US Core Durable Goods Orders Surge For 11th Straight Month

After recent string 'soft' survey data, this morning we get some 'hard' data and it's mixed...ish...

Preliminary headline durable goods orders for February fell 1.4% MoM (worse than the -1.2% MoM exp). That is the third monthly decline in a row (the first 3-month decline since Nov 2019)

Source: Bloomberg

The monthly decline of the headline print largely reflected a decline in orders for aircraft.

Boeing said it received fewer orders for its planes in February than a month earlier.

On the other hand, core durable goods orders (prelim for Feb) rose 0.8% MoM (better than expected)...

Source: Bloomberg

That is the eleventh straight month of gains, pulling core orders up 5.97% YoY - the most since Aug 2022.

Bookings for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a proxy for investment in equipment, increased 0.6% MoM after a downwardly revised 0.4% decline a month earlier.

Finally, shipments figures (which actually plug into GDP) were comfortably stronger than expected (+0.9% in February versus +0.4% forecast), which suggests upside risks to Q1 forecasts.

It remains to be seen, however, how the war impacted demand for capital goods. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 08:41

Futures Slide, Oil Jumps After US Attacks Kharg Island Ahead Of Trump's 8pm Iran Deadline

US futures reversed earlier gains and oil advanced following reports that Iran's Kharg island was targeted earlier on Tuesday, while the market was largely paralyzed ahead of Trump’s 8pm ET deadline for Iran to agree to a ceasefire or face escalation. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are down 0.4%, and Nasdaq futures slide 0.6%. In premarket trading, all Mag7 names are lower even as AVGO (+3% pre-mkt) is bid after a TPU supply pact with GOOGL (+55bps) while ASML (-80bps) is weaker following a proposed US law that would further curb semiconductor exports to China (targeting ASML’s deep ultraviolet lithography machine ). Managed care is well bid after the final Medicare Advantage rate of +2.48% (vs ~1% bogey) was released last night (HUM +9%, CVS +7%, UNH +6%, ALHC +11%). Bond yields rise 1bp, 10Y TSY yield at 4.34%, the USD is also higher while commodities are mixed with oil reversing earlier losses and rising over 2%. Today’s macro data focus is weekly ADP, Durable / Cap Goods, and NY Fed 1-year Inflation Expectations. Ultimately, expect weaker volumes today with some market swings on unconfirmed ceasefire / deal chatter.

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks are all lower (Alphabet -0.06%, Amazon -0.4%, Meta -0.6%, Microsoft -0.4%, Tesla -1.3%, Nvidia -1.2%, Apple -1%)

• Managed care companies including Humana gain after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized a 2.48% rate hike for health insurers in 2027. Investors see the pay boost as a meaningful improvement over the initial rates the agency proposed in January. Humana (HUM) rises 9% and CVS Health gains 6%.
• Broadcom (AVGO) rises 3% after the chipmaker announced a long-term agreement with Google to develop and supply Tensor Processing Units. The companies also confirmed plans to work with Anthropic to power the AI startup’s burgeoning operations.
• Estée Lauder (EL) slips 1% after Spanish newspaper Expansion reported that the the company and Puig owning families are set to hold talks this week in New York over their potential merger.
• Organogenesis Holdings Inc. (ORGO) rises 19% after the company said a randomized controlled trial of 170 patients in a diabetic foot ulcer trial achieved its primary endpoint.
• Wingstop (WING) rises 1.9% as Citi upgrades the fried chicken restaurant operator to buy, saying the valuation offers an attractive entry point.
• Pershing Square proposed a combination with Universal Music Group that would move the listing into a US-based acquisition vehicle. It’s a deal that Bill Ackman’s fund said values the world’s biggest music label at a 78% premium to its last closing price. 

In other news, Samsung reported preliminary operating profit that soared 755% to a record, with memory’s contribution estimated to be close to 90% of total operating profit. Rivals OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet’s Google have begun working together to try to clamp down on Chinese competitors extracting results from cutting-edge US AI models. And Anthropic said its revenue run rate has now topped $30 billion, with more than 1,000 businesses spending over $1 million annually, a rate that has doubled since February. BlackRock is setting its sights on a corner of the $13.7 trillion US ETF industry long controlled by Invesco — tracking the Nasdaq 100 Index. Some Tiger Cub funds incurred losses in March. Maverick Capital’s Long Enhanced Fund and its main hedge fund tumbled 8.1% and 5%, respectively, while Viking Global Investors’ flagship fund lost 4.1%, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Trump has threatened “all Hell” will rain down on Iran if it doesn’t agree to a ceasefire that reopens the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. Eastern time. The Pentagon canceled the morning press briefing due to be led by Pete Hegseth, giving no reason. WSJ reported last night that hope is fading for a final deal by the deadline and RTRS reported this morning that a Senior Iranian Source said Tehran has rejected any temporary ceasefire with the U.S. and the IRGC warned neighboring countries “restraint is over” and threatened to disrupt regional oil and gas supplies for years to come. Strikes continued overnight. 

“It seems clear that it is extraordinarily difficult to invest on expectations for binary outcomes,” notes Jeffrey Palma at Cohen & Steers. On the other hand, David Kruk at La Financiere de l’Echiquier, set out the dilemma confronting traders, observing that the “market is now set up in such a way that the real pain trade is upwards.”

Investors are watching for any sign of a breakthrough amid a flurry of diplomacy before the 8 p.m. Eastern Time deadline. Trump insists any deal must ensure uninterrupted transit through the Strait of Hormuz — a key artery for Middle East oil flows. He’s threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if no accord is reached. “The market remains volatile,” said Wolf von Rotberg, equity strategist at Bank J Safra Sarasin. “It continues to swing between de-escalation hopes and Trump following through on his threats.”

Oil remains in focus, with WTI crude rising to the highest since June 2022. Meanwhile, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts expressed caution over the wide gap between the Brent spot price, which reflects expectations of a resolution, and Dated Brent, which represents actual cargoes assigned specific loading dates. At above $140, the latter signals acute spot scarcity.

Trump’s deadline marks the latest pivotal moment in the war, which has killed thousands of people and triggered the largest-ever disruption to the global oil market. Israel told Iranians to refrain from using their country’s railway network until 9 p.m. local time, the first warning about such infrastructure that usually precedes an attack. Iran launched seven ballistic missiles and several more drones at Saudi Arabia overnight into Tuesday, while the Israel Defense Forces reported two missile volleys from Iran since midnight.

Meanwhile, the technology sector is looking increasingly attractive for investors as valuations fall below those of the wider stock market, according to Goldman strategists. Any lasting shock to the global economy from the war in Iran is also likely to benefit the sector as tech cash flows are less sensitive to economic growth, the strategists said. 

The recent economic numbers aren’t boosting the case for the Federal Reserve to resume cutting rates anytime soon. March CPI on Friday is predicted to show the largest month-over-month increase in headline inflation since June 2022, largely driven by a spike in gasoline prices tied to the Iran conflict. 

Europe's Stoxx 600 is up by 0.6%, with the media subindex leading the way on a jump for Universal Music on a €56 billion takeover proposal. UMG is the biggest gainer after Pershing Square offered to buy the entertainment company, while tech underperforms, weighed down by ASML as US lawmakers propose tighter curbs on chip equipment exports to China. Here are the biggest movers:

• Universal Music Group shares rise as much as 24% in Amsterdam, but trade well below the value of an offer from Pershing Square Capital Management amid doubt over whether the deal will happen
• JCDecaux rises as much as 5.8% as TD Cowen upgrades the outdoor advertising company to buy from hold, seeing a clear inflection point as China returns to growth
• Volati gains as much as 7.2%, the most since November, as Nordea reiterates its buy rating and raises its price target on the Swedish industrial group, saying the company is well-positioned to benefit from a cyclical rebound
• ASML shares fall as much as 4.7% on Tuesday after US lawmakers unveiled legislation aimed at tightening restrictions on chip tool exports to China. The goal is to subject Dutch and Japanese firms to the same curbs that American companies face
• Leonardo shares fall as much as 5.5% on the possibility of a management change at the Italian defense group; Bloomberg News reported that CEO Roberto Cingolani could be replaced as soon as this week
• AddTech falls as much as 5.9% after DNB Carnegie downgraded the stock to hold from buy, saying the Swedish industrial equipment maker could face weakening earnings growth momentum in 4Q
• Ninety One tumbles as much as 14% as BofA Global Research downgrades its rating on the investment management firm to neutral from buy and cuts its target price to 260p from 280p because of lower expected market returns
• Colruyt drops as much as 4.3%, biggest decliner in Belgium’s BEL Mid Index, after UBS downgraded the stock to neutral from buy, saying it looks “fairly valued for modest growth”

Asian stocks advanced for a third-straight session even as the approach of President Donald Trump’s deadline for a peace deal with Iran kept traders on edge. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1%, with technology shares including TSMC and SK Hynix among the biggest boosts. Stocks climbed in Taiwan and Australia. Hong Kong’s market remained shut for holidays. Stocks also gained in India, while equities traded mixed in Japan, China and much of Southeast Asia. South Korea’s Kospi climbed after better-than-expected results from Samsung Electronics.

“While oil prices remain elevated for now, there is a strong view that the conflict will come to an end within the next one to two weeks, with crude prices returning to prior levels,” said Hideyuki Ishiguro, chief strategist at Nomura Asset Management. “Geopolitical risks themselves have not been resolved, but VIX in Japan, US, and Europe have peaked, suggesting that markets may have largely priced in these risks,” he added.

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rises by 0.1%, with Aussie dollar and sterling the outperformers and Swedish krona lagging after a surprise cooling in inflation.

In rates, treasury futures hold small losses after erasing gains amid rising oil prices, with yields across tenors slightly higher on the day. US 10-year yield is less than 1bp higher near 4.34%, and curve spreads are within a basis point of Monday’s closing levels. With European bond markets open for first time since Thursday, German and UK yields are 2bp-5bp cheaper across flatter curves. The US session includes the first of this week’s three Treasury coupon auctions, a 3-year note sale at 1pm. Treasury’s $58 billion 3-year new-issue auction, to be followed by $39 billion 10-year and $22 billion 30-year reopenings Wednesday and Thursday, has WI yield near 3.895%, about 32bp cheaper than last month’s, which tailed by 1.1bp, a notably poor result. 

In commodities, WTI crude oil futures are up about 2% from Monday’s multiyear high close, which followed Trump’s threat to obliterate key Iranian infrastructure if an agreement to end the war isn’t reached by 8pm Tuesday. Gold prices up, though paring back from highs near $4,700/oz.

US event calendar, includes ADP weekly employment change (8:15am), February durable goods orders (8:30am), March New York Fed 1-year inflation expectations (11am) and February consumer credit (3pm). Fed speaker slate includes Williams (8:30am), Goolsbee (12:35pm, 1:45pm) and Jefferson (5:50pm)

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 mini -0.6%,
• Nasdaq 100 mini -0.7%,
• Russell 2000 mini -0.2%
• Stoxx Europe 600 +0.3%
• DAX +0.5%
• CAC 40 +1.0%
• 10-year Treasury yield +1 basis point at 4.34%
• VIX +0.3 points at 24.48
• Bloomberg Dollar Index -0.2% at 1211.85
• euro +0.3% at $1.1571
• WTI crude -0.4% at $111.97/barrel

Top Overnight News

• Negotiators are pessimistic Iran will bend to meet President Trump’s demand to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before his Tuesday-night deadline, paving the way for the U.S. to target Iranian bridges and power plants in a fresh escalation of the war. Twice in his second term, Trump set a deadline for a deal with Iran, said he would bomb the country if its leaders didn’t comply, then followed through with military operations. WSJ
• Airstrikes pounded Tehran on Tuesday, and Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants, hours before the expiration of U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest deadline for the Islamic Republic to reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz or face punishing strikes on its infrastructure. AP
• Iran on Monday delivered a 10 point proposal to end the war with the US and Israel. The plan was conveyed by Pakistan, which has been acting as a primary intermediary, but appeared unlikely to resolve major questions ahead of Trump’s Tuesday evening deadline for new attacks on Iran. NYT
• A cross-party group of U.S. politicians have proposed ‌a law to impose further restrictions on exports of computer chipmaking equipment to China, affecting companies such as ASML and China's top chipmakers. RTRS
• Japan’s households reduced spending for a third straight month even after real wages turned positive. Outlays by households adjusted for inflation fell 1.8% in February from a year earlier, a faster decline compared with January’s 1% retreat. Real consumption remains weak, with economists citing growing consumer fatigue and inflation pressure as key challenges to domestic demand. BBG
• Taiwan’s opposition leader is set to arrive in China on Tuesday on what she has called a “historic journey for peace” as she hopes for a face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the first such contact in a decade. FT
• Anthropic’s revenue run rate has topped $30 billion and the company confirmed partnerships with Broadcom and Google. BBG
• Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee both see inflation as a far bigger problem than employment, underscoring their support for tighter rather than looser monetary policy as the Iran war puts upward pressure on energy prices and the job market remains ‌stuck in low gear. RTRS
• Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square offered to buy Universal Music Group in a cash-and-stock deal at a 78% premium to Thursday’s closing price. Ackman cited UMG’s stock underperformance as a trigger for the bid. BBG
• Republicans are reportedly weighing how broadly to structure a party-line bill to fund President Trump’s immigration enforcement, with some senators seeking multi-year DHS funding and others favoring a narrower ICE and CBP measure: Semafor 

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks traded cautiously following the positive lead from the US and with all focus remaining on geopolitics heading into US President Trump's Tuesday evening deadline for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz or face the US destroying its power plants and bridges, although President Trump had also previously stated that he thinks talks are going well with Iran and they would like to be able to make a deal. ASX 200 rallied with tech and miners leading the upside and with almost all sectors in the green aside from industrials and consumer staples. Nikkei 225 failed to sustain its initial advances with the index pressured amid headwinds from higher oil prices and following disappointing Household Spending data. KOSPI surged at the open with strong gains in Samsung Electronics after its preliminary results topped forecasts and showed around an eight-fold jump in Q1 operating profit, although most of the advances were then pared as shares in the index heavyweight also pulled back. Shanghai Comp lacked conviction on return from the long weekend, with upside limited after another meek PBoC liquidity operation and with the Stock Connect still closed as Hong Kong markets remained shut.

Top Asian News

• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said won't comment on JGB yield levels and will refrain from commenting on levels in the markets, adds impact of Middle East and oil prices on the market is high.
• Chinese President Xi called for new energy system as war on Iran rocks global economy and said China needs to accelerate planning and construction of a new energy system to ensure the country’s energy security.
• South Korean FX Chief said are to deploy bold measures in the FX market, if needed.
• South Korea policy chief Kim said the chip industry secures four month's worth of helium and it is premature to discuss a second extra budget.
• Morgan Stanley cuts its China 2026 GDP growth forecast to 4.7% due to oil shock.

European bourses (STOXX 600 +0.7%) re-open from the 4-day Easter closure with mild gains, as traders countdown to Trump's Iran deadline at 20:00EDT/01:00BST. France's CAC 40 outperforms its peers, while the FTSE 100 underperforms. Worth noting that European indices opened mixed, but then moved higher, without a clear driver. Some may point to reports via a Pakistani journalist which suggested that a "framework of understanding for ceasefire" between US and Iran is “closer than ever”. European sectors are broadly in the green. Media is the clear outperformer, driven by gains in UMG (+12.2%) after Pershing Square announced a EUR 9.4bln bid to take over the media company. Technology sits at the bottom of the pile. Despite the majority of the sector components in the green, ASML (-2.3%) is weighing on the sector. This comes following a group of US politicians proposing a law to impose further export restrictions on computer chipmaking equipment to China.

Top European News

• UK S&P Global Services PMI Final (Mar) 50.5 vs. Exp. 51.2 (Prev. 53.9). "Stagflation risks appear to have increased, with the final Services PMI data signalling slower growth and higher cost pressures than the earlier 'flash' estimates based on data compiled up to 20th March."
• UK S&P Global Composite PMI Final (Mar) 50.3 vs. Exp. 51 (Prev. 53.7).
• EU S&P Global Composite PMI Final (Mar) 50.7 vs. Exp. 50.5 (Prev. 51.9). "The near-stalling of growth in March drags the PMI’s signal for first quarter GDP growth down to 0.2%. More worrying is that there are clear risks of the economy contracting in the second quarter unless there is a swift resolution to the conflict."
• EU S&P Global Services PMI Final (Mar) 50.2 vs. Exp. 50.1 (Prev. 51.9).
• German S&P Global Services PMI Final (Mar) 50.9 vs. Exp. 51.2 (Prev. 53.5).
• German S&P Global Composite PMI Final (Mar) 51.9 vs. Exp. 51.9 (Prev. 53.2).
• French S&P Global Services PMI Final (Mar) 48.8 vs. Exp. 48.3 (Prev. 49.6).
• French S&P Global Composite PMI Final (Mar) 48.8 vs. Exp. 48.3 (Prev. 49.9).

FX

• FX markets saw a sharp risk-on move in the European morning, with no specific headline, but several outlets reporting optimism in US/Iran negotiations ahead of Tuesday's deadline. DXY fell as much as 0.2% from 100.04 to a trough of 99.77, and high-beta FX was helped against the weaker buck, with Aussie the outperformer and Sterling also performing notably well.
• Some participants flagged an Axios article six hours before the move, which quoted a US official, "If the president sees a deal is coming together, he'll probably hold off..." it is unclear whether this led to the reaction, though other reports following this initial move have added to the constructive risk environment, "mediators are close to reaching an agreement" on a "framework of understanding for ceasefire", according to Pakistani reporter Anas Mallick.
• Elsewhere, EUR and GBP were unreactive to mixed European Final PMIs. To recap, the EZ wide composite and services were revised a touch higher while the UK's were revised lower.
• The session ahead sees US ADP Employment Change Weekly, US Durable Goods RCM/TIPP Economic Optimism Index (Apr), Atlanta Fed GDP and President Trump's Iran deadline. Fed speak is expected from Fed's Williams (13:30 BST), Goolsbee (17:35 BST) and Jefferson (22:50 BST). Full primer on the Newsquawk headline feed.

Central Banks

• ECB's Wunsch said he is open to an interest rate rise at the April meeting; a lasting crisis would warrant a series of rate rises.
• ECB's Radev said the ECB must be ready to act if inflation persists, sees a rising likelihood of adverse scenario but too early to say if April rate hike is needed. Inflation expectations at risk of rising too quickly.

Fixed Income

• Initial bearish bias across the fixed income was facilitated by stronger energy prices, as the geopolitical environment remains exceptionally turbulent and as traders count down their clocks to President Trump’s 20:00EDT Iran deadline. However, in recent trade the crude complex took a tumble – but lacked a clear driver. Some market participants pointed towards an Axios piece from overnight, which reported that Trump may hold off from strikes on Iran if he sees a “deal coming together”. Markets also appear to be digesting some relatively positive mood from the Pakistani side, with a couple analysts suggesting a breakthrough could be close; whilst another suggested that a “framework of understanding” for a ceasefire is close. The pressure in energy prices therefore helped to boost fixed benchmarks to session highs.
• USTs were initially lower and were holding near troughs throughout the early portion of the morning, before then surging alongside the pressure in the crude complex. Currently holding at the upper end of a 110-21+ to 110-29+ range. On the data front, weekly ADP jobs figures, durable goods orders for February. On today’s speakers’ slate, Fed's Williams (voter) will speak on Bloomberg TV; Fed’s Goolsbee (2027 voter, dovish) will speak on the outlook for policy and the economy; Fed’s Vice Chair Jefferson (voter, dovish) will speak on the economic outlook and the labour market.
• Bunds followed the above, and currently holding at the upper end of a 125.31-125.73 range – though still remains incrementally in the red. Geopols aside, German benchmarks have had a number of European PMI Final metrics to digest; Spain topped expectations, Italy missed whilst the EZ-wide figure was revised incrementally higher. Interesting commentary from within the German release suggested that, “the lack of pricing power in the service sector is important from a monetary policy perspective, as it limits the amount of upward pressure on core inflation, a measure that the ECB will be closely watching when considering interest rate increases.”
• Gilts are currently flat. As above, initially weighed by stronger energy prices, but UK paper then soared to highs as energy prices dipped. Currently towards the upper end of a 88.23-88.72 range. UK PMI Finals were revised lower, with analysts citing slower output growth as a result of the war in the Middle East. It also highlighted increasing risks to “stagflation”, and increasing costs pressures.

Commodities

• Crude futures gained at the start of the APAC session and held onto gains as European traders stepped in as US President Trump's 20:00EDT deadline approaches. If Iran does not agree to a ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he said the US will decimate Iran's bridges and didn't rule out striking power plants. However, Trump did also state that he thinks talks are going well and that Iran has "an active and willing participant on the other side." Further reporting throughout the European morning indicates that an agreement could be near, with Pakistani reporter Mallick suggesting that the interlocutors are 'closer than ever for an agreement' to get a "framework of understanding for ceasefire" between the US and Iran.
• WTI and Brent topped at USD 116.56/bbl and USD 111.80/bbl, respectively, before sinking – a move which lacked a clear driver. However, the move appeared to follow the aforementioned reports from the Pakistani reporter. At the time of writing, WTI May'26 has returned below USD 113/bbl while Brent Jun'26 oscillates on either side of USD 110/bbl.
• Spot gold trades relatively contained within a USD 4617-4691/oz range. Upticks have picked up pace in recent trade as the USD softens amid downside in energy prices. However, the 20-SMA at USD 4,732/oz and last week's high of USD 4,800/oz remain as near-term resistance levels. To add, China added gold to its reserves for a 17th consecutive month, highlighting that demand for the yellow metal is still high. However, UBS lowered its end-June forecast to USD 5,200/oz due to softer investor demand.
• 3M LME copper is rangebound, oscillating in a USD 12.37k-12.46k/t range. This comes as participants remain cautious as the Trump deadline looms.
• Hungary to agree to buy oil from US at Orban-Vance meeting, Bloomberg reported. Hungary’s Mol will agree to purchase 500,000 tons for approximately USD 500mln.
• Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry said the oil shipments via CPC pipeline is stable, IFX reported.
• IRGC's public relations channel reported of "explosion and extensive damage to the Al-Jubeil industrial area".
• Attacks reportedly hit Saudi Aramco's petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia, AFP reported citing sources.
• China has provided Iran with a financial lifeline during the past half decade by purchasing most of its oil, according to WSJ.
• Tanker explosion near the Bridge of Americas in Panama City caused a massive fire.
• Japan's Industry Minister Akazawa said crude oil procurement is progressing.
• China gold reserves at end-March (USD) 342.76bln (prev. 387.59bln).
• UBS lowers end-June gold forecast to USD 5,200/oz, amid softer investor demand amid elevated volatility.
• Goldman Sachs analyst raises 2026 copper price forecast to USD 12,650/ton from USD 11,400/ton and expects copper prices to remain volatile as the market continues to assess impacts of the events in the Middle East on economic growth.

Geopolitics

• Pakistani reporter Anas Mallick suggests that, "to my understanding, the interlocutors (Pakistan, Turkiye and Egypt) are 'closer than ever for an agreement' to get a "framework of understanding for ceasefire" between US and Iran".
• Some geopolitical analysts say signals from Pakistan suggest a possible breakthrough in the coming hours, with Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and reportedly Beijing involved. said that a ceasefire could be near, but the situation remains early and fragile, so caution is warranted.
• Pakistan in last-minute efforts, along with Turkey and Egypt, to convince Iran to agree to the outline proposed by Pakistan, according to I24's Stein.
• Five friendly countries leaders' and eight intelligence agencies have reached out to Iran seeking to open a path for a ceasefire, Fars News reported.
• Israeli Source tells N12 news "The next 24 hours are the most decisive in the war, if it were up to political leadership in Iran, there would have been a ceasefire long ago, there is doubt about their control", N12's Segal reported.
• Iran's Spokesperson of the National Security Commission of the Parliament said "we are making special arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz", via Tasnim.
• Spokesman of Iran's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Parliament said oil exports are going on as usual, and with even more capacity than before, IRIB reported.
• Iran atomic agency said heavy bombs won't halt nuclear tech progress.
• China has provided Iran with a financial lifeline during the past half decade by purchasing most of its oil, according to WSJ.
• Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel report Iranian drone and missile attacks, according to CBS.
• Israel announces a new wave of strikes on Iran and issues incoming missile alert.
• Iran launches new batch of missiles towards southern Israel.
• Israeli military said it completed airstrike wave aiming to damage Iranian terror regime infrastructure in Tehran and additional areas across Iran.
• US House Democrat Ansari intends to introduce articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Hegseth, cites Iran war and war crimes as grounds for Hegseth impeachment, according to NBC.
• Japanese PM Takaichi said in parliament said in Parliament, want to take next step in talks with Iran and is strongly urging Iran to allow Hormuz safe passage, while she is seeking phone talks with the presidents of US and Iran.
• Iranian Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf's adviser Mohammadi said it is Trump who has about 20 hours to either surrender to Iran or his allies will return to the Stone Age, while he added that they will not back down.
• Iran said non-hostile countries can coordinate access to the Strait of Hormuz, according to Press TV.
• US Vice President J.D. Vance is on standby for Iran negotiations, according to POLITICO. "The negotiations are led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner but Vance could be tagged in if there is a direct meeting with Iranian officials.".
• Iran's top joint military command said Trump's threats are 'delusional' and his threat have no effect on operations against US and Israel.
• US data centres of Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and Equinix (EQIX) in the UAE are now identified as potential targets for Iran's counter response in the region.
• Iranian securities exchange chief outlines conditions needed to reopen the Iranian capital markets: said outcomes could include a ceasefire with a formal agreement and full reopening, or a ceasefire without agreement and a gradual reopening.
• Explosions reported in eastern regions of Saudi Arabia and alarms sounding in Bahrain, Tasnim reported.
• Israeli reporter Stein said "Unexpectedly: the press conference planned for today with Defence Minister Hegseth and US Chief of Staff was cancelled".
• Fars news citing an informed source said "Trump is clearly looking for a meeting and an agreement. The American proposal includes the removal of "Witkoff" due to his closeness to Netanyahu's circle and negotiations with "Vance" to build a serious path. In the end, this source noted: Americans believe that fuel prices will increase explosively from next week and are not willing to accept this risk.
• The Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan said Pakistan's positive and productive attempt to step the war is approaching a critical and sensitive stage.
• Iranian outlets report that Yazd and Shiraz were shaken by blasts.
• Large barrage of missiles were reportedly headed for Bahrain, with air raid sirens and alerts in multiple areas.
• Drone strike reportedly hit US Victoria base in Baghdad, according to Iraqi sources cited by Fars.
• Missiles hit Saudi Arabia's Jubail which is largest industrial hub in the Middle East where large petrochemical and energy facilities are located.
• IRGC Aerospace Force Commander said they targeted the oil refinery, power plants, ports, and railway lines in Haifa Bay, and no interception of our missiles was recorded, Al Jazeera reported.
• Russia's Yamal LNG ships first cargo to China since November, LSEG data shows.
• Russia's Ministry of Defence reported that air defence forces have downed 45 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions overnight.

US Event Calendar

 

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

US and Asia markets had a decent start to the week yesterday while Europe was off for Easter Monday. However, sentiment has turned more cautious this morning as investors grapple with President Trump’s new deadline of 8pm Eastern Time tonight (1am London) for Iran to agree a deal as he threated to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants. The renewed escalation threat has seen Brent crude move back above $111/bbl this morning after trading as low $107/bbl yesterday. In turn, S&P 500 futures are down -0.44% overnight after posting a fourth consecutive advance (+0.44%) yesterday that saw the index erase half of its decline since the Iran strikes began.

In terms of Trump’s latest ultimatum to Iran, the US President shared the 8pm ET Tuesday deadline on social media on Sunday and then referred to it several times yesterday as he demanded that Iran strikes a deal that “that's acceptable to me”, while threatening intensified attacks against Iran that would destroy “every bridge” and take “every power plant” out of business. Notably, Trump said that a deal should include “free traffic of oil”, calling reopening the Strait of Hormuz “a very big priority”. So a seeming shift from previous suggestions that reopening the straits was not a core objective for the US. The President repeatedly suggested that this evening’s deadline was final, saying that he was “highly unlikely” to postpone it. Recall that Trump had issued an initial 48-hour ultimatum for striking Iran’s power plants back on March 21, first extending this by 5 days and then followed by another 10-day pause that had been due to expire yesterday.

Earlier yesterday, we had heard various reports on talks as other countries in the region have pushed for a ceasefire deal. Iran’s state-run IRNA then reported that Tehran rejected a ceasefire via Pakistani mediators, instead demanding a permanent end to the war as well as lifting of sanctions, reconstruction efforts and a protocol for safe passage through Hormuz. Meanwhile, Trump called Iran’s proposals a “very significant step” but “not good enough” as he threatened the escalatory strikes.

So that left oil markets facing crosswinds from Trump’s escalation threat to possible ceasefire talks as well as news that shipping via the Strait of Hormuz has been edging higher in recent days. Iran said on Saturday that “brotherly” Iraq would be exempt from shipping restrictions in the Strait, and AIS data showed five tankers crossing the Strait that day (possible that more did so with transponders turned off). That was the most since March 1 but still a small fraction of the roughly 60 tankers a day before the war.

Brent crude whipsawed in a relatively tight range yesterday, falling from above $111/bbl at yesterday’s open to as low as $107/bbl early in European hours before closing +0.68% on the day at $109.77/bbl. It is another +1.67% higher at $111.60/bbl as I type.

With oil markets relatively stable, risk assets had a decent start to the week, with the S&P 500 (+0.44%) advancing for a fourth session in a row yesterday, its longest run since January. That left the S&P 500 up +4.22% from last Monday’s closing low, erasing around half of the -7.78% decline it had seen since February 27. The NASDAQ (+0.54%) and the Mag-7 (+0.28%) saw similar gains, while nearly two thirds of the S&P 500 constituents moved higher on Monday with cyclical sectors outperforming. Private investment companies including Apollo (-0.87%) and Blackstone (-0.72%) underperformed amid lingering concerns about private credit. By contrast, US HY credit spreads tightened by -8bps to 291bps, their lowest level since March 5.

In Asia this morning, the Nikkei (-0.38%) is down following a +0.55% increase yesterday after softer Japan household spending data (-1.8% YoY vs -0.8% expected) which posted a third consecutive year-over-year decline in February. Meanwhile, the KOSPI (+0.30%) is continuing its upward trend after a +1.36% rise on Monday. Samsung Electronics was up as much as +4.9% at the open as it projected record quarterly profits due to strong AI chip demand, but its stock is now down -1.98% as I type. Elsewhere, the S&P/ASX 200 (+1.43%) is significantly higher this morning, while the CSI (-0.29%) and the Shanghai Composite (+0.03%) are more subdued. In the US, S&P 500 futures (-0.44%) have lost ground overnight, whereas Euro STOXX 50 (+0.13%) futures are edging higher after yesterday’s US advance.

In terms of yesterday’s other news, the March ISM services release in the US highlighted the inflationary risks stemming from the Iran war. While the headline reading retreated from a post-2022 high of 56.1 to 54.0 (vs. 54.9 expected), the prices paid component saw a stronger-than-expected rise to 70.7, its highest since October 2022. And there were contrasting signals within the details, as new orders rose to a 3-year high of 60.6, but employment fell to a 2-year low of 45.2. Amid this mixed data, the Treasury curve saw a modest flattening yesterday, with the 2yr yield up +0.8bps to 3.85% but 10yr down -1.3bps to 4.33%.

Treasury yields had seen a sizeable rise in Friday’s shortened session, with 2yr up +4.4bps and 10yr up +3.9bps following the strong March employment report. The release saw both headline (+178k vs +65k expected) and private (+186k vs. 78k expected) payrolls come in far above consensus expectations, with the unemployment rate also dropping from 4.44% to 4.29% (vs. 4.4% expected). To be sure, the rebound from strike- and weather-related weakness in February payrolls played a role, with the earlier timing of Easter also possibly bringing forward some payroll gains at the expense of April. Still, averaging through the Q1 employment reports, headline (+68k) and private (+79k) payrolls have been running above estimates of breakeven job gains and well above their subdued pace in late 2025, easing concerns on the employment side of the Fed’s dual mandate. 

Turning to the week ahead, the data highlight will be the March CPI print in the US on Friday where the impact of the energy price shock will be on full display. Our economists expect a roughly 25% increase in gasoline prices to yield a 0.95% monthly gain in headline CPI, raising the annual rate from +2.4% to +3.4%, while core inflation sees a more moderate +0.33% monthly rise. The March CPI reading will also be preceded by the February core PCE inflation print on Thursday, which we expect at +0.39% MoM. That would mark the highest monthly print since last February and bring the 3- and 6-month annualised rates of the Fed’s preferred inflation metric up to 4.5% and 3.5% respectively.

Other notable US data releases this week include the March NY Fed inflation expectations survey and February durable goods orders today as well as the University of Michigan consumer sentiment on Friday. Elsewhere, we have the Euro Area final March services PMIs (today), Germany’s February factory orders (Wednesday) and industrial production (Thursday), and the March inflation reports in China (Friday). From central banks, Wednesday will see the March FOMC minutes and a rates decision in New Zealand (our economists expect a hold). See the full day-by-day rundown below.

And while Iran headlines will dominate the geopolitical news, we also have NATO Secretary General Rutte scheduled to meet with Trump in Washington tomorrow in a visit that comes amid Trump’s vocal criticism of NATO allies over their stance on the Iran war.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 08:30

Polymarket Unveils Exchange Overhaul, Native Stablecoin As US Expansion Looms

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via Bitcoin Magazine,

Bitcoin and crypto focused prediction market platform Polymarket is preparing its most significant infrastructure upgrade to date, rolling out a rebuilt trading system alongside a new native stablecoin designed to replace bridged collateral and streamline on-chain activity.

The overhaul, described by the company as a “full exchange upgrade,” is expected to go live over the next several weeks and includes new smart contracts, an updated central limit order book (CLOB), and a proprietary collateral token called Polymarket USD.

The token will be backed 1:1 by USDC and will replace USDC.e, a bridged version of the stablecoin currently used across the platform.

Last month, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, made a $600 million direct cash investment in prediction market platform Polymarket as part of a broader equity fundraising round, the company announced.

The shift away from bridged assets reflects a broader effort to reduce reliance on cross-chain infrastructure, which can introduce additional risks and inefficiencies.

By moving to a natively controlled collateral token, Polymarket aims to tighten control over settlement, improve liquidity consistency, and simplify the trading experience for users.

At the core of the upgrade is a redesigned matching engine and an improved order book architecture.

The new system is intended to deliver faster execution, tighter spreads, and lower operational overhead. According to developer materials, the updated exchange stack reduces the complexity of order structures while introducing support for advanced features such as EIP-1271 signatures, enabling smart contract wallets to interact more seamlessly with the platform.

Polymarket said most users will experience a smooth transition, with the interface automatically handling the conversion of existing assets into Polymarket USD via a one-time approval. However, more advanced traders and developers will need to manually wrap their holdings using a dedicated collateral onramp contract and update integrations to align with the new system.

As part of the migration, all existing order books will be cleared during a scheduled maintenance window, with the company promising advance notice ahead of the transition. The reset is intended to ensure consistency across the upgraded infrastructure and avoid discrepancies between legacy and new systems.

Prediction markets like Polymarket are booming 

The timing of the overhaul comes amid rapid growth for Polymarket, which has seen trading volumes surge in recent months. The platform reportedly surpassed $10 billion in monthly volume in March, underscoring increasing demand for event-based trading markets across crypto and traditional finance audiences.

Beyond performance improvements, the upgrade signals a strategic shift toward greater vertical integration. Polymarket has historically relied on external systems, including optimistic oracle mechanisms, to resolve market outcomes. However, the company has hinted at future plans for a native token, potentially called POLY, which could play a role in governance and dispute resolution.

If implemented, such a token could allow Polymarket to internalize key functions like market validation and outcome verification, reducing dependence on third-party protocols and giving the platform more direct control over what it defines as “truth” within its markets.

The infrastructure revamp also aligns with Polymarket’s renewed push into the U.S. market. After previously halting domestic operations, the company has since registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and is positioning itself to operate within an increasingly defined regulatory framework.

With its latest upgrade, the company is attempting to evolve from a fast-growing crypto application into a fully-fledged exchange platform, combining improved execution infrastructure with tighter control over collateral, governance, and market integrity.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 08:05

US Already Spent Over $42 Billion & Counting On Iran War

This week will see the Iran war reach 40 days of fighting, which is a far cry from the mere "four days" some US administration officials offered as a possible 'optimistic' timeline at the very opening of Trump's Operation Epic Fury.

According to the Iran War Cost Tracker portal, the US military operation has cost more than $42 billion thus far. The tracker has arrived at this figure largely based on a Pentagon briefing to Congress on March 10, which disclosed that Washington spent $11.3 billion in the first six days of the new war in the Middle East.

USAF file image

The same briefing indicated the Pentagon planned to spend at least an additional $1 billion per day for the remainder of the conflict.

The real cost could be much, much higher given that at this point dozens of ultra-expensive aircraft and radars have been knocked out by Iran's ongoing retaliation, and as the US has begun high risk incursions into the region and into Iranian territory itself.

Axios in a report days ago highlighted that "The U.S. is dedicating significant amounts of firepower to the Middle East as it wrestles with Iran. Some of it — billions of dollars' worth, in fact — will not be returning."

Describing the mounting costs in terms of blood and treasure, Axios wrote that "Hundreds of American troops have been injured and 13 killed" - and also: "Some exquisite weaponry, everything from stealth jets to radars, has been knocked out."

Axios continues, "The high end includes costs associated with radar replacement at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and some fixes to the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, which last month suffered an hours-long laundry fire." The laundry room fire narrative has been subject of immense speculation and skepticism, with the supercarrier undergoing lengthy emergency repairs at its current port of Split, Croatia.

Also confirmed damaged or destroyed are the following:

• One Lockheed Martin F-35A
• One Boeing E-3 Sentry
• One RTX AN/TPY-2 radar
• Three Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles
• Multiple Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers
• Multiple General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers

The lost military hardware, some of which may have yet to be disclosed, itself is a loss in the billions.

Here’s what is known so far about U.S. Air Force losses during Operation Epic Fury:

Total losses are estimated to exceed $2 billion, with replacement costs potentially even higher.

— Four F-15E Strike Eagles have been lost, one over Iran and three downed by friendly fire over… pic.twitter.com/OjaR0gzdWv

— Egypt's Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) April 3, 2026

Despite the immense and growing expense on the American taxpayer, there's still not been a Congressional War Powers resolution passed. As yet, there's really not been any real or robust debate over the merits or justification of the war among the people's representatives in Congress.

Independent journalist (formerly of The Intercept) Lee Fang writes, "We learned from the Afghan papers & SIGAR reports that everything the Pentagon and cable media told us about that occupation was a lie. The U.S. installed hated pedophile drug lords to run that country while contractors ransacked billions. The Iran war is 10x more built on lies." And so the Iran situation could get a lot worse, and could be for potentially years to come.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 07:45

Marc Andreessen Calls AI Job-Loss Fears 'Fake', Expects Employment Gains

It is not the first time that the venture capital guru has questioned some of the fundamentally dystopian scenarios being proposition in an AI world. 

In February, we noted that amid an armada of dystopian futurists, projecting linear thoughts into a future of 'AI uber alles', Marc Andreessen stands as a beacon of potential utopian light, seeing a future that looks very different and very positive for young and old alike.

In a brief few minutes, the co-founder of Netscape and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) believes instead that we are living through a unique (and most incredible) time in history with the rise of AI coming right as human civilization needs it...

"we're going to have AI and robots precisely when we actually need them [with populations shrinking] to keep the economy from actually shrinking."

Simply put, Andreessen says that fears of AI-driven mass job loss are overly simplistic.

After decades of unusually slow technological change and low job churn, AI could restore historical productivity levels (exemplified by the period from 1870-1930), sparking opportunity, innovation, and net job growth rather than displacement. 

Declining populations and reduced immigration will make human labor increasingly valuable. AI's timing is "miraculous", Andreessen exclaims, preventing economic shrinkage from depopulation.

In even radical scenarios, explosive productivity leads to output gluts, collapsing prices, and massive real-wealth gains - equivalent to "giant raises" for everyone - while making safety-nets more affordable. 

Whether incremental or transformative, Andreessen sees the outcome as fundamentally positive economic news.

Of course, he does have a lot of skin in this game...

Building on that, CoinTelegraph's Christina Comben reports that Andreessen said artificial intelligence will spark a “massive jobs boom,” dismissing fears of widespread job losses as “all fake” in a Sunday post on X.

His optimism contrasts with a March US jobs report showing unemployment holding steady at 4.3%, while the number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more rose by 322,000 over the past year.

Andreesen shared a Business Insider report showing a sharp rise in tech job openings in 2026, with more than 67,000 software engineering roles, a twofold increase from 2023, and argued that employers had recovered from post-pandemic hiring corrections and the interest rate spike.

“The ‘AI job loss’ narratives are all fake,” he wrote.

“AI = massive ramp in productivity = massive ramp in demand = massive jobs boom. Watch.”

Andreessen is one of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors, a co-founder of Netscape and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

He is also a major backer of US crypto and AI companies.

Job losses in tech pile up

On the ground, the reality is somewhat different. On Feb. 26, Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 40% of its staff as the company accelerated its use of AI, including experiments with agents to take over parts of middle management.

On March 19, crypto exchange Crypto.com announced a 12% workforce reduction due to AI integrations, warning that companies “that do not make this pivot immediately will fail.”

Crypto.com cuts 12% of its staff. Source: Kris Marszalek

AI-driven pivots by companies are also impacting employment.

Oracle reportedly cut up to 30,000 jobs recently, citing “broader organizational change,” as it pushes to build AI data centers.

MARA, which has been repurposing its Bitcoin mining infrastructure for AI, has reportedly reduced its staff by 15%.

Andreessen’s comments meet with skepticism

That backdrop helps explain the online backlash Andreessen received.

“Tell that to the average lower middle class American who can’t find a job or the consumer who can’t get decent customer service,” crypto influencer WendyO replied. 

Tory Green, co-founder at io.net argued Andreessen could be proved right on net job creation, but only if AI tools are broadly accessible and not captured by a handful of platforms.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 06:55

Germany's Debt Spiral: Bundesbank Chief Breaks Silence

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

It’s not every day that top officials of the German Bundesbank take an explicit stance on daily politics.

Nagel’s stark warnings about Germany’s debt and the government’s creative accounting were surely met with grim recognition in Berlin’s corridors of power. Open criticism is rare there, and when it comes from credible insiders, it stings even more.

Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel 

Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil apparently still believe the fairy tale that debt-fueled demand policy can create economic miracles, generate growth, and deliver real prosperity. The result: a staggering debt binge that threatens to finish Germany economically.

Of course, this is a Keynesian nursery tale, endlessly repeated by politicians. With this simplified version of economics, political power is cemented – while the anonymous masses of taxpayers are left to clean up the debt disaster.

The government assumes the taxpayer backstop—and has surrounded itself with a state-friendly media sector, like a protective membrane. This behavior is conditioned.

The truth about mounting state debt, its destructive impact on private business, inflation, and the erosion of middle-class purchasing power is rarely discussed, and only in the media’s backrooms. When criticism reaches the public eye, its proponents are aggressively attacked and their valid arguments systematically sterilized.

Since January 2022, Joachim Nagel has led the Bundesbank. Recently, he warned for the first time about the unchecked growth of public debt—breaking Berlin’s long-standing elite vow of silence. Last year, he said, national debt rose by €144 billion to €2.84 trillion, pushing the debt-to-GDP ratio to 63.5 percent.

Some may recall the Maastricht limit, which capped debt at 60 percent. Those times are long gone, and the official debt numbers are, of course, grossly misleading.

For years—especially since the banking bailouts 15 years ago—the government has operated shadow budgets. Hoping the public won’t dig into fiscal details, these rarely illuminated debt channels are declared “special funds,” off the official books. Over 20 such hidden debt pots inflate actual state debt by at least €550 billion. Germany’s real debt likely sits near 80 percent of GDP and could exceed 85 percent by the end of this fiscal year.

The most infamous of these special funds originates from the debt crisis 15 years ago. The Financial Market Stabilization Fund (FMS) provided €400 billion in government guarantees and €80 billion in potential recapitalizations. Ultimately, €168 billion in guarantees and around €30 billion in direct transfers to financial institutions were used, while roughly €50 billion in debts from that era remain.

One of the largest black funds in federal history. Only Merz’s half-trillion-euro special fund will surpass this scale. Lesson learned: state financing has become an undeniable Ponzi scheme. Bond markets will ultimately dictate when the fiat money spree ends—they are the final arbiters of decades of political chaos.

Merz and his debt-hungry, insatiable finance minister are deliberately driving state spending to dizzying heights, yet must acknowledge that the heavily damaged German “economic tanker” can no longer move forward.

To buy time, the tragicomic duo plans to tighten middle-class taxes to the limit, holding taxpayers accountable for their fiscal free-for-all.

This is irresponsible, economically destructive policy unseen in Germany since WWII—the construction of a new socialism.

Against this backdrop, the Bundesbank president urged a return to sound budget planning. Deficits must be reduced mid-term without cutting essential infrastructure. Sadly, Nagel stopped short of endorsing free-market principles outright, missing the chance to clarify that the diversion of additional debt via special funds is systemic.

Policy cannot be fiscally restrained as long as bond markets are manipulated by monetary policy. According to the ifo Institute, 95 percent of this additional debt was added to the pre-existing debt binge and diverted. Social policy with a money printer—this is how far German fiscal policy has sunk.

Those seeking the real debt picture must dig deep—including pension obligations and current retirement promises. The scale of these liabilities defies imagination.

Germany—and nearly all of the EU—is trapped in a debt spiral. Turmoil in capital markets, broad restructuring, and massive wealth and debt redistribution loom. A standalone debt haircut would be systemic death: it would shrink circulating fiat credit and trigger a deflationary shock beyond the capacity of banks to absorb—a dead-end.

When will Germany begin monetizing its treasure, its massive gold reserves? Four years ago, the government under then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz pressured the Bundesbank to sell part of its gold to fund the defense special fund.

“Top” economists at Spiegel were reportedly inflamed by this idea—in these circles, the significance of collateralized, limited-quantity assets is poorly understood, even though they may one day underpin a new monetary regime.

It is fortunate that Nagel held the firewall against political adventurers and media amateurs. The Bundesbank may one day play a decisive role in a severe currency and debt crisis.

* * * 

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 06:30

Death Of Hollywood In Two Charts

The nightmare story for Hollywood is playing out in real time for the world to see, as a century-old entertainment economy implodes and bears all the hallmarks of what happened to Detroit after the auto industry went bust.

A new Wall Street Journal report describes the Hollywood job market as being in "collapse" mode, with employment in the industry down 30% from its late-2022 peak, while behind-the-scenes union workers logged 36% fewer hours last year than in 2022.

One big reason is that studios are making fewer shows and movies, and more of what they make is being filmed overseas or in other U.S. states that offer better tax incentives.

None of these overseas productions, or productions in other business-friendly states, should come as a surprise given that California is controlled by unhinged, one-party-rule Democratic Party leaders whose state-killing progressive policies have sparked a massive exodus of residents, businesses, and even billionaire tech bros.

The job market collapse in Hollywood has led to increasing calls for a federal production tax credit, with lobbyists linked to studios saying that a 15% federal incentive, on top of state subsidies (which typically range from 20% to 40%), could help break the production bust cycle and reshore more production back to the state. 

But tax incentives won't solve the job crisis on their own. With crazed liberal elites left holding the bag of studio garbage, younger audiences are spending more time on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for video consumption, while an increasing number of Americans have boycotted films and TV shows they consider "woke."

The regime's propaganda machine is collapsing under the weight of its own irrelevance. Hollywood exists solely to launder the radical leftist agenda into the minds of the youth. They despise the audience they claim to serve. This victory proves the market rejects their synthetic…

— Saggezza Eterna (@FinalTelegraph) February 1, 2026

"The biggest question now is whether the current downturn is temporary," the WSJ report asked.

Well, in WSJ's own words, the job bust will likely go into hyperdrive in the era of AI ...

"Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, could eliminate more production jobs or spark a new production boom if the technology enables content to be made less expensively."

Ben Horowitz says a famous Hollywood friend told him half the movie they’re making is AI.

It’s collapsing the cost of filmmaking, and when creation gets cheap enough, entirely new mediums could emerge.

Source: @bhorowitz at Columbia Business School pic.twitter.com/B2uL2S68t4

— a16z (@a16z) October 5, 2025

To sum up, Hollywood's sphere of left-wing influence is collapsing, and it is no longer taken seriously. 

Beyond studios, in the world of corporate media, job losses are mounting for white-collar liberals ... 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 05:45

Iranian Kurdish Groups Deny Receiving US Arms After Trump's 'Guns For Protesters' Remark

Via The Cradle

Several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups on Monday denied reports that the US had armed them during anti-government protests and riots that erupted in January, leaving over 3,000 Iranians dead.

Mohammed Nazif Qaderi, a senior official from the opposition Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), called the reports "baseless," saying, "We haven't received any weapons. The weapons we have are from 47 years ago, and we obtained them on the Islamic Republic's battlefield, and we bought some from the market."

AFP via Getty Images

"Our policy is not to make demonstrations violent and use harsh methods, rather we believe we must make our demands in a peaceful and civil manner without weapons," Qaderi said.

The protests and riots began in January after the US Treasury deliberately created a shortage of US dollars in Iran's heavily sanctioned economy, causing the Iranian currency to collapse. The uprising began with economic-driven demonstrations in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, which saw shopkeepers shutter their stores.

Armed groups then used the protests that erupted in response as cover to carry out attacks against Iranian security forces and paramilitary groups, known as Basij. Rioters also attacked and burned government buildings and mosques.

Israeli media reported that Mossad had agents on the ground in Iran to organize armed groups and create chaos in advance of the US-Israeli bombing campaign launched weeks later, on 28 February.

The Kurdish denial came one day after US President Donald Trump admitted for the first time during an interview with Fox News that the US attempted to ship "a lot of guns" to anti-government protesters in Iran.

Trump appears to confirm that the US pursued a Syria scenario in Iran earlier this year.

Thousands of Iranians were killed as security forces cracked down on unrest. At the time, Iranian authorities claimed many victims were either caught in crossfire or armed militants. https://t.co/ISzAXgph9N

— Mohammad Ali Shabani (@mashabani) April 5, 2026

While confirming the intent to arm the uprising that began in late 2025, Trump claimed the operation failed because the Kurds, who were used as the delivery channel, "kept the weapons" for themselves instead of passing them to the demonstrators.

This blunt disclosure not only provides the Iranian government with direct evidence of US interference but also publicly blames the US's Kurdish allies for the missing arms.

In response to Trump's comments, Amjad Hussein Panahi, head of communications for Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan, stated, "We assure you we haven't received a single bullet or weapon from any country or place, and we're not aware of the existence of such a thing; what we have is our own."

Reports first emerged that the CIA was working to arm Kurdish forces in an effort to foment an uprising in Iran in early March. 

Trump:

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

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

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026

Multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN that the Trump administration had been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq. The CIA wished to provide weapons and air support to Kurdish militants as part of an operation to topple the Iranian government.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 05:00

RQ-180 Spy Drone Reappears Again In Greece As Larissa Air Base Backs U.S. Recon Ops

New footage of what appears to be the highly secretive Northrop Grumman RQ-180 stealth surveillance drone has surfaced near Larisa, Greece, according to the aviation outlet The Aviationist.

The RQ-180 apparently appeared in daylight hours on approach to landing at Larisa Air Base, home to the Hellenic Air Force’s 110 Combat Wing. The footage offers one of the clearest views yet of the flying-wing spy drone and confirms it is neither the B-2 Spirit nor the B-21 Raider. 

Screenshot from videos taken by Efthymios Siakaras near Larissa, Greece. (Image credit: The Aviationist/Efthymios Siakaras)

The aircraft has never been formally acknowledged in detail by the Pentagon, but the designation has circulated in defense reporting since at least 2013. Its core mission is to collect imagery, radar, and signals intelligence in places where a non-stealth drone, such as the Global Hawk, would be too vulnerable. 

The earliest video of the RQ-180, which could be among the first-ever glimpses of the drone, emerged in late March and was first reported by the local Greek news website OnLarissa. 

The Aviationist pointed out this latest footage only suggests that "Larissa is in fact being used as a regular forward operating location for the RQ-180." 

Larisa Air Base has already been used for MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance operations in the region. The base is part of the Eastern Mediterranean support network, where Reuters reported that Western militaries increased their presence last month. 

The RQ-180's most likely role in the US-Iran conflict is reconnaissance.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 04:15

Europe's Climate Policy Forces Industry Into Retreat; Even Its Critics Are Folding

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the media business, five months is an eternity. And it does indeed seem like an eternity has passed since Christian Kullmann, CEO of the German chemical giant Evonik, sharply criticized European climate policy at the end of October.

At the time, Kullmann gave an interview to Süddeutsche Zeitung, in which he called—if not for the outright abolition—then at least for a significant weakening of the EU-wide CO₂ emissions trading system, given the dramatic state of the economy.

Kullmann rightly pointed out that there is probably no stricter CO₂ regime anywhere in the world than in the EU. And since the climate, as we know, has no borders, he argued it makes little sense to disadvantage domestic cutting-edge technology in this way. He explicitly referred to the costly CO₂ trading system, which drained a staggering €21.4 billion from the German economy last year alone—under the banner of climate policy through this relatively new mechanism.

Five months after these remarkable statements—briefly breaking the long-standing silence of German industrial leaders—the question must be asked whether there is anywhere else in the world a comparable project to the EU’s CO₂ regime. With the United States abandoning its policy of artificial energy scarcity, its war on conventional energy production, and heavy-handed regulation of its own industrial base, the EU now stands alone in its ideological campaign against economic rationality. No one else seems willing to join the chorus of Europe’s climate apocalypticism.

This European isolationism may elsewhere be perceived as a form of late-stage counter-colonization—a return flow of capital from remorseful Europeans willing to accept self-imposed sacrifice to help other regions get back on their feet. Around the world, this selflessly naive “degrowth suicide” is welcomed, as it delivers not only so-called climate support from European funds but, more importantly, accelerated industrial investment from European companies—served on a silver platter by eco-socialist policymakers. A civilizational ingredient that, it seems, Europe itself now believes it can do without.

In China, one has learned to remain quiet when a geopolitical rival makes mistake after mistake—as is currently the case with European climate policy. Energy-intensive firms like Evonik are penalized by CO₂ pricing with an artificial competitive disadvantage. Once embedded in political and administrative structures, this amounts to a genuine stimulus program for foreign industrial locations.

At the same time, China—like the increasingly deregulated United States under President Donald Trump—is developing a powerful vacuum effect in global capital markets. The world is benefiting from German engineering and European capital.

This dynamic is particularly evident in the chemical industry. As a highly energy-intensive sector, it has suffered one of the hardest blows from European climate policy, alongside the automotive industry. Kullmann’s warning about the erosion of economic foundations was more than justified—but it came far too late and remained, for a time, a lone voice in the wilderness.

Since 2018, Germany’s chemical industry has lost roughly a quarter of its production capacity. The sector is operating at an average capacity utilization of just 70%, a level that reflects a sectoral depression not seen in Germany since the end of World War II.

Yet the worse the economic situation becomes, the more firmly German policymakers cling to their belief in the green transformation. Corporate silence is secured by a massive subsidy machine, just as the sympathetic media sector provides the shrill soundtrack to the broader economic decline.

Tactically astute from a media standpoint, Brussels—under pressure from European industry—has agreed to ease some pressure from the CO₂ cost burden. The European Commission is expected to temporarily freeze the volume of circulating certificates within the market stability reserve in order to stabilize prices.

For Evonik CEO Kullmann, the outcome presented by Brussels appears acceptable. His once sharp criticism of the CO₂ mechanism has mysteriously vanished into the media ether. The change of heart clearly follows the promise of further subsidies.

A destructive mechanism has emerged between large corporations and an eco-socialist political leadership. At the media level, corporate executives and political actors stage a kind of ping-pong game that simulates critical debate and conflicting interests at the highest levels of decision-making.

Evidently, there is no willingness to even slow down the ongoing transfer of wealth—from the productive sectors of society to politically favored extractive sectors such as the green economy—even amid prolonged economic stagnation. The economic and social consequences of this policy are, for now, being conveniently ignored in both Brussels and Berlin.

* * * 

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 03:30

British Official Admits UK Not Capable Of Rescuing Their Own Lost Airmen

Europe has been dancing on the edge of a knife, flirting with notions of war with a battle hardened Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.  As these tensions escalate, questions are being raised about the actual combat readiness and capabilities of countries that have relied on the US for their security for so long.

The primary division between the Trump Administration and NATO countries, the thing that started it all, was the initial refusal of so many of them to pay their fair share for defense.  Currently, most NATO members budget around 2% of their GDP to defense under the NATO treaty.  When asked to budget 5%, European governments became indignant, only agreeing to meet the target in a decade.

In an interesting recent admission from The Telegraph, Tom Tugendhat, a British MP and former security minister, argues that the UK simply lacks the independent military capabilities needed to pull off a rescue operation of one of their own airman similar to the recent US operation in Iran.  He says that if one of their pilots needed to be saved, they would have to ask the US to do it.  

“We do not have the platforms, the satellites, the reach or the mass. Our rescue plan, if the airman were British, would be to call the U.S.”

Tugendhat warned about the situation in Iran in March, saying he had questions as to why Prime Minister Keir Starmer failed to deploy appropriate air defense assets in the region to protect UK citizens and allies from missile and drone strikes.  Starmer is facing mounting criticism for his delay in deploying the HMS Dragon to Cyprus, following an attack on UK base RAF Akrotiri. 

Expressing his dismay at the lack of protection for British personnel, Tugendhat told GB News:

"My take is pretty simple - we may not have agreed with the initial decision to strike, that's an American and Israeli decision...But I see absolutely no reason why we didn't have assets in the region, why we didn't have Type 45 destroyers in the region to protect our citizens and our allies. It's baffling to me."

Beyond their heavy reliance on the US and Europe's lack of military spending, Europe is facing a crisis of public confidence. European military readiness has been exposed in the past few years as severely lacking, and a core problem these governments refuse to address is the fact that most young men simply don't want to fight for them.  In other words, in a voluntary system the governments and the countries in question need to hold similar values to the men they want to send into battle. 

With far-left progressive elements holding power across Europe, this is simply not the case.  So, their only option is to force a draft. 

Several senior UK officials and MPs have publicly entertained or discussed the possibility of forced conscription (a military draft) as something that the government might implement in the event of a major war.  UK military recruitment is far below requirements with the Army and Royal Navy consistently hitting only 60% of their personnel goals. 

Dr. Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former British Army officer, stated in March 2025 that if the UK became involved in a general war with Russia, “we’ll be conscripting the population - there’s no question about that.” He described it as something Britain “must be prepared” for, given the significant risk of wider conflict.  Notions of an incoming draft have been a major topic in the British media for the past couple years. 

The suspicion is that the establishment is acclimating the public to the idea over time, getting them ready to accept it as inevitable.  

Germany is creating the framework for a draft right now.  As of January 1, 2026, German men aged 17 to 45 must obtain "permission" from a Bundeswehr Career Center before traveling abroad for more than three months.  They witnessed what happened in Ukraine at the start of the war with Russia; millions of young men fled the country to avoid conscription.  Germany is establishing loss prevention, clearly planning for a near term clash with the Russians. 

One strange narrative that has been circulating on social media is the argument among Europeans that the US "wasted" millions of dollars in military equipment in their successful mission to rescue "just one" wounded airman.  The operation included special forces landing two MC-130s on a makeshift landing strip right under the nose of the IRGC and securing the area for the extraction of the stranded airman.  The planes became stuck in the sand and had to be destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of the Iranians.  

It's highly revealing that this sacrifice of equipment for the sake of saving a lost soldier is confusing to many Europeans.  It shows that they can't comprehend the idea of a government that would actually care enough to save them rather than throw them to the wolves.  In other words, there is no loyalty on either side of the equation and Europe's weaknesses go well beyond the political.  

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 02:45

France's Debt Spiral: Tax Hikes Mask A Looming Crisis

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

On both sides of the Franco-German border, the same problem persists: overburdened and reform-averse politicians struggle against a rapidly accelerating debt spiral. Their preferred tool: higher levies.

Last week, France’s Finance Minister Roland Lescure reported a revision of the projected budget deficit for the current year.

Initial estimates for 2026 had suggested a deficit well above five percent. Yet numerous fiscal measures brought last year’s deficit down to 5.1%. For 2026, the Finance Ministry expects it to stabilize at around five percent—provided the ongoing energy crisis and the war in Iran do not cast a lasting shadow over the year, and the economy does not abruptly collapse.

With total public debt at roughly 115% of GDP, France cannot possibly meet the Maastricht criteria under this level of new borrowing.

Do restrictive fiscal rules, such as the increasingly fading Maastricht criteria, even matter anymore in the Eurozone? It’s a rhetorical question: public spending dynamics are no longer controllable. One could also say: EU nations have entered a phase of fiscal fatalism.

After a 4% increase in government spending in 2024, outlays rose again last year, this time by 2.5%. The state apparatus continues to expand, regardless of the dramatic debt levels, pushing the public-sector share of GDP to 57%.

Similar to Germany, this figure does not account for the bureaucratic overhead borne by the private sector on behalf of the increasingly feudal state. Hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs exist solely to fulfill government reporting and compliance obligations.

Massive Tax Hikes

Meanwhile, the French government remains stuck in its involuntary role as a reform-incapable instrument of the crumbling status quo. Parliament’s majority arithmetic leaves it paralyzed. A reform process to shrink the welfare state, reduce the massive bureaucracy, and achieve sustainable budget management is now completely out of reach for Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s minority government.

Every administration supported by President Emmanuel Macron functions as a placeholder, interchangeable and powerless in a parliamentary arithmetic deadlock. Macron, facing dramatically poor approval ratings as a sort of “president without a people,” knows the fragility of France’s public finances and can at least rely on one thing: a broad political alliance capable of delivering temporary relief through tax hikes.

In Paris, as in much of the EU, policymakers are staunch etatists—staunchly loyal to the state and simultaneously hungry for power—making a large government apparatus serve their interests.

Over the past two years, France has cranked up the tax screws: a minimum rate for top incomes above €250,000, an increase in property wealth taxes, and a rise in corporate taxes for larger firms, yielding up to €6 billion in additional annual revenue.

New levies on higher dividend payouts and large corporate stock buybacks have been introduced. A Tobin-style financial transaction tax is planned to hit wealthy shareholders. Energy and environmental levies have also risen. As with tobacco and alcohol, the message is clear: “We tax luxury and the rich.”

This creates the impression of socially just taxation, while distracting from the fundamental problem: the expanding state, a European disease driving the continent into turbulence.

Where the Journey Leads

France illustrates both the mechanics and potential timeline of the emerging national debt crisis. Through intensive public-relations work and the backing of state-aligned media, politicians cultivate the impression of massive social imbalances. Punchline: societal decay and poverty, up to the misery of public finances, are the undeniable result of capitalist plunder.

The only functioning corrective to this systemic injustice comes from the benevolent, balancing state, stepping in to deliver fiscal transfers and enforce a form of justice.

In the sticky rhetoric of “justice,” the government conceals its complete failure—whether in border policy, over-bureaucratization, or the naive belief in a centrally planned economy. The result is a lifeless economy, which in France fares no better than in Germany. Only in energy has the importance of nuclear power been recognized—a wise choice, securing significant advantages for French industry.

Fiscal policy in Paris and Berlin now moves hand in hand toward the fiscal inferno. Berlin delayed necessary action by two years, but 2026 promises to be a year of major shocks. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government is expected to raise both inheritance tax and the top income tax rate.

Options on the tax roulette wheel include a two-percentage-point hike in VAT and the end of spousal income splitting—measures particularly cherished by the political left in its ongoing attack on the remnants of the bourgeois family sphere.

The CDU’s participation in this scheme, leveling itself with other socialist parties in the Bundestag, reveals the intellectual and ethical erosion of a party led to the threshold of socialism by Angela Merkel and now finally pushed over by Friedrich Merz.

From general political-ideological mismanagement emerges a crisis-management strategy. Germany and France offer clues about fiscal trajectories in the coming years.

In short: the state will feed off the shrinking economic substance, masking its failures with higher levies while postponing necessary reforms.

This has immediate consequences for capital markets. If the sell-off of European sovereign bonds continues, the European Central Bank will have to intervene to prevent the public debt Ponzi scheme from collapsing.

This trend is highly inflationary and accelerates the process of social and economic erosion. Those capable of cutting the Gordian knot of Europe’s complex fiscal entanglement remain, for now, on the sidelines.

* * * 

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/07/2026 - 02:00

How Modern Influence Operations Work, Part 1: The New Influence Stack

Authored by Charles Davis via The Epoch Times,

On a Tuesday night in a dorm room, a student opens TikTok for a “five-minute break.”

The first clip is a montage of rubble and sirens.

The second is a professor-style explainer, neatly captioned, delivering a single moral conclusion.

The third is a shaky phone video of a confrontation on another campus—shouts, police lights, a crowd surging like weather.

The student doesn’t search for any of it.

They don’t even follow the accounts.

The feed arrives already confident about what matters.

This is the political technology of our moment: the system that decides—thousands of times a day—what you see next.

The Influence Stack

For most of the past century, influence meant broadcasting. You bought a newspaper, aired a radio spot, printed leaflets, argued in the town square. Feedback was slow, indirect, and expensive.

Today, influence runs on a different stack. It is microtargeting—figuring out which slice of the population to target. It is recommender distribution—determining what to place in front of the target group and in what sequence. It is measurement of effects—watch time, rewatches, scroll-hesitation, comments, shares. And it is iteration—rapidly adjusting what works and discarding what doesn’t.

Once those pieces lock together, persuasion stops looking like a party debate. It takes on the appearance of a thermostat: sense the room, nudge the temperature, sense again.

Microtargeting Didn’t Begin With TikTok

Microtargeting is older than the smartphone feed. 

Campaigns have long merged voter files with consumer and demographic data, then tailored appeals to specific segments. What changed, especially by the early 2010s, was tempo: the ability to see what’s working while the moment is still unfolding.

The Obama campaign’s 2012 digital operation offers a useful bridge between the older world and the current one. Their teams watched web behavior in near real time and used it for rapid response. During a presidential debate, when then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said “binders full of women,” the campaign immediately bought search ads keyed to the phrase and linked to a fact sheet; the campaign’s digital lead described an “immediate uptick in both traffic and engagement” from users searching that term.

That isn’t TikTok. It’s still the open web—search, ads, landing pages. But the shift shows a new logic: observe behavior as it happens, then redirect attention before the story cools. Strike while the iron is hot.

Algorithmic platforms industrialize that loop. Microtargeting is not about “who gets which mailer.” It becomes a live system, stitched to distribution and feedback. Different demographics can be shown targeted versions of the same reality, and the system learns—at scale—how each group responds.

And “response” doesn’t require explicit agreement. It can be attention, arousal, and volatility: two extra seconds of watch time, a rewatch, a comment typed in anger and posted, a share to a group chat.

Ranking Systems Don’t Just Reflect Preference. They Shape It.

We don’t have to guess whether ranking changes what people see. Researchers have tested it inside platforms.

A large-scale study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) drew on a “massive-scale randomized experiment” on X, then known as Twitter, that assigned a randomized control group—nearly two million daily active accounts—to a reverse-chronological feed “free of algorithmic personalization,” precisely so the effects of ranking could be measured. The authors reported measurable differences in “algorithmic amplification” across political actors in multiple countries.

That’s the key: ranking is an intervention. When a system orders content, it decides what becomes salient, what feels common to particular groups, what appears urgent, and what fades. Political power can emerge even when nobody writes a manifesto inside the company. The feed trains the user. It is an environment, and environments shape behavior.

This is also why the public debate so often misses the point.

People argue as if the only question is whether a platform “censors” a viewpoint or “pushes propaganda.” Those concerns matter. They just sit on top of a deeper mechanism: the simple act of ranking, repeated billions of times, changes what societies talk about.

Measurement: The Hidden Power Is the Dashboard

The influence stack is powered by dashboards.

A broadcaster might learn weeks later whether a message landed. A platform learns in minutes whether a clip increased retention among 19-year-olds in a specific place, at a given hour, after a strategically set sequence of prior videos.

This creates a persuasion capability that older institutions weren’t built to match: rapid experimentation on human attention. Content becomes a hypothesis. The audience becomes a living lab. The system keeps what works.

Universities update policy once a semester. Newsrooms adjust framing over days. Legislatures move over months. The feed scope and focus can pivot before lunch.

Why Anger Wins Inside the Loop

A hard truth about the influence stack is that not all emotions travel equally well through it. High-arousal emotions move faster because they prompt action.

In a landmark study of sharing, Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman found that virality is linked to physiological arousal: content that evokes high-arousal emotions, including anger and anxiety, is more likely to spread than content that evokes low-arousal emotions like sadness.

Politics adds another accelerant: moral emotion. A PNAS study analyzing large datasets of social media debate found that moral-emotional language increases diffusion; in their sample, each additional moral-emotional word in a message was associated with a substantial increase in sharing.

And anger has particular advantages in networked environments. A computational analysis of Weibo found anger to be more “contagious” than joy and more able to travel along weaker social ties—meaning it can move beyond a tight-knit group and spill into wider communities.

Put those together and the targeting logic becomes almost mechanical. Anger keeps people watching. It increases the odds they’ll share. It tends to bridge out of local clusters into broader networks. In an engagement-optimized system, anger is not just a feeling. It’s a distribution advantage.

Iteration: How Talking Points Come Back as Optimized Themes

And then there is the old broadcast trick—the repeated phrase, the tagline, the talking point—reappearing in new clothes.

In television news, theming worked because repetition makes ideas feel common. In the influence stack, the system tests variations. It monitors the retention curve, watches share velocity and comment intensity. The phrases that survive are the ones that travel and harden into slogans that feel “everywhere,” because the platform has learned exactly where “everywhere” is.

This is how a moral frame becomes a transport mechanism. A short phrase is easy to caption, easy to hashtag, easy to stitch and remix. It is also easy for the system to recognize and route toward audiences that have historically responded to that emotional key.

The Verification Problem

A second political fact of the influence stack is that outsiders struggle to verify what’s happening in real time.

Platforms point to transparency and researcher access. While those programs are meaningful; sometimes they lag the speed of events. The influence stack’s advantage is velocity in a world of slow oversight. When you can’t see the full system—distribution weights, downranking rules, recommendation pathways, enforcement decisions—you can’t reliably separate organic waves from algorithmically amplified waves, or evaluate whether interventions were neutral or asymmetrical.

What This Series Will Do

Over the next installments, we’ll walk up the stack.

We’ll examine emotion recognition and why even flawed affect inference can be dangerous when institutions treat outputs as truth. We’ll look at China’s operational model—identity resolution plus sensor coverage plus data fusion—and why architecture matters more than any single sensor. We’ll treat TikTok as a distribution layer where iteration is fast and verification is hard. Then we’ll apply the framework to a test case Americans lived through: the surge of campus protest dynamics during the Gaza war, what we can measure, and what we cannot responsibly claim.

The point isn’t to reduce genuine political conviction to “the algorithm did it.” People protest for real reasons. Institutions fail for real reasons. But in a world where attention is programmable, it becomes reckless to pretend the feed is only entertainment.

The influence stack doesn’t replace politics. It changes the temperature at which politics happens.

And once you see it, the question stops being whether a single video “caused” anything.

The question becomes: who controls the thermostat—and who gets to audit it?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 23:25

China Introduces Pistol-Like Coil-Gun Based On Electromagnetic-Launch Systems

Authored by Bojan Stojovski via Interesting Engineering,

A new handheld coil gun developed in China is designed for discreet, non-lethal use, including law enforcement operations, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Capable of firing between 1,000 and 2,000 rounds per minute, the weapon can penetrate wooden boards from distances of several dozen yards. Its adjustable power settings allow it to incapacitate rather than kill when set lower.

China develops electromagnetic weapon for covert operations.Gamersky

The compact electromagnetic launcher features a 12-inch barrel and is light enough to be comfortably held and operated with one hand, allowing for greater mobility and ease of use in tight or urban environments where traditional firearms or larger coil guns would be cumbersome.

Equipped with a laser pointer for improved accuracy, the device – also called a Gauss gun – uses electromagnetic coils to accelerate metal projectiles at high speeds, miniaturizing technology previously limited to larger military systems.

Merging stealth and increased destructive power

The latest Chinese handheld coil gun offers a stealthy alternative to traditional firearms, producing no muzzle flash or smoke, minimal noise, and no ejected shell casings. These features make it particularly suited for covert operations, according to Chinese media. 

The showcased model represents an upgrade from last year’s test version, featuring a slightly longer barrel and the ability to fire larger, heavier projectiles. While its rate of fire is somewhat slower, the weapon delivers significantly greater kinetic energy and destructive force, increasing its impact per shot, the South China Morning Post reported.

The weapon is equipped with an electronic display that provides real-time information on battery life, ammunition count, and firing modes. Operators can adjust the electric current to control output power, allowing them to vary projectile speed depending on the target’s distance and situational conditions.

This feature enables the coil gun to deliver precise, controlled force, allowing operators to tailor each shot to the situation. By adjusting power and projectile speed, the weapon can incapacitate or deter targets effectively while significantly reducing the risk of fatal injury, making it suitable for law enforcement, crowd control, or other scenarios where non-lethal force is preferred.

Portable coil gun could supplement traditional firearms 

The coil gun’s design places a detachable magazine behind its centrally positioned grip, allowing the electromagnetic coils to run the full length of the chassis. This layout maximizes projectile acceleration while keeping the weapon compact and easy to handle. 

Currently, the portable device is intended mainly for specialised non-lethal scenarios, limited by battery output. However, as battery technology advances, the weapon could see broader applications, potentially supplementing or even replacing traditional firearms in certain combat situations, offering a new form of precision, low-visibility firepower on the battlefield.

China has been advancing larger-scale electromagnetic weaponry as well. In 2023, the PLA Naval University of Engineering reportedly tested what is believed to be the world’s most powerful coil gun, capable of launching a 273-pound projectile at speeds reaching 435 miles per hour. 

Beijing is also advancing railgun technology, a type of electromagnetic weapon that propels projectiles along a pair of parallel rails at extreme speeds, while promising higher velocity and longer range than conventional guns, potentially transforming naval and land-based combat. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 22:35

US Oil Premiums Hit Record High As World Scrambles For Crude

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

The premiums for U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude have soared in the spot market to a record high of between $30 and $40 per barrel above key regional benchmarks as Asia and Europe scramble for supply amid the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

WTI Midland is being offered for July delivery in north Asia at premiums of between $30 and $40 per barrel, depending on the benchmark against which they are marked, trading sources told Reuters on Monday.

"Asian refiners, shut out of Middle Eastern supply, are bidding aggressively for ​every available Atlantic Basin barrel," said Paola Rodriguez-Masiu, chief oil analyst at Rystad Energy, in a note dated April 3.

With most of the Middle Eastern supply still trapped at Hormuz and all Gulf producers slashing upstream production in response to the closed Strait, competition for barrels from other producers has become fierce and has pushed premiums higher and higher.

WTI Midland is offered to North Asia at a premium of $34 per barrel over the Dubai benchmark, a trader told Reuters. Another trade source said there are also offers of WTI Midland priced $30 per barrel above Dated Brent. There have been offers at nearly $40 a barrel above ICE Brent for August delivery, additional sources told Reuters.

The offers for spot WTI Midland have jumped in recent days from around $20 per barrel premium for cargoes sold at the end of March.

U.S. crude has become prized oil supply in the absence of free flows from the Middle East. As a result, the price of the WTI Crude futures benchmark soared past Brent Crude futures at the end of last week.

WTI Crude rarely trades at a premium to Brent. Brent crude reflects seaborne crude and typically leads during global supply shocks, while WTI crude is usually discounted.

As Julianne Geiger noted, part of the move is technical: WTI’s front-month contract reflects May delivery, while Brent has already rolled to June, skewing the headline spread.

Month-matched spread...

 

But the deeper driver is extreme prompt pressure - WTI backwardation has surged to record levels - signaling immediate demand for secure, deliverable barrels.

With rising uncertainty around global shipping routes, WTI has effectively gained a “security premium,” narrowing and even reversing its usual discount to Brent.

The current inversion points to a breakdown in normal pricing signals tied to physical flows.

* * *

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 22:10

Murder And Mayhem: A Look At ICE's 'Worst Of The Worst' Arrests

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez and Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts this term have focused on illegal immigrants with criminal histories.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made about 379,000 arrests from Jan. 20, 2025, through Jan. 20, 2026, and the administration has maintained that the majority involved those with criminal arrests or convictions.

Tricia McLaughlin, former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said last year that 70 percent of ICE arrests were of criminal illegal aliens who had been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States. According to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, last year’s arrests included more than 7,300 suspected gang members and 1,400 known or suspected terrorists.

In December, DHS launched its Worst of the Worst searchable database of criminal illegal immigrants taken off the streets. The database, which currently lists more than 30,800 entries, allows visitors to search for those arrested across all 50 states with criminal histories that include homicide, assault, rape, drug trafficking, crimes against children, assault, armed robbery, and others.

President Donald Trump signs the Laken Riley Act in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 29, 2025. The Laken Riley Act, which mandates the detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft-related crimes, is named for a 22-year-old student murdered by a Venezuelan national with no legal papers who was wanted for shoplifting. Pedro Ugarte/AFP via Getty Images

Here is a sampling of 10 violent criminal illegal immigrant arrests in 2025 and early 2026.

Indecency With a Child

On Feb. 18, 2025, ICE arrested Guatemalan national Sostenes Pérez-López in Brighton, Massachusetts.

According to a Boston Police report, a mother and her daughter encountered Pérez-López at a laundromat on Nov. 23, 2024.

The young girl was drawing at a table near the laundromat’s entrance when Pérez-López approached her. Later, the mother noticed her daughter with an unknown man and went to her, at which point Pérez-López spoke to her in Spanish.

“Your daughter is very pretty,” he said. “They are going to steal her.”

When asked who was going to steal her daughter, Pérez-López responded, “The dogs,” and left the laundromat.

The girl later told her mother that Pérez-López had inappropriately touched her.

Local human trafficking and sexual assault investigators obtained a photo of the man from the surveillance video inside the laundromat and identified Pérez-López as the suspect on Nov. 27.

Pérez-López went to a police station after he was identified and asked to speak with investigators, according to the police report. He told detectives he was at the laundromat that day and saw a girl he believed to be about 5 years old standing by herself.

He instructed the girl to come to him, then told police that he put his left arm around her waist, “pulled her closer to him,” and said, “Hola.”

Pérez-López told police the girl “just looked up at the brim of his white cowboy hat” without speaking to him. He denied speaking to the girl’s mother.

ICE officers arrest Guatemalan national Sostenes Perez-Lopez during an enforcement operation in Brighton, Mass., on Feb. 18, 2025. Perez-Lopez was charged with two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, according to ICE. Department of Homeland Security

Pérez-López was arrested and charged with two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 on Nov. 28, 2024, according to ICE, which lodged an immigration detainer against him following his arrest.

​The Boston Municipal Court, Brighton Division, arraigned Pérez-López on Nov. 29, 2024, but ignored the ICE detainer and released him on bail on Dec. 12, 2024.

Pérez-López was served with a notice to appear before a Department of Justice immigration judge following his February arrest, and he remains in ICE custody.

20 Sex Crimes

On April 1, 2025, ICE and federal partners operating in Lawrence, Massachusetts, arrested Ecuadoran national Gilberto Avila-Jara, whose criminal history includes more than 20 sex crimes against a minor.

Avila-Jara allegedly illegally entered the United States near San Ysidro, California, on Feb. 10, 1996, and was arrested on March 2, 1996, at Los Angeles International Airport, according to ICE.

ICE officers arrest Ecuadoran national Gilberto Avila-Jara in Lawrence, Mass., on April 1, 2025. Avila-Jara faces more than 20 sex crime charges involving a minor. Department of Homeland Security

​​Avila-Jara was removed from the country in July 1996, but later illegally reentered on an unknown date.

​On Dec. 18, 2020, Avila-Jara was arraigned in Lawrence District Court for more than 20 offenses, including indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, rape of a child with force, and aggravated statutory rape of a child, according to ICE.

* * * Sale ends Friday

​On that same day in December, ICE Boston lodged an immigration detainer against Avila-Jara with the Lawrence Police Department. However, the court refused to honor the detainer and released Avila-Jara on bail on March 17, 2021.

On April 22, 2021, the Essex County Superior Court arraigned Avila-Jara for six counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, eight counts of rape of a child with force, and eight counts of aggravated statutory rape of a child.​

Murder and Assault

ICE arrested René Pop-Chub, a Guatemalan national who had pending charges for murder, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment, in Hyattsville, Maryland, on April 12, 2025.

Pop-Chub was captured and subsequently removed by Border Patrol twice—once on June 13, 2013, in Falfurrias, Texas, and again on Dec. 11, 2017, in Cowlic, Arizona.

After illegally entering the United States for a third time, he was arrested on Aug. 19, 2024, by police in Maryland and charged with first-degree assault.

ICE officers arrest Guatemalan national Rene Pop-Chub in Hyattsville, Md., on April 12, 2025. Pop-Chub has pending charges for murder, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment. Department of Homeland Security

ICE lodged a detainer with the Prince George’s County Department of Corrections on Oct. 9, 2024, but it was ignored, DHS said.

On Oct. 31 of that year, the District Court for Prince George’s County forwarded the case to the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County for the currently pending charges.

However, the district court refused to honor ICE’s immigration detainer and released Pop-Chub on April 8, 2025. He was arrested by ICE four days later.

Sex Offender Drags Officer

Mexican national Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala had a history of run-ins with the law dating back to 2010 before ICE agents caught up with him in Bloomington, Minnesota, during a traffic stop.

Muñoz-Guatemala had multiple driving offenses on his record and was previously convicted of domestic assault and a felony sex crime against an underage teenager, according to DHS.

Mexican national Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala. Department of Homeland Security

In October 2022, Muñoz-Guatemala’s 16-year-old stepdaughter accused him of sexually abusing her for several months after her mother left to live with her new boyfriend, according to Minnesota court records.

The teen got proof of the abuse by propping her cell phone up on some schoolbooks and recording an incident, state court records show.

At the time of his 2022 arrest for sexual abuse, ICE issued a detainer, which was not honored by local authorities, and Muñoz-Guatemala was released from custody.

He was convicted of a felony sex crime and sentenced to 18 months in prison in October 2023, but was later released on supervised probation, according to state court records.

Three years later, when he was stopped by ICE, he refused to get out of the vehicle and allegedly tried to flee, dragging one of the officers some 50 yards.

Muñoz-Guatemala called Bloomington Police after fleeing, “claiming he was just assaulted” by ICE, court records read.

The officer recovered but was later involved in the Renee Good shooting. Good was protesting ICE and drove her vehicle toward the officer, striking him as he opened fire.

Federal immigration agents stand guard after one of their vehicles was involved in a crash while making an apprehension in St. Paul, Minn., on Jan. 31, 2026. Scott Olson/Getty Images

ICE first lodged a detainer on Muñoz-Guatemala in 2013.

Tren de Aragua Attack

Gabriel ​Hurtado-Cariaco, identified as a member of Venezuelan terrorist gang Tren de Aragua, first crossed the U.S. southern border illegally in 2023 and was removed. He tried again in 2024 and was released into the country under the Biden administration.

An ICE officer and FBI agent caught up with Hurtado-Cariaco outside an apartment complex in Bellevue, Nebraska, after authorities issued an arrest warrant for the man, who claims he was a first sergeant in the Venezuelan military from 2013 to 2018 before deserting.

Initially, Hurtado-Cariaco “signaled non-verbally” to the agents that he would comply as they approached to take him into custody. But the officers realized too late that it was a ruse.

With no warning, the alleged Venezuelan gang member crashed into one of the ICE officers, sending her flying. The pair hit the ground, and the ICE officer smacked her head and injured her elbow. She would later tell investigators that Hurtado Cariaco lured her in with his relaxed body language.

Federal officers arrest Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco, an alleged member of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, in Nebraska on June 18, 2025. Hurtado-Cariaco was charged with attempted murder of a federal officer and assault on a federal officer. Department of Homeland Security

The alleged gang member then ripped off the officer’s body armor and continued the assault, according to DHS. He managed to get her in a chokehold and began to squeeze her neck.

The FBI officer was able to get Hurtado-Caiaco in a chokehold and applied “deadly force” to get him to release his grip on the officer. He turned the fight on the FBI agent but eventually fled.

The ICE officer and FBI agent gave chase, called for backup, and eventually made the arrest.

The ICE officer was hospitalized and treated for serious injuries to her head and arm. Hurtado-Cariaco was charged with attempted murder of a federal officer and assault of a federal officer.

10 Arrests, 19 charges

A Salvadorian national with a long rap sheet who was repeatedly released into local communities was taken off the streets by ICE in Fairfax County, Virginia, on Oct. 24, 2025.

Salvadoran national Jorge Armando Melendez-Gonzalez in Fairfax County, Va., on Oct. 24, 2025. Department of Homeland Security

Border Patrol arrested Jorge Armando Meléndez-González after he illegally entered the country on June 22, 2015, and refused to comply with a judicial removal order in October 2016, according to ICE.

Between March 19, 2018, and July 18, 2025, Meléndez-González was arrested 10 times and charged with 19 different crimes, including felony malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, assault and battery, grand larceny, trespassing, possessing a false identification, and public intoxication.

Just before 2 a.m. on Aug. 26, 2023, Fairfax County Police officers were called to a Merrifield, Virginia, parking lot, where they found two men suffering from gunshot wounds. One was shot in the arm and the other in the abdomen, according to a Fairfax County press release. Both were treated at a local hospital.

Almost two hours later, police received a 911 call from the hospital that a man had walked in with a gunshot wound to the arm.

As it turned out, Meléndez-González, who was living in Falls Church, Virginia, had approached a group of men who were standing in front of a business that night. One of the men assaulted Meléndez-González , who then opened fire into the crowd and fled, according to police.

​ICE in the District of Columbia said it lodged two immigration detainers against Meléndez-González with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. One was issued on Aug. 28, 2023, and another on July 18, 2025.

Fairfax County officials refused to honor the detainers and released him, according to ICE.

Manager Protects Sex Offender​

A Minneapolis apartment manager tried to protect a 57-year-old Somali sex offender from arrest by blocking federal enforcement agents from entering the building on Jan. 7, 2026, according to ICE.

Mahad Abdulkadir Yusuf was eventually arrested at his Lake Street apartment after ICE launched a targeted enforcement operation to apprehend the longtime Minneapolis resident.

ICE officers conduct a targeted enforcement operation to arrest Somali national Mahad Abdulkadir Yusuf, a convicted sex offender, in Minneapolis on Dec. 31, 2025. Department of Homeland Security

Minnesota District Court records show that in June 2020, the Richfield Police Department was called to a long-term care facility in Hennepin County, where a 69-year-old woman accused Yusef of forcing her to perform sexual acts.

She told police that he had entered her room that night several times and had tried to force her to perform sexual acts in the past.

He was arrested on felony criminal sexual conduct charges but was convicted of misdemeanor nonconsensual sexual contact in 2023.

Yusuf was also arrested in 2016 for assault in the first degree and has an active warrant from 2024 for obstructing police.

He originally entered the United States in 1996 and was a lawful permanent resident, but “threw away his shot at the American dream by repaying our country’s generosity with these vicious crimes,” according to ICE.

​Stabbed in the Back

Honduran national Rafael Aguilar, who was charged with attempted murder and convicted of second-degree assault after stabbing a victim in the back on April 19, 2025, was picked up by ICE agents in Baltimore on Jan. 13, 2026.

Prince George’s County failed to honor an immigration detainer and instead released Aguilar back into the community on Jan. 6, according to ICE.

​He was initially charged with attempted second-degree murder. The county court system reduced the charge and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, but he served only 141 days before being released on probation.

Tren de Aragua Homicide

On Jan. 7, 2026, ICE officers in Dallas arrested Venezuelan national Alberth José Simancas-García, an alleged member of Tren de Aragua who was wanted in Peru.

In August last year, an immigration judge with the Dallas Executive Office for Immigration Review issued a final order of removal for Simancas-García. ​

In December, a Homeland Security Investigations task force in Dallas received information from its Houston office that Simancas-García was wanted in Peru for questioning relating to a homicide. Peruvian officials alleged he had committed additional violent crimes, including armed robbery, assault, and firearms violations.

(Left) ICE officers arrested Venezuelan national and alleged gang member Alberth Jose Simancas-Garcia in Dallas on Jan. 7, 2026. (Center) ICE agents in Baltimore arrested Honduran national Rafael Aguilar on Jan. 13, 2026. (Right) ICE arrested Guatemalan national Oscar Vasquez Lopez in Savannah, Ga., on Feb. 16, 2026. Department of Homeland Security

Deadly U-Turn

ICE attempted to arrest Oscar Vásquez López, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, under a final order of removal issued by a federal judge in 2024. ​During a Feb. 16, 2026, operation in Savannah, Georgia, officers saw López enter a vehicle and tried to detain him.

He initially stopped, but then allegedly fled the scene. He made an illegal U-turn, running a red light and colliding with a vehicle, killing the special education teacher driving. She was pronounced dead at the scene, ICE said.

López, who suffered only minor injuries, was charged by the Chatham County Police Department with vehicular homicide, according to ICE.

​“This vehicular homicide is an absolute tragedy and deadly consequence of politicians and the media constantly demonizing ICE officers and encouraging those here illegally to resist arrest—a felony,” McLaughlin said. “Now, an innocent bystander has lost their life.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 21:45

North Korea Keeping Iran At Arm's Length, Hoping To Improve Ties With Trump

When the Ukraine war began over four years ago, North Korea only deepened its relations and defense cooperation with Moscow. Later into the conflict, it even sent thousands of troops to assist Russian military and security forces - and an undisclosed number of DPRK troops died or suffered wounds while fighting Ukraine.

When it comes to Iran, many pundits assumed Pyongyang might also do something similar in defense of Tehran, give the Middle East nation and fellow 'rogue' ally is under US and Israeli bombs; however, there are signs North Korea is actually distancing itself in this case.

via Reuters

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) sees no evidence that North Korea has sent weapons or supplies to Tehran since since Trump's Operation Epic Fury began, and is even remaining far away from such a move.

Lawmaker Park Sun-won, who attended a closed-door briefing held by the NIS, described Sunday that North Korea is not at all rushing to the Islamic Republic's aid.

This is also consistent with the Kim Jong Un government's public statements on the crisis, which have by and large been mute:

While Iran’s other allies China and Russia have frequently issued statements on the US-Israel war on Iran, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry has only issued two toned-down statements so far, said the NIS.

While Pyongyang did condemn the US and Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal, it did not issue public condolences after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death or send a congratulatory message when Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeded him.

The spy agency said Pyongyang is likely adopting this cautious approach to position it for a new diplomatic chapter with the US once the Middle East conflict subsides, said Park.

Trump actually mentioned North Korea several times in Monday remarks from the White House on the Iran situation. He charged that a certain past president failed to act properly to prevent Pyongyang from going nuclear - and that the last several presided did as well.

He concluded that Kim Jong Un would not have nuclear weapons if that job was done right. The said that they are afraid to take "strong action".

Trump:

If a certain president did his job, North Korea would not have nuclear weapons right now. pic.twitter.com/Ib7jVqw9pt

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026

It could be that Pyongyang is staying on the sidelines, and not offering direct support to its ally the Islamic Republic, given the obvious mismatch in military strength as the Iranians get pummeled by superior US aerial firepower.

In the case of Russa-Ukraine it is the opposite - where North Korea is on the side of the militarily stronger power and so perhaps feels more at east supporting its ally Moscow in such a context.

* * *

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 21:20

What Would Robert Louis Stevenson Say About Ozempic?

Authored by Ann Bauer via Brownstone Institute,

I have loved many addicts in my life.

I have been exasperated, impoverished, and terrified by them. But also amused, warmed, enraptured, elevated…That’s the thing about addicts. They contain multitudes, all drama and extremes. They’re charismatic until they’re repugnant, joyful until they’re suicidal. Everything is in vivid, dangerous color. It’s part of the ride and the reason they exert such a pull on cautious, ascetic people like me.

Some of my addicts are gone. My closest friend and “Damn Good Food” co-author, Mitch Omer, died at 61. Others have found God and turned their lives around (they’re now exciting and dramatic people of faith). I love people who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and food. Many surf between the four.

Recently, another category of people formed: the ones injecting themselves with GLP-1s, mostly to lose weight but also to control other impulses. It’s clearly great for the handful whose life and health were being destroyed by obesity. But for the others? I’m dubious.

Ozempic and its cousins (Mounjaro, Wegovy, Zepbound, et al.) modify the pleasure centers of the brain, making everything people crave—food, sex, smoking, alcohol, shopping, gambling, cocaine—less appealing. It doesn’t address the underlying problems of addiction, such as depression or dishonesty. It just eliminates the part of the person that enjoys and revels, the colorful, joyous side.

It’s a version of the drug in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that the doctor ginned up to divide himself, creating a respectable man bound by reserve and a separate murderous, pleasure-seeking monster.

From Dr. Jekyll’s own account:

Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.

Of course, the doctor’s desire to split off his hedonistic self will have devastating consequences. The lesson of Jekyll and Hyde is that decoupling morality from desire is unnatural. It disrupts the natural order. My question for RLS, were he still with us to answer: Do GLP-1s pose similarly catastrophic risks?

I think they may. One reason is my Uncle Joe.

Joe was a quiet, careful religious man. He and his wife, Darla, had desperately wanted children but it just never happened. They raised boxer dogs that they treated like babies. Joe worked as a photographer in North Minneapolis in this little tufted studio from the 1930s that smelled like rose cologne and dust.

Some time in the late 1970s, Joe started shaking uncontrollably. Terrible thing for a photographer. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and put on a whopping dose of Levodopa, which flooded his brain with dopamine. This got the tremors under control. He and Darla were hugely grateful. They needed Joe’s income and now he could go back to work.

But over the next half-decade, my uncle changed. He became furtive and untrustworthy. Around the time Darla discovered she had cancer, she also discovered that her husband had nearly bankrupted them. This tidy man had developed a rabid gambling habit—cards, horses, sports—and he was a terrible bettor. I was just a kid, but I remember my father talking about what a dumb bastard Joe was, how he lied to his wife and spent the money she needed for her treatments.

Darla died a few years later, and Joe kept right on gambling. He sold his business and used the money for trips to Las Vegas. By this time, the Levodopa was having diminishing returns and his Parkinsonian shaking was back. Joe’s doctors kept ratcheting up the dose, believing they were doing so with impunity. But the drug only made him step up his gambling. And spending. And drinking. And God knows what else.

Shortly after Joe died, penniless, news started to eke out that Levodopa was causing previously straight-laced people to do all sorts of out-of-character things. They were visiting prostitutes and buying fancy clothes, snorting blow and placing bets. Joe was part of the first wave of Parkinson’s patients that were treated with this new ‘miracle’ drug and went off the rails. He died alone, having borrowed money from everyone he knew and burned all the bridges he’d spent a lifetime building.

What does this have to do with Robert Louis Stevenson’s story about chemical medicine? Not a lot—directly. In Jekyll and Hyde, the main character sets out to create a potion that will free him from his rutting, profane, dissolute self (and vice versa). In the case of my uncle, chemists were simply trying to control the symptoms of his disease, and it had the awful, unintended consequence of turning a once-refined man into – basically – Mr. Hyde.

But Joe’s story is information about what happens when you mess with brain chemicals and try to spark or dampen certain behaviors. He wasn’t an addict they were trying to control. In fact, he was the kind of orderly person who shined his shoes and set them out every night. Levodopa MADE people like my Uncle Joe into addicts. Collaterally. And scientists missed it for years.

GLP-1 drugs center around the very same brain chemical: Dopamine. Instead of raising patients’ levels as neurologists did with Parkinson’s patients, Ozempic and the rest ‘modulate’ (which simply means adjust) Dopamine levels, suppressing them [typically] to a point where the pleasure-seeking cravings for food, alcohol, nicotine, and on and on are weak enough for people to overcome.

The Free Press ran an article recently on a little-talked-about downstream effect of GLP-1s: apathy. “They Went on Ozempic—and Gave Up on Life” by Evan Gardner reports on people who lost weight on the injectable, along with their libido, ambition, and desire to participate in the world. One woman finally had the boyfriend of her dreams, thanks (in her mind) to her slender new body, but no desire to have sex.

This is the opposite of what happened to Parkinson’s patients in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. The danger is that doctors are oblivious to (or ignoring) what’s happening because GLP-1s are easy, people want them, and they’re having the desired effect.

But what if the sum of becoming apathetic isn’t just laziness or low sex drive? What if it leads to something more sinister, such as a lack of empathy, the need for ever-more disruptive or violent entertainment, errors in high-risk high-stakes jobs, a dearth of parental love for a child….The list of potential ills goes on and on.

I ran this theory by a friend who works in the sober community, for a 12-step program, and he told me there are some professionals working in recovery who won’t accept people on GLP-1s into their programs. “A lot of us believe it’s an addiction if you’re relying on a drug that removes the need for spiritual work,” he said.

Robert Louis Stevenson warned about this very thing back in 1886. His story is about a drug made of phosphorus and salt and “some volatile ether” that allowed the addict, the rogue and criminal, to split off and wander free.

Today, we have a drug made of “salt forms of a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist,” being pushed by physicians and television campaigns and sports heroes and celebrities nationwide that allows people to silence the addict within—the self that once “laid aside restraint and plunged in shame”—stuff them in a crawl space, slam the door shut, and trap them there.

Don’t tell me that a Hyde-like creature isn’t going to get out eventually. There will be consequences.

“Prepare for a dreadful shipwreck,” I imagine Stevenson would say.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 20:55

Tech Bros Sound Alarm As AI Data Centers Poll Worse Than ICE Agents

The tech bros are only now waking up to what we pointed out 1 year and 8 months ago: the early stages of public backlash against AI data center expansion. Since then, this resistance has spread nationwide as working-class people grow increasingly angry about hyperscalers erecting massive AI data centers in their backyards, with one of the most immediate consequences being surging power bills.

"If tech leaders don't organize and get America on their side, the situation on the ground - as seen in the three charts below - will get worse before it gets better," Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital and co-host of the All-In Podcast, wrote on X.

Palihapitiya warned, "That, in turn, will tank the US economy since AI is responsible for much of our incremental GDP. Someone needs to step up." 

Palihapitiya posted what appears to be several slides from a Social Capital deck showing alarming trends in public sentiment toward AI data centers, clearly moving deeply negative. 

Charts

AI has a perception problem - and it's getting a lot more political:

• The first chart shows net favorability of AI is negative (-20), worse than ICE (-18) and close to politically toxic categories.

• That's a big signal: AI is no longer viewed as neutral "innovation" - it's drifting into polarized, politically charged territory.

• Translation: regulatory risk is rising, not falling.

Surging power bills are the core at public backlash against AI 

• Power prices were relatively stable from 2014-19, then erupted post-2020.

• The narrative forming (rightly or wrongly): AI plus data centers = massive energy demand = higher bills

• Whether AI is the main driver doesn't matter - perception is locking in causality.

Local backlash is now measurable - and accelerating

• Data center projects facing opposition are soaring fast

• Roughly 40% of contested data centers get canceled

• That's a real constraint on future supply growth

The warnings about public backlash against data centers were well known by our readership for nearly two years. We noted this again last year.

Something we warned about a year ago... https://t.co/xECu4mNEGj pic.twitter.com/dcpcO7Uc78

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 6, 2026

Even with AI at their fingertips, the tech crowd's messaging on data centers remains awful.

The same tech bros who spent years backing Democrats and supporting de-growth climate policies, before suddenly pivoting to Trump, are now running into a disaster of their own making. The public is already angry, and the political damage will be far from easy to unwind. Next time, they might want to fund politicians who prioritize grid security over a fake climate crisis. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 20:30

US Tests Mach-5 Hypersonic Missile In Joint Army-Navy Launch

Authored by Georgina Jedikovska via Interesting Engineering,

The U.S. has carried out a successful launch of a hypersonic missile made to travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5, meaning over five times the speed of sound, which allows it to cover vas distances in a matter of minutes.

A common hypersonic missile launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on March 26, 2026. via DoW

The launch of the common hypersonic missile, which is capable of covering more than 3,836 miles per hour (mph), was conducted as part of a joint test by the US Army and Navy.

According to the U.S. Department of War, the event took place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the state of Florida. The push is part of the U.S.’ ongoing efforts to develop advanced strike capabilities.

“The U.S. Army’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires, in partnership with the US Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Strategic Systems Programs, conducted a successful launch of a common hypersonic missile from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on March 26, 2026,” the U.S. Department of War stated.

A joint military test

Designed to travel faster than Mach 5, hypersonic weapons are considered a key part of future warfare and a military technology breakthrough. Their high speed makes them difficult to detect and intercept with existing defense systems.

The latest test by the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy marks another step toward deploying a shared hypersonic missile system. It is developed for both land- and sea-based platforms, and aims to help accelerate deployment and reduce costs.

Officials noted that the missile is being designed to strike time-sensitive, heavily defended, and high-value targets with minimal warning. What’s more, its extreme speed significantly reduces enemy reaction time.

“The Army and Navy partnership to field a common hypersonic missile across land- and sea-based platforms supports the National Defense Strategy by accelerating timelines, reducing costs, and delivering a highly survivable capability to defeat time-sensitive, heavily defended, and high-value targets at speeds exceeding Mach 5,” the U.S. Department of War continued in a statement shared on April 2.

Hypersonic push continues

According to reports, the test is part of a larger Pentagon plan to quickly roll out advanced technologies for combat use. On November 17, the US Department of War said that hypersonic weapons are one of six Critical Technology Areas (CTAs) seen as essential for battlefield advantage.

“Our adversaries are moving fast, but we will move faster,” Emil Michael, under secretary of war for research and engineering, revealed in a press release. “The warfighter is not asking for results tomorrow; they need them today.”

The six areas include Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI), biomanufacturing (BIO), Contested Logistics Technologies (LOG), Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID), Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE), and Scaled Hypersonics (SHY). All are aimed at strengthening battlefield performance.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at the time that the nation’s military has long been at the forefront of military power. “Under Secretary Emil Michael’s six Critical Technology Areas will ensure that our warriors never enter a fair fight and have the best systems in their hands for maximum lethality.”

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, turning innovation into battlefield advantage will secure future dominance. “The War Department is committed to remaining the most deadly fighting force on planet Earth,” Hegseth concluded.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/06/2026 - 19:15