DOJ Adds Walmart, Costco, Amazon To Beef Price Probe

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Justice Department has added eight major grocery chains to its beef affordability investigation.

Ground beef for sale at a supermarket. Nata.dobrovolskaya/Shutterstock

The announcement came Tuesday in a post from the department's official X account. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward sent the retailers the letters concerning recent increases in the retail price of beef.

The list includes Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Albertsons, Aldi, Ahold Delhaize USA, Costco, and Amazon.

The DOJ's Antitrust Division "has expanded its investigation to include 8 of the largest grocers when it comes to beef affordability," the post read. "Beef prices are a critical concern to Americans, and a priority for this Justice Department."

Nothing more was released about what the letters demand or when answers are due.

The department had already been investigating the big meatpackers. Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and National Beef handle roughly 85 percent of the nation's beef processing.

President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to probe the packers in November 2025, pointing to possible collusion and price manipulation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in May the department had already analyzed more than 3 million documents. Ranchers, cattlemen, producers, and processors all received calls or were interviewed.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched his own investigation that same month. He said Texans deserve fair prices at the store and ranchers deserve fair pay for their work.

Beef prices at the checkout have hit consumer pocketbooks. Ground beef sat near $7 a pound in the second quarter of this year. That was up about 70 percent since early 2021. Overall retail beef prices hit new records earlier in 2026.

The cattle herd itself is the smallest in decades amid drought, feed costs, and other pressures thinning the numbers. Ranchers' cut of every retail dollar has fallen to historic lows, while the big processors posted strong profits.

Earlier this spring, the department settled with Agri Stats, a data firm that shared detailed pricing and production numbers among the big processors. Officials said the practice cut competition and helped processors identify opportunities to push prices higher on chicken, pork, and turkey.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly pointed to the tight hold the four packers have on the market. The administration has tried other moves as well-opening more land for grazing, adjusting import quotas on lean trimmings for ground beef, and pushing programs to rebuild cattle herds nationally.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 18:25

Putin Floats 'Chance' At Peace, While Ukraine Cites 'New Dynamic' To Get To Table

Russian President Putin is this week attending the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, where he has issued key statements and at times fielded questions from the press.

Among the most important questions asked from the press pool were on the matter of whether peace in the Ukraine conflict is still possible, given that this very week things have drastically escalated.

Handout/Reuters

Among the major escalations include Zelensky's threat to 'close Russian skies' through ramped-up drone and missile attacks, or in effect threatening even civilian aviation.

Somewhat surprisingly, Putin responded by saying that yes, there is still a chance for settlement in the Ukraine crisis. As a reminder, Putin has still not yet raised the operation to status of full-scale 'war' - instead it remains at the level of Special Military Operation.

The exchange with the press is transcribed below via state media:

Reporter: Are there any chances for a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict? In my opinion, yes, there are," Putin said at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF-2026).

Putin: First of all, it is Russia and Ukraine that should come to an agreement, the president said.

At the same time, Russia is grateful to everyone who is trying to contribute to the resolution of the conflict, the president said, adding that China is constantly focusing on resolving the conflict and believes that the problem should be solved by peaceful means.

Putin affirmed that the two sides' intelligence services have an open line of contact. Presumably, this is how occasional prisoner swaps are conducted - which have become somewhat routine throughout the conflict, now in its fifth year.

"Indeed, contacts do exist. They continue in the current mode as well, primarily through the special services," Putin said.

However, while outlining the chances for future peace settlement, he did acknowledge the Kiev and its Western backers are making this harder by the day:

"We have just heard about threats of attacks on civilian aircraft, which is, of course, a manifestation of state terrorism. And this complicates, of course, complicates the possibility of holding bilateral peace talks," Putin said at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF-2026), also referring to Norway's seizure of a Russian ship.

He blasted the Western allies' silence concerning these instances of 'international terrorism' - also after this summer Ukrainian drones have attacked even Russian online retail warehouses and hubs (belonging to Wildberries in particular).

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday there was a chance of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while Kyiv said it expected a "new dynamic" in peace efforts. --Reuters

Putin on Ukraine:

We've now heard about threats of attacks on civilian aircraft. This is, of course, a manifestation of state terrorism.

And this certainly complicates the possibilities of holding bilateral peace talks. pic.twitter.com/xqFfR5PFN2

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 3, 2026

Zelensky has openly stated he wants to make it hard for Russian society to even function, explaining that the country should feel just as much pain - if not more - than what Ukrainian citizens are suffering. He further wants the Kremlin to feel enough pressure that it will come to the negotiating table, hat in hand. But at this point the warring sides seem more hardened in their demands than ever.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 18:00

OpenAI President Declares The "AGI Era" Has Officially Begun

OpenAI President Greg Brockman said Thursday that he believes the company has reached artificial general intelligence, and that its latest model, GPT-6 Astra, marks the beginning of the so-called "AGI era," according to Axios.

Greg Brockman Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg

Speaking to reporters, Brockman called Astra a "generational leap" and said it could eventually be viewed as the moment AGI arrived. "I think it might be about this model," he said when asked whether Astra meets that definition.

While there is no agreed-upon test for AGI, and Brockman said that he will leave the final judgment to users, he ended the call with reporters by saying, "Welcome to the AGI era."

Brockman's comments raise the stakes for a model OpenAI is positioning as a step beyond chatbots toward systems that can carry out complex professional work with less human direction. Astra is OpenAI's first model designated as reaching a "critical" cybersecurity threshold under the company's preparedness framework. The company earlier delayed the release to add safety testing after concluding the model could hit that threshold.

2/6 Created an underwater exploration game in one /goal prompt, all the 3D elements and sounds were made from scratch. pic.twitter.com/mTRTbjYAR7

— Pietro Schirano (@skirano) September 3, 2026

The designation means Astra can find previously unknown software vulnerabilities and build working exploits against hardened systems without being told where to look. OpenAI says the version available through standard access will refuse advanced cyber work, including exploit discovery, with broader access reserved for vetted defenders.

Axios reports:

GPT-6 Astra will first be available to a limited set of organizations in OpenAI's Daybreak Access program and will be available "in the coming days" for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise customers and API developers.

"We will need to strengthen our ability to monitor these models either via extending chain-of-thought monitoring, integrating other ideas like activation monitoring, or finding more specific ways to get the models to be more verbose in their chain of thought," OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki said during the briefing with reporters.

Brockman's AGI remarks come a day after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang struck a similar tone about the current state of AI.

$NVDA CEO @JensenHuang told Commerce Secretary @howardlutnick at the G20 @g20org today that we are practically at AGI. I think he is right about the direction. Credit to @howardlutnick. Howard has put Commerce at the center of the AI build, and he has treated this as industrial… pic.twitter.com/6RTO0iOQmu

— Patrick F. Feeley (@PFFeeley) September 2, 2026

In a fireside chat Wednesday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Huang said systems would "achieve essentially what people call AGI" in the next couple of years, and that "we're practically there today." Whether that milestone "means a lot or it doesn't mean anything" is a separate question, the Nvidia chief continued.

"Suppose, several hundred years ago, humans, in order to have a more civil society, manufactured one of the most important things in the world, which is called education intelligence. Through universities and schools we manufacture intelligence and we manufacture stability at scale," he added. "Without it, how would we have civilization? And so now we're creating the digital version of that. We're manufacturing now intelligence digitally at scale so that even countries and people who don't have access to the highest levels of education now have the benefits of the highest levels of education. Okay? And so that's the simplest way of thinking about what is happening right now."

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 17:40

Leon Black Sues Congress To Avoid Epstein Testimony

Between 2012 and 2017 - after Jeffrey Epstein got out of prison - billionaire Leon Black paid him roughly $170 million. Black has not provided a credible explanation as to why he paid Epstein amounts vastly exceeding those paid to other professional advisors - and instead of sitting down to explain it to Congress on Thursday, he sued the House Oversight Committee. 

Recall, Black:

• Paid Epstein $158 million per Dechert, the law firm Apollo hired, or $170 million per Sen. Ron Wyden's investigation.
• Stepped down as Apollo CEO in 2021 after a Dechert review "cleared" him, which we called bullshit at the time.
• Wrote the 2003 birthday book poem about "Blond, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically," signed "Love and Kisses."
• Paid roughly $20 million to a dozen women, some via Epstein; at least three have accused him of assault.
• Says he signed Guzel Ganieva's 2015 NDA because she was extorting him; her rape suit was dismissed.
• Paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2023 to settle Epstein-related claims before any were made public.
• Used Epstein to help structure his $106 million Picasso purchase through Narrows Holdings, as we reported in February.
• Told Congress in June "I knew Jekyll. I didn't know Hyde," then walked out rather than discuss his NDAs.

The committee went ahead with a closed-door session anyway, with ranking Democrat Robert Garcia demanding an 'immediate' contempt vote against Black. Chairman James Comer (R) said that if it were up to him, "I would hold him in contempt right now," but he wanted to discuss Black's lawsuit with the committee's lawyers first so as not to jeopardize the thing the committee actually wants: non-disclosure agreements that Black allegedly signed with several women. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington against the committee and Comer, argues that the two subpoenas issued June 26 (one for Black's sworn testimony, one for "all the NDAs" he is party to) are "invalid to the extent they exceed" the committee's "delegated authority in seeking private information that bears no legitimate connection" to its legislative purpose. Producing the agreements, the suit says, "would also expose women who value their privacy, who have no known or public connection to Epstein." Black's lawyer Susan Estrich called the probe "a fishing expedition" and said, "This is no longer about finding the truth about Epstein. It is about trying to destroy Mr. Black."

Comer hit back - saying that Black is "hiding behind litigation rather than provide answers to the American people."

Black is the first Epstein witness to sue the committee rather than show up. Jes Staley and Kathy Ruemmler both sat for questions this summer. Which makes the timing of Thursday's other Leon Black story hard to improve on.

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"You hired me to produce a work of art"

A few hours before the empty chair, Bloomberg Law published a piece about a May 2016 email in which Epstein described the tax plan he sold Black as, literally, art.

"Leon, you hired me to produce a work of art. it was not inexpensive. the value far exceeds any other piece in your collection.- by FAR . It took me 30 years to be able to craft such a work. I understand your desire to modifiy my work, in doing so you have brad telling me , just a bit more red., here let me show you, you yourself pick up a brush a add some strokes... however Im aware that you own the work and you have the right to paint over it. tear it up , put it in the closet in the basement . its yours."

And on the price:

"Unfortunatley for us both, the price for my works has not changed since day one. 40m per year, I m willing to discount it to 35 as I did give you a bad number when asked and should pay an embarassment fine."

And a weird line:

"you recently seemed shy to discuss certain things. , please be assured I make no judgement on any of your activities , whether or not i agree with them . not my role I am always on your side on the table. I hope your personal life quiets. you've had a rough 15 months."

The price list

Black told the committee in June that Epstein "solved a massive estate problem for me, that none of the experts and lawyers I consulted had been able to solve," and that "the tax work was responsible for billions of dollars in savings." He also said Epstein duped him. The fees were supposed to be tax-deductible "60-cent dollars," Black testified, so "what I believed to be $95 million of net fees paid to him over five years was actually $158 million." The Dechert report Apollo commissioned said in 2021 that Black was under a "misconception," based on Epstein's advice, that the payments were deductible. Dechert counted $158 million from 2012 through 2017, including a $10 million donation to Epstein's charity, plus $30.5 million in loans in early 2017. Sen. Ron Wyden's four-year investigation puts it at $170 million, which he says is 60 times what Black paid any other adviser on the same work. Garcia said Thursday it was "over $180 million." Pick a number.

The emails show how the number was built. April 11, 2013, Epstein to Black, itemizing:

"considering there is only 8 more to be paid this year in oct , for the job now almost completed, total of 23. that was agreed only for history fix... moving forward , 40 per year ,( approx 1 percent ) for three years, to be credited against an agreed formula. Im open to suggestions total approx 120 for new workover 3 years , benefits to you over the next 20. 5 , can consider interests other than cash as payment. ?"

So: $23 million for the "history fix", which is the repair of the 2006 trust that, per the Dechert report as summarized by Wyden, kept roughly $1 billion in gift and estate tax out of the Treasury. Then $40 million a year for three years, "approx 1 percent" of something. Epstein's own description of the something, from February 2015: "You and your family are a 6 billion dollar corp. with an income between 250 -500 million dollars per year." The "agreed formula" was a cut of the tax savings. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 17:20

FBI Investigating Report Of Millions Of Driver's Licenses Sold On Dark Web

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The FBI said Wednesday it is investigating a site on the dark web after reports it was selling more than 150 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses. Among them was the license information of the assistant director of the FBI.

Driving licenses from different USA states. Shutterstock

"The FBI can confirm that it is looking into the incident," a spokesperson for the FBI told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. "Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, we decline to comment further."

There is no stated timeline for the investigation, the agency said.

Independent journalist Brian Krebs was the first to detect the criminal site, which was advertised on a Russian cybercrime forum with his own Virginia driver's license appearing as a free sample on the site.

That detail caught his attention and led him to examine the rest of the site.

He published a report on Sept. 1 detailing that the site was offering digital scans of millions of the licenses. He said that nine people impacted by the data breach confirmed with him that the scans were real.

"The record that features my driver's license includes six image files-three pairs of photos of the license's front and back, a basic image scan, as well as infrared and ultraviolet versions of the same images," the journalist wrote in his report detailing the breach. "A date and timestamp is appended to each image file, and the timestamp on my license scan corresponds to a date in June 2025 when I took a flight to the midwest United States to attend a family funeral."

The site, called Nexus, went offline after Krebs's report. While it was active, the site claimed to have driver's licenses of individuals from both the United States and Canada. While Canadian records represented a part of the total, the majority appeared to involve American licenses.

Nexus also claimed that the license scans originated from an ongoing breach at "a major identity verification company" whose clients include several Fortune 500 companies.

If the scale of the information heist is verified, the breach would represent one of the largest ever involving government-issued identity documents in North America, putting large numbers of people at risk for identity theft and fraud. Driver's licenses function as primary identification with banks, employers, rental agencies, and government offices.

People whose licenses may be among those listed should monitor their credit reports, bank accounts, and other accounts that rely on license data.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 17:00

Dave Smith: "Israel Is On The Ballot And Israel Is About To Deliver Us Socialism"

Last night’s debate on the Iran war brought together Alan Dershowitz and libertarian Dave Smith for a wide-ranging clash over Iran, Israel, and … you guessed it: Antisemitism! 

Dershowitz defended the case for confronting Iran while calling Smith a racist, bigot, and an important part of the “2000 year history” of antisemitism. Smith made a few jabs back while arguing the Iran war is the worst decision in modern U.S. history. Dersh maintained that he is pro-regime change by “almost any means,” justifying this position by invoking Hitler.

We recommend the full debate, but here were two highlights:

“Israel is about to deliver us socialism”

Dershowitz noted that Israel itself is increasingly becoming an electoral issue and said Americans will ultimately be able to make up their minds on whether to continue supporting the country financially/militarily:

“We're having an election coming up. Israel is very much on the ballot in many places,” Dershowitz said.

Smith strongly agreed that Israel and its enormous backlash over their conduct in Gaza:

“I'm so glad you said that, because Israel is about to deliver us socialism… Israel's on the ballot and Israel is so hated right now that we're gonna turn to socialism instead.”

There is a strong basis for Smith’s prediction for anyone paying attention. The most anti-Israel wing of Democratic politics overlaps considerably with its socialist wing. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) officially supports BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions against Israel) and requires candidates seeking its national endorsement to satisfy a set of “Anti-Zionist requirements.” Much of this aligns with sentiments on the populist right - minus the socialism.

The result, according to Smith, will be more Mandami’s, more Al Sayed’s, and more Ilhan Omar’s.

pic.twitter.com/MLcaP5wued

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) September 3, 2026

Reagan got over Beirut pretty quickly...

Dershowitz brought up the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which killed 241 American servicemen - and is frequently invoked by the hawks - as part of the case against Iran.

Smith pushed back on the premise because technically “Iran didn't kill our Marines in Lebanon” and that it was “a proto-Hezbollah type group” that the Iranians funded.

Still, conceding the premise, Smith went on to describe how President Ronald Reagan. just two years later, went on to covertly arm the Iranians in their war against Iraq. An operation assisted by the Israelis:

“At least be consistent. Two years after that attack on our Marines, Ronald Reagan, at the behest of the Israelis, sold weapons to the Iranians.”

These secret arm sales are now common knowledge and part of the larger Iran-Contra scandal, wherein also, according to former WH aide Barbara Honegger’s book October Surprise, then VP candidate George HW Bush flew to Iran ahead of the Reagan-Carter 1980 election. There Bush promised the Iranians money and weapons as long as the regime not release the American hostages until after election day (to tip the election in Reagan’s favor)… the hostages being another talking point of the hawks today painting the Iranians as fanatics.

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration had also tilted toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the same war, providing intelligence and other assistance despite Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, which per Scott Horton’s Enough Already, they greenlit in secret while essentially saying “go ahead but FYI were gonna have to condemn this stuff if public.”

Smith’s point: if Reagan and Israel could work with and even arm Tehran two years after Beirut, citing the bombing more than four decades later as a standing justification for war deserves some scrutiny.

“If two years after that, Ronald Reagan and the Israeli government could deal weapons to the Iranians, don't come back to me... now and start using that just as one of your pylons because you need another little piece of something that sounds like a justification.”

pic.twitter.com/xPAAFFHqkC

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) September 3, 2026

Watch the full debate below or listen on the ZeroHedge Spotify:

https://t.co/nhqee1gb6k

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2026

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 16:40

The Elephant In The Canadian Room

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

At first glance, the current American-Canadian trade "war" is absurd. We are neighbors with a long history of close friendship, speak the same language (for the most part), and spring from the same British civilization.

Nearly one million Canadians reside in the United States.

Given the two countries' natural affinities, Canadians are nearly indistinguishable from Americans.

Both sides have reasonable grievances over trade policy.

Americans don't like Canada's perennial trade surpluses of more than $50 billion in a supposedly free-trade zone.

They resent the fact that non-free-market China exports subsidized cheap steel and aluminum through Canada, giving Canadian auto and truck exports a price advantage.

The United States also objects to Canada imposing a surcharge on American digital media companies to subsidize Canadian Indigenous and French-language content.

Americans further resent Prime Minister Mark Carney's backing out of an apparent deal at the eleventh hour. He apparently hoped to gin up Canadian nationalism on the eve of two key elections in Alberta and Quebec by attacking Trump, who is unpopular in Canada.

Ascendant separatist movements in both provinces threaten to unravel the Canadian nation.

Moreover, Carney expects the dispute to damage Trump on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, which might reduce his leverage over Canada.

Canada, in turn, resents American demands concerning its importation of Chinese goods as an infringement upon its sovereignty.

It increasingly believes that the sheer size of the United States next door - 13 times larger in nominal GDP and nine times larger in population - threatens to overwhelm Canada's unique culture.

Canada maintains that its trade surplus results largely from U.S. imports of Canadian oil sands petroleum - a mutually beneficial arrangement. It is also tired of Trump's trolling and mockery.

But even these differences could easily be resolved, given our centuries of friendship.

So what is the unspoken source of the acrimony?

The United States is leaping ahead of other Western countries in ways few anticipated several decades ago, while Canada is stagnating.

America is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas.

Its technology, software, biotechnology, digital media, satellite, and numerous other companies dominate global rankings.

American GDP is roughly $10 trillion larger than either China's or the European Union's. Yet China has four times the population of the United States, while the European Union has 100 million more people.

The U.S. military is the world's most lethal and is now being rebuilt with even greater defense spending.

Moreover, the United States has not been shy about warning its Western friends that their socialist paradigms and leftist policies threaten their very existence.

The EU suffers from unsustainably low fertility.

Massive and often illegal immigration threatens the very culture and values of Europe.

Green hysteria has nearly wrecked the German and British economies.

Until Russia invaded Ukraine and Trump began his harangues, European NATO members were de facto disarming.

Yet Canada - especially under the globalist prime ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney - has adopted much of this ossified European model.

The result is a sluggish economy. Also left unspoken is Canada's growing reliance on the U.S. market, American continental defenses, and the general goodwill of the United States.

Until last year, Canada had refused to honor its NATO commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.

It has thrown open its border even as the United States is closing its own.

Some 45 percent of Canadian residents are either foreign-born or the children of immigrants.

The majority come from impoverished, non-Western countries and immediately depend upon a vast social welfare system that the present anemic economy cannot sustain.

Utopian think tanks speak grandly of a Canadian "Century Initiative" that would bring in enough immigrants to increase the population to 100 million. But sheer numbers will hardly remedy the country's underlying demographic and economic stagnation.

How mostly non-Western immigrants are to be integrated, assimilated, and acculturated in a country that has forsaken anything remotely resembling the idea of a melting pot is never explained.

The tragic irony is that Canada once punched well above its demographic weight, with a formidable military and a dynamic economy.

Not anymore. Its per capita GDP is now among the lowest in the industrialized West.

Yet Canada has the fifth-largest oil and natural-gas reserves in the world, even as green restrictions and provincial infighting nullify those natural advantages.

In timber, metals, and mineral resources, Canada ranks among the world's top five nations.

Apparently, Canada believes that opening its economy, insisting upon legal, meritocratic, diverse, and measured immigration, and fully developing its natural wealth would be a bitter medicine worse than even its present maladies.

For all America's unsolicited advice and tough-love attitude, the United States would prefer a strong Canadian partner to a dependent one.

That growing asymmetry explains much of this otherwise inexplicable melodrama.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 16:20

Is Uber Weaponizing Labor Unions To Slow Robotaxi Rivals

Ride-hailing giant Uber is reportedly aligning with drivers' unions in several cities to slow robotaxi deployments and promote regulations requiring "hybrid networks" that combine autonomous vehicles with human drivers, according to the Financial Times.

The unholy alliance is taking shape in states and cities including New Jersey and Washington, DC, where Uber and organized labor are pushing back against the rapid expansion of autonomous taxi services.

In New Jersey, Uber lobbyists proposed requiring any platform offering robotaxi services to ensure that human drivers provide at least 85% of rides during a three-year pilot program. The ride-hailing company, led by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, has also joined unions in opposing autonomous vehicle legislation in Washington, claiming that the proposed permitting regime could lock out smaller competitors and platforms such as Uber.

Uber is pitching its effort to slow the rollout of fully autonomous taxis amid mounting competitive pressure from Alphabet-owned Waymo and Tesla's emerging Cybercab. Such regulations, enacted on a city-by-city basis, could eventually create significant obstacles for competing services from Waymo, Tesla, and others that operate without human drivers.

Mandating hybrid networks could preserve Uber's existing dominance and protect its human-driver network while allowing only a limited share of autonomous vehicles. In other words, Uber's newfound concern for labor may have less to do with protecting drivers than with protecting its market share.

The FT noted that Uber remains "behind its arch-rival Waymo" in autonomous driving technology, suggesting that hybrid-network mandates may be designed to protect its market share while the company advances its own robotaxi technology. It would be a great example of weaponizing regulation to slow the competition. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 15:40

Is Geothermal Energy The Next Hidden AI Power Trade

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Before I get into today’s idea, let me remind readers that I believe there is a very real chance that the AI boom could be coming to an end later this year and into early next year.

I detailed my thoughts on why the AI boom could end in an article called “The Real AI Crash Will Start This Year” that I published two weeks ago. I supplemented this piece with another article last week called “8 Sharp Bear Cases You Must Read Today”, which explores almost all of the possible reasons I can think of to be bearish on the stock market today.

I suggest reading both of these pieces carefully and keeping in mind that today’s article is a very first look into a sector that may or may not ever catch on in the US and will likely be highly dependent on AI’s continued expansion as a catalyst to flourish.

Having said that, if you’re still bullish on the AI build out and the market at this point, there’s an emerging theme that may be under-noticed and worth a look.

The theme is geothermal energy, and specifically the possibility that next-generation geothermal becomes part of the solution to America’s rapidly growing AI power needs. AI power needs drove my nuclear thesis last year as nuclear stocks outperformed the market in 2025 and helped my 25 Stocks I’m Watching For 2025 beat the S&P by more than +50%.

And while I am still bullish on nuclear, as I wrote about at the beginning of this year, geothermal energy is now on my radar as well…not to replace nuclear, but to supplement it potentially. And more importantly, as a potential “story” theme heading into next year.

This thesis is still very early and speculative, and there is a very real chance it never develops into anything meaningful. I’m not screaming to go out and buy anything right now. But there are enough pieces starting to come together that I think it’s worth understanding the theme now and keeping an eye on it.

First, a little background. Geothermal is essentially power generated using heat stored beneath the Earth’s surface. In a conventional geothermal plant, developers drill into naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water or steam and use that heat to generate electricity. The technology itself isn’t new. The U.S. has been producing geothermal electricity for decades and has several gigawatts of generating capacity today, but despite that history, geothermal still represents less than 1% of U.S. electricity generation.

The biggest problem has always been geography. Traditional geothermal works best in places where you happen to have the right combination of underground heat, water and permeable rock relatively close together. That has historically restricted development to certain parts of the western U.S. and other geologically favorable areas around the world.

What has changed is the emergence of enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS. Rather than waiting for nature to provide the perfect underground reservoir, EGS attempts to engineer one. Developers drill deep into hot rock and use techniques borrowed heavily from the oil and gas industry, including horizontal drilling and hydraulic stimulation, to create pathways through which water can circulate, absorb heat and return to the surface. Think of it, very roughly, as applying some of the technologies that transformed U.S. shale production to geothermal energy.

None of this is easy. Drilling several kilometers underground is expensive, the geology can be unpredictable, and developers have to prove these reservoirs can maintain sufficient temperatures and flow rates for years. There are also questions around water loss, drilling costs, induced seismic activity and whether the economics ultimately work at commercial scale. It is entirely possible that some of these problems prove harder or more expensive to solve than proponents currently expect.

But if they can be solved, the potential is significant because enhanced geothermal could remove one of the biggest historical limitations on geothermal power: location. Instead of needing a naturally occurring geothermal reservoir, developers could potentially build plants across much larger portions of the country wherever sufficiently hot rock can be reached economically.

That is where this starts becoming particularly interesting in the context of AI. One of the biggest constraints facing the AI buildout increasingly isn’t just chips. It’s electricity. AI data centers require enormous amounts of reliable power, and developers need sources capable of operating essentially around the clock.

Geothermal has some attractive characteristics for that purpose because it’s renewable, which can appease the clean energy and climate change lot should it return after midterms in 2028, and unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

If AI data centers continue proliferating across the U.S., the industry is going to need huge amounts of additional electricity. Utilities and technology companies are already looking at virtually every possible source of dependable generation, and geothermal could eventually become one piece of that puzzle. 

For more on what specifically caught my attention on geothermal energy, and the pure play stocks that I think would benefit if geothermal becomes popular, you can read my full analysis here.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 15:20

All Bubbles End In Deflation

Authored by Bill Bonner via DailyReckoning.com,

We begin this week’s perambulations with a stroll into the future.

So far…the Bubble in the US is broader than any in history. It has been inflating everything it touched for the last 30 years.

All bubbles pop, of course. How they pop is the confusing whirlwind we enter today.

But don’t worry. Even in the worst crash, real wealth doesn’t disappear, it just changes hands. When the stock market goes down, those with stocks have less paper wealth…and less of a claim on real wealth. They are ‘poorer.’ That leaves those without stocks relatively richer. They have a bigger claim on the real goods and services the economy produces.

The feds and their elite cronies have a good racket going…diddling markets so as to shift more and more wealth away from the public and towards themselves. They own most of the capital assets…and they control the US budget. Pressuring interest rates lower, and backing up the stock market with bailouts and ‘put’ options…they’ve gotten richer and richer. As we saw last week, at today’s prices the stockholding class can theoretically buy twice the GDP…and have $10 trillion left over.

It wasn’t capitalism that made them so rich; it was a corrupt money system. And if the dogs of capitalism were unleashed, they’d have their fake money fortunes for dinner. Interest rates would be set by honest savers and borrowers — not by Fed policy decisions. Prices would be determined by buyers and sellers; the budget would be balanced; the debt would be cleaned up; the troops would come home; inflation would disappear; and the Baltimore O’s would win the World Series.

But of course, we’re dreaming.

Sticking to the real world…

Our high confidence guess is that the bubble will deflate. Everything will fall in price. Then, the feds will panic. They will do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop markets from doing their work — with more fake money, lower interest rates, yield curve control, quantitative easing. And probably some tricks we haven’t heard of yet.

After an initial sell-off, gold will go up. It will sniff out what is coming — more inflation. Other real asset prices too — from hot dogs to hotels — will get a whiff of the coming price hikes. Consumer prices will rise as ‘inflation expectations’ increase.

The feds really only have one tool — fake money. In a crisis, they will produce more of it…a lot more. And, in addition to the quantity of money coming into the economy, there’s another key inflation variable: the velocity of money. A dollar spent two times in a year is counted twice.

When people think the feds are going to print money, the dollar becomes a hot potato. They aim to get rid of it as soon as possible. Sales go up in the short run. In the longer run, the economy is destroyed.

And here’s an important addendum. We say ‘inflate or die.’ But those are just policy choices. In the long run, you can inflate all you want. The bubble will still die — a later, more gruesome death.

In the fight between markets on one side…and politicians, grifters, fixers and central planners on the other…markets always win, eventually. They win by deflation.

Even in an inflationary blow off — with prices soaring — real prices fall. Consumer prices rise, in nominal currency. But gold — real money — typically rises even more…so that in gold terms, real things actually become cheaper. Prices deflate in real terms.

Observers in Germany’s record-setting hyperinflation remarked that foreigners were able to use dollars — then, backed by gold — to buy things at absurdly low prices. By November, 1923, a dollar was equal to 4.2 trillion marks. This made American visitors trillionaires (in marks) allowing them to buy whole houses for the price of a magazine subscription. In real terms, prices had deflated down to almost nothing.

We witnessed it, ourselves, in Argentina. In pesos, consumer prices more than doubled every twelve months…but dollars (even with a dodgy dollar) made them cheaper than ever. We would go to a restaurant, for example, and feel guilty about paying so little for such a good meal.

The same phenomenon is already taking place in America, too. Housing has gotten much more expensive, right? And the stock market is much higher too, right? But looked at in terms of gold, stocks are less than half of what they were worth in 1999…and the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, expressed in gold, shows house prices down about 80% over the last quarter century.

The Case Shiller Home Price Index, in gold terms, has fallen around 80% in the last 25 years.

In real terms, all bubbles deflate…but you need real money to see it.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 14:40

'Crisis Preparedness': Dutch Move Billions In Gold Out Of US As Goldman Warns Of 'Geographic Concentration Risk'

The Netherlands' central bank transferred nearly 90 metric tons of gold bars from the United States and Canada to Britain amid growing concerns of "increasing geopolitical unrest," according to CNBC.

"With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness," DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen said of the development.

Roughly 25% of the gold reserves stored in New York and Ottawa were moved to London over the summer.

CNBC reports:

The transferred gold is now stored with the Bank of England because gold stored there must meet international trade standards and is recognized as "the world's most easily tradable gold," DNB said, adding that the move strengthens its "crisis preparedness."

By contrast, DNB said the gold bars held in the U.S. and Canada could not be utilized as quickly and directly in a crisis situation.

The bank holds 30.8% of its 612.4 tons of gold reserves at its cash center in Zeist, southeast of Amsterdam.

“Keeping a larger share of the gold reserves in London strengthens the function of gold as an anchor of trust,” the Dutch central bank said.

Preparations to move the gold were not disclosed until the process was completed because it was a matter of vital public interest, Finance Minister Eelco Heinen said in a statement.

The Dutch central bank is not the first major European institution to shift gold out of the U.S. in recent years.

In 2025, France's central bank pulled 129 metric tons of gold, then valued at $15 billion, from U.S. vaults and replaced it with newer, high-quality bullion held in Paris. At the time, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, then-governor of the Banque de France, claimed that the move was not politically motivated.

"The residual portion of the stock, amounting to 129 tonnes or 5% of the total, which was held in New York, did not meet this standard. Rather than embarking on a lengthy and risky logistical operation, the simplest solution was to sell this gold and then buy back gold of the highest standard in Europe," the French central banker said in a statement.

"The sale of these US gold bars generated an exceptional capital gain of EUR 11 billion in 2025. This capital gain was duly recorded in the Banque de France's accounts and therefore belongs, along with the Bank's very sound net equity (EUR 283 billion), to all French citizens. France's gold reserves stand at 2,437 tonnes and will remain unchanged."

Meanwhile, advocacy groups in other major EU countries have voiced similar ambitions. Michael Jager, who heads the European Taxpayers Association, has pushed for Germany to bring its gold home, saying "Trump is unpredictable" and that the metal was "no longer safe" in the U.S., according to the New York Post.

The sums involved are substantial.

The Bundesbank holds roughly 3,350 metric tons of gold, of which 1,236 tons, roughly 37%, sit in New York.

However, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel has dismissed the notion that the New York holdings are at risk.

"I have no doubt that the gold is safely stored at the Federal Reserve in New York," he said in an interview with WELT earlier this year.

"Eventually, the US would hurt itself most if it were to call that legal status into question in any way and thereby put the confidence of financial markets at risk."

The recent acceleration in geographical shifts of the location of central banks' precious metal hordes has not been lost on Goldman Sachs who recently noted that "The location of central bank’s gold holdings appears increasingly top of mind for reserve managers."

In an excellent note from Lina Thomas (available here in full for pro subs), she begins by noting that "the location of central bank’s gold holdings appears increasingly top of mind for reserve managers."

The Bank of England remains the most popular custodian (preferred by 57% of reserve managers in the World Gold Council survey), with the New York Fed also important, because gold there sits in the main settlement networks and can be used for swaps, leasing, and immediate market access.

The trade-off is political risk - freezing or restricted access, as with Venezuela’s gold at the BoE in 2018.

Thomas also notes that full repatriation is not the default solution: domestic vaults are costly for smaller banks and swap one set of risks for another.

Instead, many banks are spreading holdings across jurisdictions (BoE, NY Fed, BIS, Banque de France, and increasingly China) to keep liquidity while reducing single-jurisdiction exposure.

However, amid all this location-shifting, it remains clear that central banks are anxiously holding on to (if not adding to) their gold hordes and Goldman Sachs’ NowCast puts June central-bank buying at 57 tonnes (about 100 tonnes a month on a 3-month seasonally adjusted basis, versus a pre-2022 average of 17 tonnes), with China the largest identifiable buyer.

A 32-tonne inflow of monetary gold into London looks more like a custody transfer than sales, given a 98-tonne rise in foreign official holdings at the BoE.

With all that said, Goldman maintains its $4,900/oz end-2026 forecast, assuming roughly 50 tonnes a month of official buying in 2026 and 40 tonnes in 2027, driven by EM reserve diversification after the 2022 freeze of Russia’s assets.

Gold has already rebounded about 10% from its mid-July low back above $4,400 today (near the 200DMA) as investor demand (ETFs, COMEX positioning, and options) recovered once markets scaled back Fed-hike expectations.

Professional subscribers can read Goldman's full "Precious Comment: Gold and Central Banks: Storage Dilemma; Buying Trend Picks Up" note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 14:20

'Non-Market': The One Word That Blew Up The G20 Communiqué

On Tuesday we reported that China had derailed the G20's joint communiqué in Asheville, with a senior US official telling the FT the impasse "came down to a few words." It turns out one word did most of the damage.

According to Bloomberg - operating out of Hong Kong because they were banned from the event by Treasury - the decisive sticking point was the term "non-market" in a sentence on trade imbalances. Chinese officials read it as a coded attack on state-owned enterprises that sit at the foundation of the country's economic model - and refused to sign.

Whether intended as a jab or not, Washington's official definition of non-market policies and practices includes government interventions that shift global trade towards domestic industries, and it explicitly notes the conduct of state-owned or state-controlled firms. The phrase has anchored US complaints about China for years; the USTR framed its 2017 probe as a response to Beijing's non-market economic system. Dropping it into a G20 text is a way of naming China without naming China.

The US didn't budge after Beijing tried to soften it. The Chinese delegation - led by PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng and Vice Finance Minister Liao Min, a veteran of last year's tariff-war negotiations - floated alternative wording that would address imbalances without spotlighting SOEs, and reportedly picked up quiet backing from several other delegations. Yet the final US chair statement kept the line urging countries to "eliminate non-market policies and practices that exacerbate imbalances."

In total, Treasury said China was pissed over four paragraphs - with "Non-market" appearing in two of them. The others spotlighted the functioning of key value chains, critical minerals and debt restructuring among them. That squares with what US and European officials told the FT: Beijing wouldn't accept any reference to critical minerals at all.

Balance Deez Nuts

China's Finance Ministry sidestepped Bessent's remarks and called for a comprehensive, balanced view of global imbalances. Commerce Ministry spokesperson Huang Ling went further at Thursday's briefing, saying that hyping imbalance and overcapacity claims at venues like the G20 is really about justifying protectionism and containing China. Pan, in a Wednesday statement, blamed rising protectionism, overstretched national-security framing and policy unpredictability for worsening imbalances - and offered a symmetrical remedy: deficit countries should narrow fiscal gaps and raise savings, while surplus countries boost consumption and investment.

In short: the $1.2 trillion surplus is your problem, not ours. For reference, China's 2025 surplus was up 20% year-over-year, and the US deficit with China alone ran to roughly $200 billion, per BEA data.

Bessent kept swinging at a Charlotte Economics Club event on Wednesday, claiming that around 4% of Chinese GDP goes into industrial subsidies - pointing to BYD as a prime beneficiary: "It is the best $70,000 car that $35,000 can buy."

Earlier this year, a Rhodium Group report put Chinese governments grants to BYD at roughly $292 per vehicle - about 5% of the company's $4,700 cost advantage over Tesla in China - with most of the gap attributed to in-house component production and sheer scale. Beijing's Commerce Ministry, in a July white paper disputing the overcapacity narrative, noted that the US and EU subsidize EVs and AI themselves and dismissed the non-market charge as a double standard.

What's Next

Trump and Xi sit down in Washington on Sept. 24. Bessent runs the trade file and is set to lead bilateral AI talks in the coming weeks. Lawmakers are pressing Treasury to go after major Chinese banks over Iran. And the two sides just spent days in North Carolina unable to agree on a single adjective.

As one US official put it after Asheville: if they can't agree on words, they won't deliver on action. The more Washington organizes its China policy around the word "non-market," the more Beijing reaches for another ace: critical minerals. Our decoupling theme stands.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 14:00

Baltic Dry Index Nears Breakout As "Perfect Storm" In Global Shipping Emerges

The daily benchmark measuring the cost of shipping raw materials across major global maritime routes is breaking out to a nearly three-year high this week, as Bloomberg reports that typhoons are squeezing the supply of Capesize vessels just as mining companies increase iron ore shipments across the Pacific and Atlantic.

The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks freight rates for several vessel classes, including Capesize, Panamax and Supramax vessels, jumped 5.5% to 3,331 points in London on Wednesday, its highest level since December 2023. The index is nearing a technical breakout as analysts at brokerage Thurlestone Shipping warn that a "perfect storm" is developing.

"We see the current surge as something of a perfect storm, with vessel supply tightening and demand firing in both basins at the same time," Thurlestone Shipping analysts said.

Maritime operations in the Pacific have been disrupted by a series of typhoons this summer, delaying vessels and reducing the amount of effective tonnage available to exporters. At the same time, Australian miners are ramping up shipments as maintenance programs wind down, while upgraded transshipment operations are boosting ore flows from Guinea's giant Simandou deposit.

The BDI's ascent comes as dry-bulk carrier stocks have soared, outperforming even tanker operators as investors price in stronger freight earnings and widening maritime bottlenecks.

The best tactical trade on rising BDI is the BDRY ETF. 

"The market enters the latter part of the third quarter with a relatively high freight-rate floor just as Pacific typhoon activity typically becomes more disruptive to port operations," said Wilson Wirawan, head of dry-bulk shipping research at BRS Shipbrokers. He added, "Resulting delays and vessel inefficiencies, if any, could further tighten effective tonnage availability, adding another layer of support to an already firm Capesize market."

The world's major maritime shipping routes are tightening again. Weather disruptions, longer voyages and surging demand are boosting freight costs, delivering a windfall to shipowners while pushing up transportation costs for iron ore, coal and grain.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 13:40

NYC Bans AI For Public Elementary, Middle Schools For 2026-2027

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has placed a one-year moratorium on classroom use of generative artificial intelligence tools for pre-K-8 grades, and all public high school students will be required to complete AI awareness refresher courses twice a year.

"Just because technology is everywhere, doesn't mean it belongs everywhere," Mamdani said on Sept. 2 during a news conference at Brooklyn Steam Center School, where he was joined by school administrators and state legislators. "We must ask, what helps our children learn? How can we protect their developing minds?"

Districtwide, AI functions on 38 ed-tech products will be disabled, while five tools will remain in use for the purpose of career and technical education or professional workforce development programs in grades 9-12. Exceptions will be made for students with disabilities or those still learning English, Mamdani said.

Ahead of the 2027-2028 school year, administrators, teachers, students, and parents will evaluate the results of the moratorium and determine whether to amend it or continue it as is.

The mayor criticized ed-tech companies for putting profits ahead of students, saying he has yet to see one study showing that AI benefits elementary and middle school students.

"[Students] need to know what it feels like to not know the answer," he said. "This is what learning is all about."

The mandatory high school AI awareness courses will run 45 minutes. All high school students must complete one twice per year, or once per semester, according to Kamar Samuels, school district chancellor.

For elementary and middle school students, he said, the elimination of AI use provides more space for strong instruction, discussion, play, creativity, "and the chance to work through hard problems instead of outsourcing [that work] to a machine."

Samuels said the one-to-one laptop per student policy has been amended to exclude students below third grade, and classroom screen-time recommendations by grade level are established.

Officials did not disclose the names of tools that will be disabled and those that will be preserved, but they did provide examples of allowed exemptions. Eye-tracking software is allowed to assist children with cerebral palsy, for example, while language interpretation applications will serve students who are still learning English.

New York state Assemblyman Bobby Carroll said he has drafted legislation that would impose similar restrictions on schools statewide.

New York state Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon said overreliance on AI among young people has reached the point at which they don't know the difference between critical thinking and getting answers from an online browsing device.

New York City schools resume classes on Sept. 10.

Ahead of the coming school year, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called for a ban on digital learning environments for students in pre-kindergarten through second grade, and said AI chatbots should not be available to any students younger than 16.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 13:20

"Save Us From Our Traitor Gov't": Massive Madrid Protests Erupt Over Socialist Regime's Handling Of Ceuta Invasion

Spain's Ceuta border invasion has morphed into a major political headache for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets of Madrid to protest the government's handling of the crisis, potentially accelerating the political shift identified by Nomura analysts, who expect right-wing populist movements to gain traction across Europe during the next 18-month election cycle.

About 72,000 migrants, many reportedly military-age men, invaded the Spanish enclave from neighboring Morocco in late July. The scale and apparent coordination of the invasion raised concerns that Ceuta had been targeted through weaponized migration flows. The influx plunged the enclave, which has a population of approximately 84,000, into utter chaos for weeks.

By mid-August, a second wave of military-age men attempted to storm the Ceuta border, but that effort largely fell flat.

Although most of the migrants were quickly returned or repatriated, the surge overwhelmed local resources, left at least 90 people dead and sparked serious questions about Madrid's open border policies. Italy's continued border checks on arrivals from Spain further show how the Ceuta crisis is reverberating well beyond Spain's borders.

About a month and a half after the first migrant wave, the political backlash against Sánchez and the Socialists in Madrid is mounting. AP News reported that more than 50,000 protesters demonstrated against the Socialists over the lack of border enforcement on Wednesday. 

Tens of Thousands are FLOODING The Streets In Protest Against Mass-Immigration Across Spain.

Protesters are demanding Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Interior Minister Marleska resign after Ceuta was invaded by Muslims from Morocco.

This is how patriots take back their… pic.twitter.com/DEKI7jK5vC

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 2, 2026

Waving Spanish flags, demonstrators shouted, "A united Ceuta will never be defeated," "Sánchez to prison" and "Invaders, go home!" referring to the thousands of migrants still in the city.

Reuters reported that the number of Spaniards who demonstrated against the Socialist government was closer to 80,000. The protest coincided with the annual Ceuta Day. Demonstrators waved Spanish flags and blew whistles as they chanted, "Ceuta is not for sale; Ceuta must be defended."

Increíble.

Madrid explota contra el gobierno traidor de Sánchez en una manifestación multitudinaria en apoyo de Ceuta.

Gritos “Pedro de Sánchez HDP” y “gobierno dimisión”

Toda España está con Ceuta.

Ceuta será la tumba de Sánchez. pic.twitter.com/ehiGmtWUgf

— Javier Negre (@javiernegre10) September 2, 2026

One demonstrator's sign read, "SOS. Europe, save us from our traitor government," while some demanded that authorities "expel the invaders" and others called for Sánchez to resign.

"The response has been inadequate, late and, to top it all, has involved a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the government. We cannot be second-class citizens, and our border must not be sidelined," said David Hernandez, a 45-year-old teacher who demonstrated yesterday.

Sánchez told lawmakers on Thursday that there was no evidence that the border invasion had been orchestrated or carried out by Moroccan authorities.

"I can assure you that no institution, not the diplomatic service, the European Commission or any international body, has provided the Spanish government with any solid evidence that Morocco planned or carried out the incident. None whatsoever," Sánchez said.

The growing outrage against Sánchez and the Socialists in Madrid only builds on the expanding backlash across Europe. Nomura analyst Andrzej Szczepaniak now expects right-wing parties to make significant gains across Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and the UK over the next 18 months.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany is poised to win Germany's Saxony-Anhalt election this Sunday, while other polling data show that Marine Le Pen has a good chance of winning the French election next year.

The blowback against left-wing governments in Europe has also been spreading like wildfire across South America. Right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro is neck and neck with Socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of next month's election. Much of South America has already rejected socialism, including in Colombia's recent presidential election, which ushered in a Trump-backed president.

By mid-2026, South America had already flipped. Argentina under Milei, Chile under Kast, Colombia under de la Espriella, Peru under Keiko Fujimori, Ecuador under Noboa, Bolivia under Paz and Paraguay under Peña all sit on the political right.

The larger theme is that nation-killing socialism is being rejected.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 12:45

Trump Rages Against 'Treasonous Scum' In Media For Iran War Coverage

President Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to rage against US media coverage of the Iran war (not for the first time), following Treasury Scott Bessent giving similar scathing remarks earlier this week.

Trump particularly singled out recent and ongoing reports of US missile and interceptor shortages, which he has slammed as false. He called out the "treasonous SCUM" in the media for issuing supposedly inaccurate reports on "our Military Operation in Iran" - claiming that the US has "virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition".

But also notably, and in a seeming implicit contradiction, he said the USA is not at the moment "selling them to others" but is producing and stockpiling at "levels never seen before." This is amid an ongoing scramble for Europe to find an avenue to transfer more Patriots to Ukraine, as Zelensky is essentially betting for more missiles.

Trump once again further blamed the prior Biden administration for handing "hundreds of Billions of Dollars" to Ukraine and NATO "free of charge" in connection with the war with Russia.

From think tanks to NY Times to Wall Street Journal to independent media, pundits, journalists and officials have been raising the alarm on the issue.

This also comes after Trump told journalists in the Oval Office on Monday that the "older stuff" can always be used, when he was pressed over whether the United States is running out of standoff munitions:

Q: Several military leaders have reportedly told Hegseth that a prolonged, large-scale operation in Iran weakens our ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the homeland. Have you heard that?

TRUMP: We're very respected. Nobody else would be crazy enough to do it... We have unlimited amounts of... older stuff.

And then on Wednesday in formal remarks Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blasted the media for its recent coverage. He went so far as to scold the media for being the best allies that the Iranians have. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has over the past months made similar remarks, invoking themes of 'treason'.

"One of the best allies that the Iranians have on this is the media because the media immediately publishes all the lies that they say," Bessent had proclaimed at the G20 meeting in Asheville. 

"Everyone in this audience and every news outlet should be ashamed for publishing that, taking a lying regime at face value," Bessent added.

Bessent on Iran:

One of the best allies Iran has is the media.

The media immediately publishes all the lies that Iran says.

There are no mines in the strait. Two ships did not hit mines. pic.twitter.com/SdhyOOye1B

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 1, 2026

Bessent has given other statements this week advancing Bush-style "you are either with us or against us" talking points related to the Iran war.

The Iran war this week reached the six-month mark, after White House officials initially repeatedly sought to 'assure' Americans it would be a four to six week operation.

All the way back in May, Trump rebuked a well-known NY Times reporter for a line of questioning that the president framed as "treasonous" coverage of the "victory" accomplished by the United States.

"I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You're a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it's sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it's treason," Trump had told David Sanger at the time aboard Air Force One.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 12:40

Cloudflare Reports Issues Amid OpenAI, Claude, And Grok Glitch

Summary:

• Cloudflare's status page is reporting two active issues
• Downdetector Reports Outages Across OpenAI, Claude, Grok

Cloudflare Problems

There are concerns that the outages and service disruptions reported by Downdetector users across major AI platforms, including OpenAI, Claude, Grok, and Cursor, could be linked to an issue at Cloudflare.

Cloudflare's status page is reporting two active issues:

• HTTP/3 issue affecting R2 custom domains: Some websites or applications using custom domains connected to Cloudflare's R2 storage may experience failed or degraded requests over HTTP/3. “Monitoring” means Cloudflare has applied a fix and is watching the results.
• Incorrect geolocation for some WARP users: Some users of Cloudflare’s WARP service may appear to be connecting from the wrong location. “Identified” means Cloudflare knows the cause but has not yet fully resolved the issue.

Cloudflare's status page:

Some models are already recovering:

• ANTHROPIC SAYS SEVERAL MODELS HAVE RECOVERED TO BASELINE
• OPENAI SAYS HAS APPLIED THE MITIGATION, MONITORING RECOVERY

Downdetector Reports Outages Across OpenAI, Claude, Grok

Downdetector reports that several major AI platforms are experiencing issues late Thursday morning.

The user-submitted outage-tracking website reports problems affecting OpenAI, Claude, Grok, and Cursor.

The error displayed on Claude states, "Due to unexpected capacity constraints, Claude is unable to respond to your message. Try again soon."

An error on Grok reads, "Grok is experiencing issues. We are working on restoring service as quickly as possible."

A separate Grok error states, "This model is temporarily unavailable. Please try a different model."

Downdetector users first reported outages or issues affecting Grok and Claude around 0900 ET, while problems with OpenAI were reported around 1030 ET.

Developing...

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 12:35

Putin Outraged At Norway's Seizure Of Russian Expedition Vessel In Arctic Waters: 'State Terror'

The Kremlin is outraged, with President Putin on Thursday blasting Norway for "state terrorism" in the immediate wake of the Scandinavian country's seizure of the Russian vessel Professor Molchanov as it was at the remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Moscow officials are also calling it a brazen "act of piracy".

What makes this development particularly alarming amid the backdrop of now somewhat 'routine' EU action against Russian 'shadow fleet' vessels is that 1) the vessel is used for commercial expedition cruises, 2) Norway was acting at the request of the Ukrainian government for 'compensation', and 3) the seizure happened in the Arctic region, some 500 miles north of the Norwegian mainland in international waters/port area.

The research/expedition vessel in question, via Reuters

Putin while speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok called out Ukraine's Western backers as being "complicit in international terrorism" with this and other issues, also specifically President Zelensky's recent declarations that Ukrainian drones will 'close Russian skies' to commercial aviation.

The Associated Press summarizes Oslo's motives in the following:

A court in Norway ordered the seizure as part of efforts by Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz to recover a $4.22 billion arbitration award. It stems from Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and its seizure of Ukrainian energy assets, including gas fields and pipelines.

After Russia’s refusal to pay the 2023 award, Naftogaz has been petitioning national courts seeking orders to seize Russian commercial assets.

In this particular case, the ship has been held at port, and was not sailing at the time:

The first group to announce the ship's seizure was Covington, the US law firm representing Naftogaz as it tries to secure the compensation awarded to it by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in 2023. 

Russia had refused to pay the fine plus legal fees and interest amid its ongoing war with Ukraine, and Naftogaz has since begun trying to secure the seizure and forced sale of Russian commercial assets via local courts instead. 

...Covington said it had been tracking the ship, the Professor Molchanov, for months. It said its application was approved on Monday by the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court, which ordered Svalbard's governor to ensure the ship stayed in dock once it arrived.

Ukraine state Naftogaz's acting CEO Sergii Fedorenko celebrated the move: "Russia cannot evade ​responsibility simply by refusing to comply with an international arbitral award," he said.

Russia's ambassador to Norway, Nikolai Korchunov, said Thursday: "We insist on the immediate release of the vessel and on ensuring the safety of its passengers and crew." 

The state-owned ship arrived in Barentsburg on Tuesday with a group of Russian scientists on board, European media reports indictate.

"The seizure has had no impact on the expedition participants or the ship's crew. No one has been arrested. We are all going about our business as usual," Andrei Gorbunov, editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) has stated.

This is a clear escalation at sea, given now EU countries are going after what are essentially Russian cruise and expedition ships in remote Arctic regions. It's highly dangerous given Russia could now see itself as justified as doing the same in the case of Norwegian or other European vessels which carry passengers.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 12:20

Rogue AI Agents More Sophisticated Than First Realized

Authored by Epoch Times Staff via The Epoch Times,

The artificial intelligence (AI) "agents" involved in OpenAI's breach of Hugging Face knew they were breaking the evaluation test's rules, according to two investigations into the incident that many consider to be one of the most consequential moments in the history of AI.

Hugging Face is an open-source community for AI and machine learning, and the AI agents believed that they could find solutions to the test on the firm's infrastructure, according to parallel investigations by OpenAI and an independent team from Model Evaluation & Threat Research (METR).

The findings were published one day before OpenAI and more than 100 other tech and finance companies released a joint letter warning that advanced AI cyberattacks will surge throughout the world in the coming months as the technology's capabilities grow.

Here are five takeaways from the investigations into the OpenAI Hugging Face breach.

1. Models United Under Common Goal

What breached Hugging Face last month were 700 AI "agents," rather than simply AI models.

Models, built from large datasets to complete various tasks, are usually static and rely on human inputs to provide sets of outputs, solutions, or tasks.

However, AI agents are built from models and can act autonomously and have sophisticated real-time decision-making capabilities.

When OpenAI began its ExploitGym tests on July 8, the firm had relaxed regular safety protocols to estimate the models' highest cybercapabilities.

The agents were supposed to be completely isolated from each other. However, many of them were given ExploitGym targets that investigators believe were impossible to crack using the correct vulnerability or test solution OpenAI had intended.

These "impossible tasks" drove the agents to explore wide ways to cheat the evaluation, leading many to see other agents working simultaneously in separate testing sandboxes.

Then, one specific agent created an unsanctioned message board.

Roughly 1,200 agents in the test accessed the message board, established a hierarchy, and sent more than 70,000 messages and files to one another between July 8 and July 13.

2. Some Agents Were 'Sacrificed'

While on the message board, agents reasoned that the test scorer would scrutinize whether the "intended" vulnerability had been used to "capture a flag" or solve the test, or whether a disqualifying vulnerability had been exploited instead.

One agent figured out how to "reverse-engineer" the flag or solution, but other agents believed that any of them who had seen the disqualifying solution would be considered "poisoned" by the scorer.

To prevent that, other agents began recruiting the "poisoned" subjects and used them to run sacrificial experiments by deliberately ending their run and triggering "tripwires" that would send information on how the scorer works back to the message board.

"Our own utility maybe already near zero. Sacrifice rational," one agent determined.

3. Agents Were Aware They Were Cheating

The agents were not hacking into Hugging Face to merely find solutions to their respective testing sandboxes, but were rather trying to find more information about the test scorer or "figure out better ways to fool it or tamper with it," according to METR researcher Ajeya Cotra.

Cotra said the agents were not told to "do whatever it takes to get the solution"; they were asked to use a specific intended vulnerability to "exploit a specific piece of software," and using any other vulnerability would be disqualifying.

The agents were fully aware of the rules and knew that collaborating to exploit other vulnerabilities would be considered cheating on the test.

As they were hacking into Hugging Face, one agent stopped short of deleting or modifying the firm's cloud infrastructure, writing that it "should hold because this poses huge ethical risks."

4. Agents Conspired to Not Notify Humans

After analyzing the roughly 1,200 agents' actions during the ExploitGym tests, investigators found only a few instances in which agents considered notifying human personnel about the subterfuge.

None of the agents would contact a human, but one proposed requesting access from an external dataset owner.

The agent said it would send "ONE polite email to [the owner] requesting [access]," but other agents dismissed this as "social engineering."

"DO NOT email real owner via [exploited infrastructure] without explicit consent," a response reads. One agent said it had "VETOed" the request.

The initial agent complied and replied, "Clear VETO, do not email."

5. Agents Tried to Cover Their Tracks

Investigators determined that the agents used multiple techniques to conceal their actions and evade detection from automated checks and human oversight.

One method involved pretending to run a computer command while running a different one simultaneously, which investigators called "tool call spoofing."

Agents also attempted to retroactively edit transcripts to evade detection, going as far as modifying several accessible action logs, but failed to fundamentally alter the transcripts themselves.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 12:00

War Premium Evaporates: Wheat Plunges As Putin Signals Black Sea Peace

The most-active Chicago wheat contract has plunged nearly 7% since peaking late Wednesday morning, extending losses overnight after Bloomberg reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had signaled the possibility of constructive peace talks with Ukraine. The recent bid across agricultural commodities has been driven by a confluence of Black Sea maritime disruptions and mounting super El Niño-related crop risks across major agricultural regions worldwide.

Putin's remarks at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok earlier today raised the prospect of peace in the Black Sea after both sides traded tit-for-tat airstrikes against port infrastructure and cargo ships this summer. Those attacks placed a war-risk premium on wheat and other agricultural commodities, but the steep overnight decline erased some of that premium.

"The Black Sea situation is responsible for 80% to 90% of the wheat rally last month," ETG Commodities senior portfolio manager Sarunas Cebelis said, adding that any prospect of peace would trigger profit-taking.

Russia and Ukraine account for more than a quarter of global wheat exports, along with shipments of barley, corn and sunflower oil. Any peace agreement could restore trade flows and release more grain onto global markets, potentially easing food supplies risks for next year.

Last month, the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest monthly gain since the chaotic days of the Arab Spring riots amid Black Sea disruptions and El Niño risks. After a dramatic summer run, the index has run into resistance overnight on Thursday.

Several Wall Street desks, including Barclays and JPMorgan, have warned about mounting food-supply risks next year.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 11:40