Big Tech's Next AI Battleground Is Your Face: Alibaba Takes Aim At Meta Ray-Ban With New Smart Glasses

Alibaba Group Holding unveiled a new generation of AI smart glasses early Tuesday, intensifying competition with its challenger Meta Platforms, which currently sells a lineup of Ray-Ban smart glasses, as Big Tech positions eyewear as the next big battleground.

The Qwen Glasses N1 series, introduced in China, starts at $450 before discounts, putting it in the same price range as Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses. A Pro version, expected to cost around $520, adds eye-tracking capabilities.

Alibaba's Qwen Glasses N1. Source: Bloomberg

According to Alibaba, the smart glasses feature 50-megapixel cameras, bone-conduction microphones, and AI assistant integration with the Qwen model. The glasses will support shopping, payments, and health tracking, with battery life of up to 25 hours on standby or nine hours of music playback.

Last month, Loop Capital analyst Rob Sanderson told clients that smart glasses are becoming the "next major computing platform" and that an "inflection point" has already arrived.

As we've previously noted, Meta currently leads the space, with Google, Samsung, Apple, and SNAP preparing their own AI-powered eyewear.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said earlier this year that Apple is planning to release its first smart glasses in "late 2027."

Apple's smart glasses will feature "oval-shaped cameras, unique colors, and multiple frame styles," according to Gurman. "Over time, Apple believes the glasses could evolve into a health device and eventually incorporate augmented reality technologies capable of improving how people see," he said.

Read the Loop Capital report here in a note we titled "Big Tech's Next AI Battleground Is Your Face."

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 08:20

"Winter Storm Battleground": Millions Face Potentially Crippling Snowstorms Across 19 States

A rapidly strengthening El Niño is raising fears of a brutal winter across the United States as meteorologists warn that millions of Americans could be battered by powerful snowstorms, dangerous ice events and widespread flooding.

The developing weather phenomenon, driven by unusually warm Pacific Ocean waters, could trigger one of the strongest El Niño events on record, dramatically altering storm patterns across the country.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center recently placed the odds of a strong-to-very strong El Niño persisting into early 2027 above 83%.

Meteorologist Ryan Hall has identified a massive "winter storm battleground" stretching from southern Maine down the East Coast to Florida, with potential impacts extending west into Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, according to The U.S. Sun.

The corridor Hall is most concerned about runs through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, the Carolinas and the Appalachian region. For New England and the Mid-Atlantic he has called rain versus snow a coin flip.

"I'm now a lot more confident than I was a few weeks ago that somebody in this corridor is going to get a big snowstorm or a big ice storm this winter," Hall warned.

The threat extends to the West Coast, where California could face unusually heavy rainfall, mountain snow and an increased risk of flooding and mudslides, according to SFGATE.

Across the southern United States, an active storm track could unleash repeated rounds of heavy precipitation, with snow and ice possible wherever sufficiently cold air arrives.

However, not every forecaster expects a winter dominated by massive snowstorms.

AccuWeather meteorologist Paul Pastelok cautioned that rainfall, coastal flooding and swollen rivers could prove more significant, particularly in northern regions where warmer temperatures are favored, according to The U.S. Sun.

"It may be more about rainfall this year," Pastelok said, while acknowledging the potential for disruptive East Coast storms later in the season.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 08:05

JPM Reports Surprise Revenue And EPS Miss, Guides Higher Net Interest Income

And Q3 earnings season is off with a mixed report from JPMorgan, which moments ago reported results that showed a surprising drop in FICC trading revenue which sent the stock sliding in the premarket trading, but then promptly erased the entire loss after the company revealed Net Interest Income guidance that came about $1 billion higher than expected.

Let's start at the top. 

The largest US bank reported Q3 revenue and earnings which unexpectedly missed both on the top and bottom line, driven by a surprise drop in the bank's FICC (fixed-income, currency and commodity), the first such decline in more than two years. The fixed-income top-line fell 4% from a year earlier, bringing total trading revenue to $10.3 billion for the period, while analysts were expecting $10.5 billion.

Here are the details:

• Adjusted revenue $50.91 billion, +8% y/y, missing estimates of $51.37 billion
• FICC sales & trading revenue $5.37 billion, missing estimates of $6 billion
• Equities sales & trading revenue $4.95 billion, beating estimates of $4.47 billion
• Investment banking revenue $3.10 billion, +15% y/y, missing estimates of $3.27 billion
• Advisory revenue $1.22 billion, +32% y/y, beating estimates of $1.14 billion
• Equity underwriting rev. $564 million, +7% y/y, missing estimates of $646.4 million
• Debt underwriting rev. $1.22 billion, +3.8% y/y, missing estimates of $1.24 billion
• Managed net interest income $27.15 billion, +13% y/y, estimate $26.87 billion
   
• Adjusted EPS $5.75, (GAAP EPS $5.57) missing estimates of $5.93

The 15% climb in total trading revenue and 14% jump in investment-banking fees came in at the lower end of the range the firm telegraphed at an industry conference last month. At the time, JPMorgan saw both rising by a percentage in the mid to high teens.

The bank's Q3 results also included $658 million of net investment securities losses that Dimon called “discretionary” in the statement.

Some more details on the bank's "fortress balance sheet":

• Loans $1.58 trillion, +10% y/y, estimate $1.56 trillion
• Total deposits $2.78 trillion, +2.5% q/q, estimate $2.73 trillion
• Provision for credit losses $2.74 billion, -19% y/y, estimate $2.79 billion
• Net charge-offs $2.20 billion, -15% y/y, estimate $2.48 billion
• Compensation expenses $14.77 billion, +8.9% y/y, estimate $15 billion
• Non-interest expenses $27.30 billion, +12% y/y, estimate $27.18 billion
• Net yield on interest-earning assets 2.48% vs. 2.45% y/y, estimate 2.47%
• Standardized CET1 ratio 13.9% vs. 14.8% y/y
• Managed overhead ratio 54% vs. 52% y/y, estimate 52.6%
• Return on equity 17% vs. 17% y/y, estimate 17.8%
• Return on tangible common equity 20% vs. 20% y/y, estimate 21%
• Assets under management $5.21 trillion, +13% y/y, estimate $5.27 trillion
• Tangible book value per share $112.64 vs. $105.70 y/y, estimate $115.18
• Book value per share $132.30 vs. $124.96 y/y, estimate $134.93
• Cash and due from banks $21.26 billion, -14% q/q, estimate $25.96 billion

Taking a look at the bank's all important Commercial and Investment bank where the big FICC and several Investment Banking misses were, we find the following:

Markets & Securities Services revenue

• Markets revenue of $10.3B, up 15% YoY
  • Fixed Income Markets revenue of $5.4B, down 4% YoY, driven by lower revenue in Commodities, Rates, Credit and Public Finance, largely offset by higher revenue in Currencies & Emerging Markets
  • Equity Markets revenue of $5.0B, up 49% YoY, driven by strong performance across products, particularly in Prime and Derivatives
• Securities Services revenue of $1.6B, up 14% YoY, predominantly driven by fee growth on higher market levels and client activity, as well as higher deposit balances and higher deposit margin

Banking and Payment revenue

• IB revenue of $3.1B, up 15% YoY, largely driven by higher advisory fees, but missing estimates of $3.27B
• Payments revenue of $5.6B, up 14% YoY, driven by higher deposit balances, higher deposit margin and fee growth
• Lending revenue of $2.2B, up 20% YoY, largely driven by lower losses on hedges of the retained lending portfolio and higher loan balances

Expense of $10.8B, up 11% YoY, predominantly driven by higher brokerage expense and higher compensation expense, including higher revenue-related compensation

Credit costs of $663mm, predominantly driven by net lending activity and changes in the credit quality of certain exposures

• Net reserve build of $452mm and NCOs of $211mm

The FICC miss was the most notable and follows as trading desks face fallout from rising interest rates, although it isn't clear why that would have adversely impacted JPM's trading activity. 

Yet while FICC was a disappointment, the bank's equity traders notched their best third quarter on record, with a 49% jump from a year earlier to $4.95 billion. That came in ahead of expectations and marked the latest in a series of bumper quarters for that business, and was driven by the volatility of the AI bubble. 

JPMorgan’s NII for the third quarter came in at $27 billion, above estimates. Expenses for the quarter were $27.3 billion, more than expected, and the bank lifted its full-year adjusted expense guidance to about $108.6 billion, above the $107.5 billion executives expected in July.  

Commenting on the results, CEO Jamie Dimon said that "each line of business performed well" adding that growth continued to be robust in card, even as the bank "reduced share repurchases this quarter."

“Large fiscal deficits, sticky inflation, elevated asset prices, rising interest rates and geopolitical conditions continue to shift under the surface,” Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said in the statement. “These forces may be manageable, but we remain prepared for a wide range of outcomes.”

Dimon said on Bloomberg Television last week that there was “a little bit of a slowdown in September” for the investment-banking business.

While the bank's result were mediocre at best, with FICC and I-banking revenues that came on the weak side offset by stronger equity trading, it was the bank's guidance that was published in the earnings presentation, released almost an hour after earnings hit, that helped the stock recover most of its losses. 

The bank reported that it now expects to earn about $106.2 billion in net interest income this year, more than the roughly $105.5 billion it predicted in July, and that its “central case” for next year is about $107 billion in NII excluding its markets business. Both figures were about a billion ahead of analysts’ estimates.

Goldman's bank S&T trader and specialist team (Alex Mitola, Christian DeGrasse) had this to say about JPM earnings: 

• (+/=) JPM: Headline EPS miss in part driven by some noise, while core EPS was relatively in-line, but there’s a few points of weakness standing out,
• 1) core rev missed just slightly, driven by weaker fees (FICC trading partially offset by better equities, of which investors were somewhat aware of given mid quarter commentary) while expenses was relatively in-line (perhaps some would want more levers pulled amidst weaker fees)
• 2) NII was solid, but deposit costs of +7bps QoQ were higher than +1bps street, and most importantly for JPM & broader banks
• 3) a significantly slower share buyback with JPM lowering the pace of the buyback to ~$1bn vs $6.7bn last quarter. The decline in the buyback is very notable as, 1) despite this, CET1 declined 30bps QoQ to 13.9%, driven both by higher rates / AOCI (paper marks on securities) and also still solid RWA growth. The market has been spending more time on capital alongside the move higher in rates – but JPM getting more defensive here & the buyback may be a signal to the broader bank industry and capital return estimates are likely biased downward from here.
• Guidance though came in better than consensus, with FY26 NII guide of $106.2bn vs $105.5bn cons, Expenses of $108.6bn vs $108.1bn cons, and 2027 NII ex markets of $107bn, above the street at $104.5bn and +10% YoY… Call @ 830am

After all that, the stock is basically unchanged, although we wouldn't be surprised if it drifts lower after the start of trading, as markets focus on the much more notable slide in actuals compared to the company's guidance.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 08:01

Europe's Diesel Shortage Is A Problem Created By Political Design

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via dlacalle.com,

The diesel agreement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will not solve the diesel shortage, considering the magnitude of the problem created by years of misguided, wrongly called "environmental policies." Complaining about diesel prices and the US-Russia deal while eliminating domestic refining capacity and bombing refineries is just another example of bureaucratic hypocrisy.

Renewables are important, but they cannot substitute diesel, just as they have been unable to offset the importance of natural gas. Diesel is essential for every segment of the economy, from transport, manufacturing, and farming to distribution. Now, European politicians complain. However, governments cannot negotiate away years of lost refining capacity. Europe's vulnerability is structural. Yes, war has intensified it, but policy choices helped create an energy system increasingly dependent on imported fuels, expensive infrastructure, and high taxation. Furthermore, the risk is that - as happened in the past - oil and gasoline prices may fall, and the European businesses and families will still pay much higher energy and fuel prices.

According to European Commission figures and comparisons based on official European and US data, Europe suffers an enormous energy-cost disadvantage after two decades of massive subsidies and renewable rollout. Industrial electricity prices are more than twice those in the United States, while industrial natural gas prices reach four times US levels. At the pump, European consumers pay approximately 47% more for diesel and 70% more for gasoline. This is not simply an oil-price problem. It is an enormous competitiveness problem that permeates throughout the economy.

On October 9, Trump announced that Russia would release 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November, one million thereafter, and another three million, subject to refinery conditions. Washington temporarily authorized Russian diesel transactions until April 7, 2027. However, these are announced commitments, not confirmed deliveries. It may mitigate but not solve the diesel crisis.

The distinction is important. A sanctions exemption may permit trade, but it cannot repair damaged processing units. According to International Energy Agency estimates, Russian diesel production has suffered a temporary but significant blow, declining almost 30% following Ukrainian attacks.

The important element is a policy choice, not a consequence of war.

Europe's refining contraction is the key factor behind the structural diesel problem. It has lost more than 20% of refining capacity since 2009. At the end of 2025, the EU, Britain, Norway, and Switzerland had 72 mainstream refineries and an annual primary processing capacity of 625.4 million tonnes, down 167.6 million tonnes. Industry association FuelsEurope counts 35 closures since 2009.

The deterioration did not stop with the 2022 Ukraine war and has continued recently. Europe lost almost 400,000 barrels per day of refining capacity between 2024 and 2025, with five refineries closing over two years. This trend is a continuing reduction in the infrastructure needed to turn crude into usable fuel.

Environmental policy is part of this story, but taxation and policy choices have aggravated the problem. Governments made it uneconomical to upgrade aging facilities or build new units. Furthermore, at least five closed European facilities abandoned crude processing through conversion into biorefineries. These conversions worsened conventional refining capacity and did not offer a reliable and sustainable alternative.

The policy mistake is obvious and reminds us of the same errors committed with nuclear plants and natural gas supply. Eliminating capacity is a policy mistake without a credible path to reduce diesel's importance. This move was not a transition but a jump into the void. Europe now relies more heavily on refined products from the Middle East, the United States, and India. Importing products is not an environmental policy success. "Not in my backyard" led to dependency and loss of competitiveness. The EU was the fourth-largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels, accounting for 8% (EUR 1.2 bn) of Russia's export revenues from the top five importers in August 2026, according to CREA.

Ukraine's refinery attacks have reduced fuel availability, and Russia has restricted diesel exports. While damaged refineries can be repaired, it will take months.

War in the Middle East and disrupted Hormuz flows have compounded the shortage. The European Central Bank estimates reported in September put the refining-margin contribution to diesel prices at €0.41 per liter, approximately 19% of the pump price. That is why watching Brent alone misses the problem, as crude and diesel are different markets.

On September 21, EU diesel averaged €2.226 per liter, the highest reading in the European Commission's series since 2005. Taxes accounted for €0.861, or 38.6% of the price. VAT applies on top of excise duties, effectively taxing the tax itself.

The EU minimum diesel excise is €0.33 per liter. America's federal diesel tax is 24.4 cents per gallon, before state taxes and fees. European taxation adds a persistent cost wedge that cheaper crude cannot eliminate. This means that the average EU final diesel price is almost 50% higher than the US one. Thus, falling oil prices can provide relief without restoring competitiveness. Fixed duties remain, and scarce refining capacity may keep diesel expensive even when crude oil becomes cheaper.

Europe needs to abandon ideology in energy, provide solid investment conditions, eliminate regulation, and support an adequate refining system. Even though the European Commission's newly announced "refinery dialogue" mentions these issues, it does not change the underlying ideological perspective or any of the existing regulations and misses the key measures to reduce the competitiveness gap, which come from lower taxes, more investment, and elimination of punitive regulations. Emergency Russian cargoes may help at the margin, even if European politicians complain about the US-Russia deal. However, none of this is going to repair Europe's own policy-created vulnerabilities. The solution may take years, even if the changes are implemented today.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 07:20

China Is Studying Ukraine's Drone War To Prepare Its Military For Future Conflicts

China is using the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to study the future of military conflict, paying particular attention to how inexpensive drones are changing the economics and tactics of modern warfare, according to the South China Morning Post.

A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) suggests Beijing has developed an extensive system for monitoring battlefield innovations and incorporating them into its own military planning. Chinese defense researchers generally identify and assess new developments within several months, although implementing those findings across the People's Liberation Army (PLA) often takes considerably longer.

SCMP writes that the October 7 study, authored by Lilly Min-Chen Lee and Kateryna Bondar, reviewed more than 90 Chinese military and defense-industry publications dating back to 2022. The findings suggest that Chinese officials increasingly view Ukraine as a testing ground for weapons and strategies that could become essential in a future conflict.

Of particular interest is the ability of relatively cheap unmanned aircraft and boats to threaten expensive military hardware and heavily defended installations. Chinese researchers have examined everything from manufacturing drones at industrial scale to defeating electronic jamming, coordinating large numbers of unmanned systems and reducing the time between locating a target and striking it.

Beijing appears especially concerned about protecting its own military infrastructure from similar attacks. Ukraine's successful strikes against Russian naval facilities, aircraft and other high-value targets have prompted Chinese defense planners to reconsider vulnerabilities in their own forces.

Those concerns are beginning to influence military preparations. Chinese forces have incorporated drone threats into training exercises, while the country's defense industry has demonstrated new interception systems, directed-energy weapons and other technologies designed to neutralize unmanned aircraft.

One example came after Ukraine's June 2025 Operation Spiderweb, when drones secretly positioned inside Russia attacked strategic bomber installations. By October, Chinese military personnel were participating in exercises involving simulated assaults by more than 20 drone operators. Researchers believe the timing suggests that Beijing was responding to lessons from the Ukrainian operation, although Chinese state media did not explicitly make that connection.

China's navy has also begun practicing against unmanned maritime threats. An August 2025 exercise introduced hostile drone boats into a naval training scenario, with more advanced live-fire exercises following in April 2026.

The PLA is simultaneously investing in the institutional infrastructure needed to prepare for this type of warfare. New military education programs are focusing on unmanned systems, including a specialized engineering college established in September 2026.

The broader conclusion is that China is treating Ukraine as a preview of what its own military could face in a future war. Beijing is gathering intelligence, evaluating the effectiveness of emerging technologies and gradually adapting its forces accordingly.

There is, however, an important distinction between observing combat and experiencing it. While China can study Russia's and Ukraine's successes and failures, its military still lacks the firsthand battlefield experience needed to determine which tactics and technologies will hold up under real wartime conditions.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 06:55

"Britain Is Full": Farage Vows To Shut Down Asylum System For Five Years, Deport 90,000 Pending Claimants

Nigel Farage has a new answer to Britain's asylum backlog: abolish the asylum system.

Standing in Hythe, Kent on Monday in front of a replica Channel "mega dinghy," the Reform UK leader pledged that a Reform government would suspend the asylum system for a full parliamentary term: all new claims rejected, all pending applications voided, and every claimant marked for deportation, according to the BBC. No refugee status, no humanitarian protection, no tribunals and no resettlement schemes. Home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf put it in three words: "Britain is full."

"The country is currently facing a national security emergency and the first duty of government is to protect its citizens. We cannot accept more asylum seekers while we still have no idea how many people are in the country illegally and the threat they pose. A Reform government will always put British people first and protect our borders." — Nigel Farage, to The Telegraph (emphasis ours)

Translation: rather than fix the queue, Reform proposes to delete it. Regular readers will recall that when Farage first sketched out his migration plan (ECHR exit, an asylum ban for illegal arrivals, migrants moved from hotels to disused RAF bases), we called Reform's plan for dealing with UK illegal migrants a good start (Aug 27, 2025). Fourteen months later, the "start" has become a full stop.

Reform's Plan For Dealing With UK Illegal Migrants Is A Good Start https://t.co/j0UlzNMa7S

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 27, 2025

Below we lay out what's in the plan, the numbers behind it, the (predictable) reaction, and the awkward fact that it lands just as Reform's poll lead has evaporated.

What's In "Restoring Justice"

Per the BBC, PA and The Telegraph (via the Daily Sceptic), the plan, dubbed "Restoring Justice," would:

• Void the applications of the ~90,000 people currently in the asylum and humanitarian protection appeals queue and deport the claimants to their home country or "a safe neighbouring country" (PA via AOL).
• Scrap all asylum tribunals, legal refugee routes and resettlement schemes, including immediately closing the resettlement scheme Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood reopened in September. Homes for Ukraine would be abolished for new arrivals, but Ukrainians already here could stay.
• Re-task every Home Office official now working on asylum cases to "reviewing and overturning previous refugee grants." Any refugee granted asylum in the last five years would have their case reviewed (The Independent reports the review would cover grants since 2024, with those from "safe" countries losing their status).
• Pull Britain out of the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention to head off the inevitable legal challenges (BBC).
• Create a dedicated detention-and-deportation agency needing 24,000 to 28,000 detention spaces. The BBC notes it is "unclear how this would provide enough capacity."
• Ban UK visas for Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan if they refuse deportation flights, and hit countries with few nationals in the UK with tariffs, airline bans and asset freezes. As Farage put it: "People will accept their bad guys back" (The Independent).

It sits on top of Reform's earlier pledge to deport up to one million people in its first term (Telegraph via Daily Sceptic), and the August "Operation Fortress" plan to have the Royal Navy intercept dinghies and return them "under escort" to France or Belgium (Guardian). Asked how many civil servants it would take, Farage declined to say, only that it was "going to save us a fortune."

Tariffs as an immigration weapon: someone in Hythe has clearly been watching Washington.

The Numbers: Down 41%, Still 20,935

Farage opened by recalling the day in May 2020 he took a fishing boat out of Dover and called the crossings "the beginning of an invasion," noting that "over 200,000 illegal immigrants have come" since (Reform UK). The Home Office's own series backs him on that one: small-boat arrivals total 213,545 since 2018, including 41,472 last year, the second-highest year on record behind 2022's 45,755.

Which, as we noted last month, means that boat migrants who have entered Britain now outnumber its soldiers (Sep 28).

Boat Migrants Who Have Entered Britain Now Outnumber Its Soldiers https://t.co/QN8ZQJ5sGs

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 28, 2026

The awkward bit for Reform's "emergency" framing: crossings are actually falling. Provisional Home Office data show 20,935 arrivals from Jan 1 to Oct 8, down 41% from 35,476 over the same period of 2025, on 305 boats averaging 68.6 people each. The boats, however, keep getting bigger: in August a single "mega-dinghy" brought a record 230 people across (The Independent), hence Farage's line that this is no longer "a small boats crisis." And the 2026 lull can turn fast: 1,648 people landed on 22 boats in the seven days to Oct 9 alone (Home Office).

The Reaction: "Desperation," "Copycat," "Chaos"

Everyone hated it, though for impressively different reasons.

Labour chair Bridget Phillipson called it "a clear sign of desperation and weakness," adding that Farage "is casting around for more and more extreme policies as he tries to deal with scandals, police investigations and a growing challenge from Restore — this is a carbon copy of their policy" (The Independent).

The Tories, meanwhile, complained it wasn't extreme enough to be original. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the proposals "largely copy" Conservative policy: "Banning asylum claims by illegal immigrants, abolishing the immigration tribunal and ending Labour's resettlement routes are all existing Conservative policy. Our detailed BORDERS plan also sees us coming out of the ECHR... and closes the modern slavery claim and judicial review loopholes, both of which Reform seems to have missed." The Tories have separately pledged to remove 750,000 illegal immigrants within five years (BBC). So Labour says Reform copied Restore, and the Tories say Reform copied the Tories.

The Refugee Council's Jon Featonby called the plan "unworkable": "Closing our asylum system would cause chaos. Desperate people would still arrive on our shores, but instead of entering an orderly system, they would be driven underground and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse." The Lib Dems' Max Wilkinson suggested the UK join the EU migration and asylum pact instead (BBC).

The legal hurdles are real. Repealing the HRA needs Parliament, and a unilateral ECHR exit by executive power would likely be challenged in court (The Independent). Readers will recall that even a council trying to shut a single asylum hotel in Epping lost: the Court of Appeal sided with the government to keep the migrant hotel open (Sep 1, 2025), after a summer of protests. Strasbourg's critics aren't confined to Clacton either: a top German judge warned that an overzealous ECHR "endangers the existence of Western democracies" (Sep 5, 2025).

The Politics: A Pledge In Search Of A Poll Lead

The timing tells its own story. Five months ago Reform was the party to beat: Farage's Reform UK stormed to historic gains in the May "midterms" (May 8), and in August Farage crushed the Clacton by-election with 63% (Aug 14) after resigning his seat to force a "People vs. The Establishment" vote (Jul 7).

Farage Crushes Clacton By-Election With 63% As Comedy Candidates Dominate Longest Ballot In British History https://t.co/HIC8Ykgjd6

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 14, 2026

Since then, the summer of donation stories has taken its toll. In YouGov's latest poll for The Times and Sky (Oct 4-5), Labour leads on 27%, with Reform down 3 points to 22% and the Conservatives on 20%; Restore Britain is on 3% (YouGov). That's Labour's best YouGov showing since January 2025 and the first statistically significant lead for any party in three months, after Andy Burnham's conference speech.

Read the plan as the political move it is: with the Tories and Restore Britain competing for the same voters, Reform is staking out the hardest line on its strongest issue.

Bottom Line

As policy, the plan has obvious holes: no headcount, 24,000-28,000 detention spaces nobody has found, and a legal path that runs through the ECHR, the HRA, the Refugee Convention and every judicial review a well-funded NGO can file. As politics, it is shrewd. Britain has taken in 213,545 small-boat arrivals since 2018, and voters have watched one government after another promise to "stop the boats" while the dinghies got bigger. Farage doesn't need the plan to be workable. He needs it to be the only one voters remember, and with Labour and the Tories busy accusing him of plagiarism, he's halfway there. We side with Farage on the diagnosis. Whether the cure survives its first High Court hearing is another matter.

Next test: the Home Office's next weekly small-boat release on Friday, Oct 16, and the next round of polls, which will show whether "Britain is full" can win back the 3 points Reform lost.

Much more in the full Reform UK speech here.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 05:45

Tear Down That Woke

Authored by Silvio Canto, Jr. via American Thinker,

Let me give everyone some cautious advice. Save photos or magazine covers of Europe or what it used to be. Your kids and future grandchildren may need to see them to support those stories of the Europe that our ancestors came from. Honestly, we may be down to photos or memories if current trends continue in what we used to call the old country. It was through photos and memories that our parents told us about the pre-Castro Cuba they grew up in. All they had were those black-and-white photos and stories.

Maybe we will get lucky, and everyone will heed Secretary Rubio's message about preserving our Western culture.

Maybe we will someday remember that speech as "tear down that woke". I hope so but the recent events in France do not make you very optimistic.

Where is Europe going?

Well, not in a good direction as Douglas Murray pointed out via Hot Air:

Today, Britain and Europe still slumber. And worse than slumber, they are busily engaged in submitting to their enemies.

At the United Nations General Assembly last month, the UK's foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, made sure to have a meeting with the highest representative from what remains of the terrorist government in Tehran. The UK's domestic security service, MI5, said last year - in a highly unusual public statement - that the UK has foiled several Iranian terrorist plots in Britain in a short period of time. But Miliband mentioned none of this. As he shook hands with the Iranian terrorist representative, he condemned attacks and attempted attacks on British soil, but did not suggest that the UK would retaliate. Meanwhile, Miliband declared that preventing violence in the West Bank - only when directed against Palestinians by Israelis, and not the other way around - is a priority for the UK government. He later declared himself "humbled" by the presence of a Palestinian Authority representative in the UK.

It seems to be the attitude of the UK government that terror is caused by Israel and brought to the United Kingdom by the U.S. The reality is that terror has been repeatedly brought to the UK by Iran and its various terror proxies, and that they have been allowed to operate there effectively unpunished. They are allowed to enter the UK illegally. They are allowed to plan attacks that are thwarted at great expense of time and money, and they are not even berated by the UK government.

Surrender is the word, and then they wonder why their streets look like they do or why so-called "students" are burning Paris. Who would have believed not too many years ago that "students" with foreign flags and face masks would be burning a school named after Nelson Mandela? Wonder how many of those "students," angry about too much homework, even know who Mandela was?

Or that more and more Europeans would be voting to save their country and culture from uncontrolled immigration? Or that governments were talking about paying couples to have babies because current birth rates mean that the home team will lose to the visitors reproducing the old-fashioned way?

Save those photos, or maybe a video, from a trip to Europe. It may be all we have soon.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 05:00

How Would NATO Defeat A Russian Invasion? Top Commander Reveals Aspects Of Classified Plan

NATO's top military commander, US Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, on Monday gave an important speech presenting a "theory of victory" in the scenario of a future Russian attack along the Western military alliance's 'eastern flank'.

He asserted that NATO forces would "block, blunt and break" any Russian attack on member territory, which would make any such assault "utterly futile". But he also characterized the plan as one that would seek to avoid a wider, prolonged war from erupting. But he insisted the alliance is "ready to fight tonight" even though it does not seek escalation.

"Should the adversary choose to press the attack or commit his reserves, we will break the warfighting system engaged against us," Grynkewich declared at the speech given at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday. "This includes not just the attacking force itself, but anything and everything that supports, sustains or controls that force." This would suggest missile attacks deep into Russian territory, including on command-and-control centers.

"I think our populations around the alliance are a bit nervous," Grynkewich acknowledged while explaining why he is taking what was a classified plan established months ago into the public realm.

He said NATO leadership must seek to assure member populations that it will successfully defend them. "What I want to do is assure the 1 billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this," he said. "We know what we need to do. We know how we would do it, and it’s going to take all of us working together." However, looming large over all of this is the specter of nuclear war - something not focused on in his strategic talk.

Anadolu Agency: NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Alexus G. Grynkewich speaks during a panel on the first day of the Warsaw Security Forum, held Monday.

Below is a brief outline and blueprint of what he laid out in the speech...

He described the overall objective as to quickly neutralize a potential invasion force and its direct support systems, but crucially without seeking Russia's wider strategic defeat. He presented that this would be according to multiple phases:

Phase 1 (Containment & Supremacy): Ground troops stop initial territorial grabs while air, naval, space, and cyber assets secure battlefield control.

Phase 2 (Disruption): Advanced sensors and drones stall enemy momentum if the assault persists.

Phase 3 (Dismantling): Relentless multi-domain pressure (kinetic and non-kinetic) destroys enemy logistics, communications, and command structures, cutting off supplies and isolating commanders.

From there Grynkewich emphasized deterrence, describing that NATO's ability to match any enemy escalation will only solidify alliance unity and gradually weaken Moscow's overall force posture and will to keep going.

Bloomberg summarized the talk according to the following key notes:

• Does not believe a conflict is imminent or inevitable.
• NATO will respond to attacks by blockading, degrading and striking adversary forces.
• If necessary NATO will neutralize systems targeting its combat systems.
• The alliance will pair high-end precision-guided munitions with large-scale, low-cost, scalable systems.

NATO's SACEUR General Alexus Grynkewich: We know how we will fight if a fight comes to us. And we know we will win. And together we will ensure that any adversary who considers attacking our alliance reaches the only conclusion that matters: Today is not the day. https://t.co/tt1NfjeaX7

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 12, 2026

The Wall Street Journal has further issued a detailed report going into more detail on the Ukraine war-inspired 'autonomous zone' on the eastern flank:

The approach was devised to block a Russian adversary whose geographic advantages and outsize defense industry could enable it to mass forces against Baltic states, Poland and other NATO allies before the alliance could marshal a robust response. Under its strategy, an extensive “autonomous zone” would be established so that drones and ground robots could blunt a Russian attack without extensive allied casualties. 

At the same time, long-range missiles would strike Russian command posts and air defenses in the exclave of Kaliningrad, near St. Petersburg and in Belarus. That would puncture Russia’s efforts to control the skies and enable the U.S. Army’s V Corps and other NATO ground forces to counterattack. 

NATO air forces would move swiftly to strike Russian reinforcements as they streamed toward the battlefield and to attack other targets in the rear. 

The NATO attacks would be enabled by a “data backbone,” a system for instantaneously sharing classified targeting data through the cloud among allied forces. Elements of that network have been tested in the Middle East during the U.S. fight with Iran.

The approach has been dubbed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative and its overall objective, U.S. military officials said, is to force Putin to look at NATO’s defenses and conclude “not today” if he considers attacking. To reinforce that, alliance forces constantly drill to both test and demonstrate their readiness.

Meanwhile European officials are still strongly hyping and warning about what they call a continuing sabotage campaign which has made heavy use of drones and other tactics that violate European airspace and security.

NATO's SACEUR General Alexus Grynkewich: The risk of a major attack on NATO territory right now is actually relatively low. The reason is Vladimir Putin's war is ongoing in Ukraine, and his military is unfortunately engaged in that conflict. That force is not available to threaten NATO territory. That doesn't mean he couldn't do something smaller, and obviously we do see the sabotage activity and everything else that's ongoing.

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 12, 2026

EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas is also on Monday calling on President Trump to sanction Russian and ditch the controversial diesel deal. 

"Pressure ‌on Moscow, ​not concessions, is the fastest way to end ​the war," ​she ​said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 04:15

France Is World's Most Dangerous Place For Bitcoiners: 90 Attacks In 7 Months

Authored by Christina Comben via CoinTelegraph.com,

French authorities have recorded 90 cases involving kidnapping, abduction, extortion, threats, and violent theft related to cryptocurrencies in just over seven months.

The figures, provided to Cointelegraph by the French Interior Ministry, are from Jan. 1 to mid-August 2026. Authorities also recorded 223 arrests, and 126 people were imprisoned from January to July.

The figures equate to a new case every two and a half days, although there is no official year-on-year comparison to understand if the problem has become suddenly worse: "We do not have the statistics on these items for 2025, as the recording of events began on Jan. 1, 2026," the ministry says.

What makes the new numbers even more striking is they are much higher than other public trackers of meatspace attacks.

Chainalysis counted 30 publicly known violent crypto incidents in France through mid-2026, but noted that the scale was "almost certainly larger." Security firm Gart.io has tracked 73 attacks in France in the year to date, which puts France in the number one spot ahead of the USA on 66 real world attacks, and the UK on 27.

The rise in physical attacks - known as "wrench attacks" - on crypto holders in France points to something bigger than a rash of isolated incidents. Leaked personal data may be the culprit.

So, why France?

Wrench attacks are far from a new phenomenon. Bitcoin security advocate Jameson Lopp's long-running directory of known physical attacks has documented 365 cases across 60 countries between 2014 and 2026, with France topping the leaderboard.

What seems to be new, however, is the speed at which violent crypto crimes are spreading throughout the country. Attacks have gone beyond Paris to places including Strasbourg, Marseille, Grenoble, Toulouse and Nantes, according to Chainalysis.

Violent attacks above the historical baseline. Source: Chainalysis.

Criminals aren't targeting crypto rich tourists, and of the victims with known residency, 93% were French.

Chainalysis head researcher Eric Jardine tells Cointelegraph the surge is "very likely" due to a "significant data breach."

"These sort of breaches expose more than financial information; they reveal who holds crypto, where they live, and how to find them."

That makes physical attacks against crypto holders particularly insidious because they can begin long before a thug shows up with a wrench demanding your seed phrase or a crypto transfer. The assailants first need to know who has something worth stealing, where they live and how to reach them.

Jardine says the French tax authority compromise in 2024, where a tax official in the Paris area "leaked PII, financial and crypto holding information on French taxpayers," may have been the accelerant. Chainalysis records show attacks surged from late November of the same year.

Chainalysis also points to a further incident in January 2026, with crypto tax reporting firm Waltio disclosing a breach affecting some 50,000 users, creating yet more useful data for attackers to mark their targets.

Francis Pouliot, founder of Canadian Bitcoin exchange Bull Bitcoin, has repeatedly challenged Europe's DAC8 crypto reporting rules in France, which expand tax reporting and information-sharing requirements for crypto users across the European Union.

"DAC8 has transformed the concept of Know Your Customer into Kill Your Customer," he said, along with describing France as the "crypto kidnapping capital of the world."

The world of physical attacks. Source: Gart.io

When the target isn't the Bitcoiner

According to Chainalysis, one of the most revealing changes may be who is being attacked. Globally, relatives and acquaintances accounted for around 25% to 30% of violent crypto incidents by early 2026, and in France, the proportion was more than 40%.

In May 2026, six men allegedly tried to abduct the wife of The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget from the couple's home in Villenoy, France, with one attacker posing as a delivery driver to get her to open the gate.

In August, a couple in rural France reportedly endured three separate attempts to break into their home after buying a property previously occupied by crypto millionaires, after the previous owners' tax information and address were leaked onto the dark web.

A similar tactic was used in 2025, when the father of a crypto entrepreneur was abducted in Paris and held for two days, with the kidnappers reportedly cutting off part of his finger and sending it to his son while demanding $5.6 million in cryptocurrency.

Jardine says the targeting of relatives and associates "suggests criminals are doing reconnaissance before they act," whether by "monitoring social media, analyzing blockchain data, using leaked information, or receiving tips from insiders."

That turns the usual idea of a crypto target on its head, since the person with the wallet may not be the person standing in front of the attacker.

French authorities are responding by treating the attacks as organized crime, coordinating investigations through JUNALCO, the country's specialized organized crime jurisdiction.

The $5 wrench conundrum

Most crypto holders have learned how to protect their seed phrases, set up hardware wallets, test their environments and avoid clicking on phishing links.

While those things are still important, none of them will help if a bad actor already knows who they are, where they live and that they have something worth stealing in the first place.

Cryptography can protect a wallet, but it can't stop an attacker with a $5 wrench.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 03:30

German Coalition Turmoil Deepens As SPD Co-Leader Bas Quits, Blames CDU "Public Attacks"

Just when Friedrich Merz gathered his party's top brass to "regroup," the government lost another load-bearing wall.

On Monday, labor minister Bärbel Bas, who was also co-chair of the junior coalition partner SPD, abruptly resigned from both posts. The 58-year-old said she needs time to grieve after the sudden death of her stepdaughter, but she also pointed a finger at "public attacks," including from within the ranks of Merz's own CDU/CSU bloc, which she said continued throughout her mourning period, and which according to Reuters had made her situation unbearable. She keeps her Bundestag seat.

Bärbel Bas at SPD headquarters the day after the Saxony-Anhalt vote, Sept 7, 2026 (Reuters/Maryam Majd)

The resignation landed on the second day of a CDU retreat meant to steady the party after a September that went from bad to historically catastrophic. Regular readers will recall that the AfD took 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, where Merz's CDU slumped to 17.2%, and two weeks later the chancellor admitted a "disaster" as the CDU scored just 4.9% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and failed to enter a state parliament for the first time in its history.

MERZ'S CDU PARTY POSTS WORST RESULT EVER IN A GERMAN STATE VOTE AFD AHEAD OF SOCIAL DEMOCRATS IN NORTHEASTERN STATE VOTE ANTI-CAPITALIST LEFT PARTY LEADING IN BERLIN ELECTION

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 20, 2026

Nationally, the picture is no prettier: the AfD hit 30% in the GMS poll, 10 points ahead of the CDU/CSU, enough to leave the "black-red" coalition without a majority, while an Insa survey found 78% of Germans say Merz is not the right chancellor. Meanwhile, the vaunted "firewall" is visibly crumbling: four CDU lawmakers in Saxony-Anhalt helped elect an AfD speaker last week and have reportedly agreed to back AfD's Ulrich Siegmund for state premier in December.

Bas also leaves a hole in the middle of the reform agenda. Her ministry runs large parts of Germany's welfare system and was handling the pension and working-time legislation at the center of the coalition's reform push, with Berlin aiming to pass the broader pension overhaul by year-end. CDU politicians had accused her ministry of dragging its feet on measures coalition leaders agreed back on July 1, which is a polite way of describing the "attacks" she referenced on her way out.

Her replacement: Alexander Schweitzer, the former premier of Rhineland-Palatinate, nominated by Finance Minister and fellow SPD co-chair Lars Klingbeil. Readers may recall Schweitzer is "former" because the CDU beat the SPD in his state in March, so the SPD's answer to an electoral crisis is to promote a politician who just lost an election. Business groups, for their part, welcomed the appointment as a chance for a "new start."

Klingbeil also proposed an extraordinary SPD party congress in December or January to re-elect the entire leadership. People familiar told Bloomberg the next co-chair must be a woman from the party's left wing, though not Manuela Schwesig, who is busy with coalition talks in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Klingbeil, who scrapped a trip to India to deal with the vacuum (his attendance at this week's IMF/World Bank and G20 meetings in Bangkok is now uncertain), called the attacks on Bas "indecent" and said they were "poisoning our political culture."

Happier times: Merz signs the coalition agreement with the SPD, May 5, 2025 (Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Merz said Bas's decision demands "respect," while his spokesman Stefan Kornelius denied a media report that the chancellor himself had grumbled off the record about her absence despite knowing her personal situation, the kind of denial that tends to precede further reports, or even more denials.

Reuters notes that the departure of one minister is not expected to bring down the government, and coalition leaders issued a statement last week vowing to carry on through the "historic test" facing German democracy. But the calendar is brutal: an SPD leadership contest, a possible first-ever AfD state premier in Saxony-Anhalt in December, a pension overhaul with a year-end deadline and five more regional elections next year that will shape Merz's control of the Bundesrat.

As Nomura's Andrzej Szczepaniak warned last month, Europe has entered an 18-month election cycle in which politics is lurching toward populism, and Germany is the main event. All of this while the economy the reforms are supposed to rescue keeps getting outcompeted:

Beijing's trade template: China overtook Germany in exports of industrial machinery and equipment, in exports of specialized industrial machinery and will any minute overtake it in share of road vehicle exports. Coming to a Data Center near you next. https://t.co/eoHrZ2i6iV

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 12, 2026

And so, the German coalition limps on (for now), but the year-end pension deadline just became the first casualty. A government that can't keep its own labor minister is unlikely to sell voters on working longer.

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/13/2026 - 02:45

Hock Tan Warns AI Investors Are Gambling In A Casino... Whose Chips His Own Credit Is Paying For

Usually it's the chip CEOs who are the cheerleaders and the bond market that plays the skeptic. On Monday, the CEO of the second-most important AI chipmaker on the planet decided to play both roles.

Speaking on a panel at a DBS conference in Singapore, Broadcom boss Hock Tan said that many of the investors piling into AI behave more like gamblers than investors, setting extreme expectations only to discover they are effectively sitting at a casino table. In his own words, "a lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in."

He didn't stop there. Tan also questioned the long-term economics of the money-losing frontier labs, and, most importantly for markets, warned that insufficient capital could become the next constraint on the AI industry's growth. As if to make his point for him, Intel's Lip-Bu Tan, who shared the panel, said hardware will stay in short supply for another two to three years. Translation: the chips will be scarce, and so will the money to pay for them.

Semis did not take it well. The SOXX slumped 2.6% and JPMorgan's AI memory basket tumbled 4.3% on a day when more than 60% of S&P members actually rose. Asked to explain the selling, JPMorgan tech specialist Joshua Meyers wrote in the bank's afternoon Market Intel briefing (available to pro subs) that "the most proximate reason seems to be Hock Tan's participation in a panel at a DBS conference in Singapore, where he warned financing could become a bigger bottleneck than component shortages (in addition to questioning frontier lab business models, and comparing 'many investors' to casino gamblers)."

Below we look at why Tan is right about the bottleneck, and why the people he called gamblers are the ones keeping his stock afloat while his own bondholders head for the exits.

The Bottleneck Is Money

Tan's warning will come as no surprise to (even not so regular) readers: we have been warning since last October that the AI buildout runs on ever increasing amounts of debt, and last week Goldman's Rich Privorotsky effectively conceded the point when he said the AI borrowing binge is now crowding out everyone else in the capital markets.

The evidence has been piling up. Last Thursday, Nvidia-backed Australian data center operator Firmus first slashed the price of its IPO by 25% and then pulled its $5.5 billion listing altogether, opting to raise money in private markets instead (good luck with finding someone dumb enough there). Our reaction at the time:

*FIRMUS DECIDED TO WITHDRAW APPLICATION TO LIST ON ASX *FIRMUS NOW PURSUE CAPITAL FROM PRIVATE MARKETS Bring on the Apollo life insurance policies

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 8, 2026

And Tan wasn't the only one at the DBS event flagging it: just before he took the stage, DBS CEO Tan Su Shan said the market is now repricing the risks around AI financing after the heavy investment of the past two years. When the bank hosting the conference and the chipmaker on the panel agree that the money is the problem, it's probably the money.

The Customer Is Losing Money... And Broadcom Is Lending It

Then there is the swipe at the frontier labs. Tan said OpenAI's $50 billion annualized revenue as of September suggests there is a viable business, but that the company is still losing money because it spends so much on training and compute, so for now the number tells you little about long-term profitability.

Fair enough. Except that OpenAI is Broadcom's customer, and on top of it, courtesy of SPV structures that would make Jeff Skilling blush, Broadcom is the one arranging the money for OpenAI to buy Broadcom's chips (you may get a little nauseous after reading that).

As we detailed last Thursday, Broadcom is in talks on a $50 billion+ chip financing for OpenAI (Bloomberg puts the next leg at closer to $30 billion), on top of the $60 billion it is syndicating for Anthropic and the $35 billion "Big Sky" platform it set up with Apollo and Blackstone in June. That's roughly $145 billion of chip debt with Broadcom's name on it, or as we put it when we tweeted this chart, "$300BN in chip-collateralized SPVs, so far":

In other words, the CEO questioning the labs' business models is also the biggest single lender to those business models! Over the weekend, Jefferies went even further, warning of "massive capital destruction" since just two cash-burning labs account for half of a $2.3 trillion backlog.

And last week's FT report that OpenAI's run-rate was ~$50 billion rather than the widely cited ~$70 billion, which Goldman's TMT desk chalked up to gross-vs-net accounting, showed just how much of a ~$1 trillion equity complex rests on largely made up and unaudited numbers from two private companies.

Gamblers Hold The Stock, Bondholders Hold The Bag

Which brings us to the irony. Tan may sneer at the "casino" crowd, but the casino is the only thing propping up AVGO. Per Goldman's derivatives desk, Mag7 is now ~22% of total US prime exposure (the most since early 2022), semis exposure has doubled to ~12% from ~6% at the start of the year, and roughly $115 billion sits in levered semis ETFs. JPMorgan's factor team adds that semiconductor sentiment is back above the 99th percentile. Those are the real gamblers.

Broadcom's creditors, meanwhile, are folding. The moment Broadcom's Anthropic financing hit the tape, we said what would happen next:

*BROADCOM AMASSING $60 BILLION TO FUND CHIPS FOR ANTHROPIC CDS gonna fly tomorrow

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 2, 2026

It took about 12 hours for Broadcom bonds to hit all-time lows. And it has been one-way traffic since August, when Broadcom's CDS exploded after it emerged that the company was seeking up to $100 billion in an off-balance sheet SPV.

Back then, 5Y CDS hit a record 122bp. After a brief September reprieve, the Anthropic and OpenAI financings sent it right back up: according to Goldman's TMT specialist sales desk (available to pro subs), Broadcom's 5Y CDS printed a record 136bp last Thursday, alongside Oracle at a record 261bp, as nearly $500 billion of 2026 AI borrowing gets repriced. Goldman flagged both spreads as key gauges of concern over debt-funded AI capex. At 133bp, Broadcom's CDS is a few basis points from that record, and more than triple where it was in May, while Nvidia, its own $500 billion "compute financing platform" notwithstanding, sits at 86bp:

Put differently, the stock is held by the people Tan just called gamblers, and the bonds are priced by the people who agree with him.

Tan Had Some Help

To be fair, JPMorgan's Meyers also pointed to a weekend sell-side note re-igniting power worries (a shortage of "powered shell" of as much as 19GW next year, and more in 2028), plus Middle East headlines and nervousness ahead of a private frontier lab investor meeting on Wednesday. Memory got an extra kick from China's CXMT progress on next-gen DRAM, which we covered this morning in "Memory Remains The Epicenter". And with bond markets shut for the holiday, Goldman's cash desk said it was the lowest-volume session of the year, which tends to amplify every move.

Tellingly, Goldman's derivatives desk saw clients reach for HYG downside, buying 50k Jan 77/73 put spreads, with the bond market closed. Even the gamblers, it seems, are hedging the credit.

Bottom Line

JPMorgan's Market Intel team is sticking with its "Tactically Bullish" call into earnings, arguing semis can climb this latest wall of worry. Maybe. But when the CEO whose company is financing its own customers' chip purchases says money, not silicon, is the next bottleneck, while his own CDS prints records, we'd side with the credit market.

After all, in a casino the house always wins. The question is who the house is when the house is also lending the chips.

More in the full JPM US Market Intelligence afternoon briefing and Goldman's TMT specialist sales note, both available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 23:31

The Collective Is The Enemy Of Community

Authored by Thaddeus G. McCotter via American Greatness,

The Democratic Socialists of America exploit young people's longing for community, but socialism's coercive collectivism destroys the voluntary relationships that sustain it.

Whether reflecting on the impersonal essence of "virtual reality" and the incessant stream of demands and anxieties it imposes upon our diurnal, increasingly alienated existence, or listening to the concerns of one's fellow citizens, one hears a persistent leitmotif: the longing for true community, especially among the youth.

One aspect of this longing has been well bruited: people's gnawing sense that the myth of "virtual community" is an alienating illusion that increasingly leaves them numb and pining for personal engagements - the flesh-and-blood amities, intimacies, and sundry other encounters of true community.

Exacerbating this sense of loss, especially among the young, people are very concerned about "affordability" - such as the inability to purchase a new home, rent an apartment, find an entry-level job, or keep the one they already have - due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and inflation. But too often overlooked is how the diminishment of these opportunities has reduced people's personal interaction and the sense of community it brings.

Indeed, when people, notably youth, talk about wanting to "shop locally," support small businesses, or even reject "corporate" entities and their culture, it is not a complete rejection of capitalism. Indeed, one can clearly recognize young people's embrace of free markets and small businesses. Yet, it is a practical complaint regarding its failures - one of which is its eclipse of community beneath an impersonal corporatism. (One can make the argument that today's youth are essentially the political descendants of Jeffersonian Republicans, but I digress.)

Naturally, one group that has not overlooked young people's yearning for a greater sense of community is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They exacerbate youth's disaffection with the economy by equating corporatism and capitalism and proffer socialism as a virtuous panacea for economic ailments. And, for alienated people yearning for community, the DSA conflates and substitutes the collective for community.

But the truth is the collective is the enemy of community.

As Robert Nisbet warned in his seminal work, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom:

Marxism, like all other totalitarian movements in our century, must be seen as kind of secular pattern of redemption, designed to bring hope and fulfillment to those who have come to feel alienated, frustrated, and excluded from what they regard as their rightful place in a community. In its promise of unity and belonging lies much of the magic of totalitarian mystery, miracle, and authority.

It is a false promise.

Under socialism, the "warm embrace" of the collective is created by an omnipotent, centralized government. It relies upon coercion, not consent. In addition to crushing an individual's agency and ability to dissent, it destroys the voluntary intermediate institutions that form a community and insulate and protect the individual from the domination of the centralized government.

As Nisbet explained, the destruction of these intermediate institutions is imperative for would-be authoritarians:

We may regard totalitarianism as a process of the annihilation of individuality, but, in more fundamental terms, it is the annihilation, first, of those social relationships within which individuality develops. It is not the extermination of individuals that is ultimately desired by totalitarian rulers, for individuals in the largest number are needed by the new order. What is desired is the extermination of those social relationships which, by their autonomous existence, must always constitute a barrier to the achievement of the absolute political community. The individual alone is powerless. Individual will and memory, apart from the reinforcement of associative tradition, are weak and ephemeral. How well the totalitarian rulers know it. (...) To destroy or diminish the reality of the smaller areas of society, to abolish or restrict the range of cultural alternatives offered individuals by economic endeavor, religion, and kinship, is to destroy in time the roots of the will to resist despotism in its large forms.

The antithesis and antidote to the collective is community.

Community requires individual consent, agency, voluntary associations, and governmental subsidiarity. This is decidedly different from the strawman argument proffered by socialists that the choice is between the collective and a calloused "rugged individualism." While deceptive, such an argument makes a cynical sense, because subscribing to the DSA's agenda would leave someone just a coerced cog in the collective, not a consensual member of a true community.

Once more, Nisbet writes in his book, The Sociological Tradition:

There must be in any stable culture, in any civilization that prizes its integrity, functionally significant and psychologically meaningful groups and associations lying intermediate to the individual and the larger values and purposes of his society. For these are the small areas of association within which alone such values and purposes can take on clear meaning in personal life and become the vital roots of the large culture.

And is it not the aim of all radicals, including the DSA, to destroy root and branch the foundations of an established civilization?

Is it not to fundamentally eradicate all individual agency and consensual, intermediate communal relationships to impose their radical ideological dictates to perfect humanity and create Utopia?

Is it not, as Nisbet avers, to make sure "man's alienation from man must lead in time to man's alienation from God," and from community into the chill grip of the iron fist of the collective?

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 23:25

Luxury Condos Seized In Singapore’s Massive Money-Laundering Case Go Unsold

Singapore has no shortage of people curious about the spoils from its massive money-laundering crackdown. Getting them to actually buy the confiscated real estate has been another matter.

The government is gradually disposing of assets tied to the S$3 billion laundering scandal that erupted in 2023, according to Bloomberg. More than 80 homes are being sold alongside watches, jewelry, handbags and other expensive possessions seized from the operation.

The luxury goods have been hot. The luxury real estate decidedly has not.

Of more than two dozen high-end properties recently put through auctions, only four apartments have found buyers that way. At one sale, more than 60 people showed up for seven properties carrying over S$43 million ($33.6 million) in combined opening prices. Not one sold.

One Gramercy Park apartment near Orchard Road failed to attract a single bid. Another large marble-finished unit with its own elevator was offered at S$7.55 million. Eventually someone tried S$4 million, prompting laughter before the offer was dismissed.

The scene captured an uncomfortable reality for sellers: plenty of people want to see what happens when convicted money launderers' assets hit the auction block, but curiosity isn't translating into aggressive offers.

“There has been a lot of hype generated,” said Tan Tee Khoon, Knight Frank Singapore’s head of auction and sales. Some attendees, he added, openly admit: “I just want to come and see.”

The weak results also arrive at a difficult moment for the most expensive slice of Singapore's housing market.

Bloomberg writes that government measures intended to restrain property speculation have dramatically narrowed the pool of potential purchasers. Most foreigners buying residential property face an additional 60% stamp duty, while relatively few locals are prepared to spend eight figures on a home.

Two confiscated apartments at Martin Modern recently changed hands for S$2.12 million and S$2.08 million, roughly around their previous transaction levels. Two others at Wallich Residence sold for S$6.6 million and S$5.48 million, below their initial auction prices.

The broader Singapore property market remains relatively firm, but the top end has developed weak spots. Private-home prices recently posted their fastest quarterly increase since 2024 even as transaction volume fell about 30% from the previous quarter.

Sentosa, where members of the laundering operation accumulated expensive property, illustrates the disconnect. Villa prices on the resort island fell roughly 11% over the decade through 2025.

Some seized homes are now being marketed for considerably less than their former owners paid. Convicted launderer Lin Baoying spent almost S$29 million on two detached Sentosa houses in 2021. Their current combined guide price is more than S$6 million below that purchase price.

Deloitte's Singapore unit is overseeing the liquidation and plans to release assets in stages through mid-2027. If properties repeatedly fail to sell, prospective buyers have an obvious incentive to wait for further reductions. Sellers, meanwhile, don't want to cut prices so aggressively that the portfolio begins looking like distressed inventory.

Photos: Knight Frank/BBG

The assets stem from an enormous 2023 police operation involving more than 400 officers and over 200 properties, many in expensive areas including Orchard Road and Sentosa. Ten China-born defendants were convicted, and the group became widely known as the “Fujian Gang.”

The fallout eventually reached Singapore's financial sector. Nine firms, including Credit Suisse, Citibank and United Overseas Bank, were hit with a combined S$27.45 million in penalties over anti-money-laundering shortcomings connected to the case.

Yet while multimillion-dollar apartments sit without bids, the former owners' handbags and jewelry have been flying out the door. At an auction conducted by Hotlotz, every luxury-goods lot sold. One limited-edition Louis Vuitton pumpkin bag created with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was expected to fetch S$12,000 to S$16,000. Instead, 81 bids pushed the final price to S$87,000.

The difference is partly psychological. Someone chasing a rare handbag, watch or piece of jewelry may worry another opportunity won't appear. Property buyers can compare an apartment against alternatives, determine fair value and walk away when the numbers don't work.

Another 14 Hotlotz auctions are planned, including Hermès handbags and watches from Rolex, Patek Philippe and Richard Mille. Dozens of homes also remain in the liquidation pipeline. The government has already recovered substantial sums. By the end of March, approximately S$1.4 billion in cash and proceeds from disposed assets had entered Singapore's Consolidated Fund.

For now, Singapore's most infamous criminal asset sale has produced a strange split: people will fight over the handbags, but they won't fight over the homes. And with buyers increasingly convinced that patience could produce lower prices, the remaining condos may prove considerably harder to move than the watches, diamonds and designer bags sitting inside them.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 23:00

At Least 10 Supertankers Approaching Port Of Fujairah Reverse Course Amid Iran’s Attacks

A growing number of empty supertankers have been turning away from the Persian Gulf as escalating Iranian attacks threaten a critical transfer hub for wartime oil shipments, Bloomberg reports.

At least 10 very large crude carriers and several Suezmax vessels approaching the port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates have stopped or reversed course in recent days, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. 

While other vessels are still continuing on their journeys into the region, the retreat of these tankers amid near-daily attacks around the Strait of Hormuz - some near Fujairah itself - raises fresh concerns over the sustainability of oil flows through the waterway.

Fujairah is commonly signaled as an interim destination by vessels ultimately sailing to the Gulf of Oman, where they can collect cargoes via ship-to-ship transfer, or onward into the Persian Gulf. That makes the number of ships heading toward the port a broader indicator of tanker operators’ appetite for approaching the waterway.

The shift threatens a key workaround that has helped Persian Gulf oil exports recover to near prewar levels. Large crude carriers can wait off Fujairah and in Omani waters outside Hormuz while shuttle tankers make the riskier transit through the strait, bringing out crude and transferring it for onward shipment to buyers.

The system depends on a steady supply of receiving tankers, so a significant retreat from the region by empty VLCCs could slow the flow of crude, tying up the shuttle vessels for longer when tanker availability is already tight.

The pullback is particularly striking given the financial rewards on offer. A global tanker shortage has pushed shipping costs to extraordinary levels.

For example, hiring a vessel to haul oil from the US to China now costs more than launching a rocket into space.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 22:45

"My Guy, I Can Code": After Deconstructing Adobe, Dev Uses Claude To Clone Microsoft Office For Free

Days after unveiling free, open-source stand-ins for seven Adobe applications, Atlanta engineer Brandon Thomas has turned to Microsoft Office. This week he posted WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft - replicas of Word, Excel and PowerPoint - to GitHub, Tom's Hardware reported. Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude to help build the software and is giving the results away.

The Adobe set came first. Gizmodo's Mike Pearl reported on Oct. 7 that Thomas had used Claude Opus 5.5 and the Rust programming language to recreate Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and four other Adobe applications. Thomas wrote on Hacker News that they were in early alpha and "not anywhere close to ready," while Pearl called the Photoshop stand-in "glitchy, but real." Adobe, Pearl noted, agreed to a $150 million settlement after federal prosecutors sued it in 2024, alleging it was "trapping" people in subscription plans.

The Office clones followed within days. Paul Thurrott reported on Oct. 9 that WordCraft reads and writes DOCX files, and that ArtCraft, Thomas's company, calls it 87 percent complete for ribbon commands and about 62 percent complete for real feature parity. For GridCraft, a pre-alpha Excel stand-in, ArtCraft claims 93 percent of Excel's worksheet functions. DeckCraft, the PowerPoint stand-in, is said to cover about 79 percent of the feature set and to be 80 percent of the way to a first alpha.

Thurrott also reported that ArtCraft has removed the download links from its website, leaving GitHub as the way to get the code.

Gadget Pilipinas took a closer look at the project's documentation and found some important caveats. WordCraft's roadmap says charts, SmartArt and embedded OLE objects are lost when a DOCX file is loaded and saved, and validation against real business documents had not yet begun. The site also noted that counting ribbon commands measures whether a feature can be invoked, not whether it actually behaves the way Word does. It listed the licenses as Apache-2.0 or MIT. Release numbers differ between the two outlets: Thurrott reported version 0.3.0, while Gadget Pilipinas cited 0.5.0.

The larger target is the subscription model itself. When Microsoft added Copilot to its consumer plans in January 2025, PCWorld reported, Microsoft 365 Personal rose from about $7 a month to $10 and Family from about $10 to $13, with 60 AI credits a month included. Existing subscribers could remain at the old price on a "Classic" plan.

And the customer base is enormous. Microsoft last reported 89 million consumer Microsoft 365 subscribers in July 2025 and then stopped publishing the metric, according to Office-Watch, which estimates the total is now about 95 million. It also reported that consumer cloud revenue rose 24 percent in the quarter ended June 30.

Tom's Hardware called Thomas's project "a targeted protest" against subscription software and said ArtCraft's Discord community is already asking for more, with a CAD clone among the most frequent requests. But it also cautioned that most of the apps are "still far from what they intend to replace."

After the Adobe release, critics dismissed the software as vibecoded "AI slop." Thomas answered on X:

My guy, I can code

In college I was building laser games on skyscrapers and cloning the luciferase-luciferin system into plants via agrobacterium-mediated transfection

AI models enable me to work as an entire company. I'm doing 4x better than Google's revenue per employee https://t.co/HE3qk7paBm pic.twitter.com/sGCkdy92QM

— e/chelon (@echelon) October 9, 2026

The revenue-per-employee comparison is Thomas's own claim, and none of the coverage cited here independently checked it.

The project's "clean-room" description also remains untested. ArtCraft says the apps are clean-room reimplementations written from public specifications and observed behavior. Besthub summarized the view of lawyer Neil Brown, who it said notes that the legal position depends on the jurisdiction and argues that an independent reimplementation made without access to the original source code may not infringe. None of the coverage cited here reports a legal challenge from Microsoft or Adobe.

None of this means Office has been replaced. By ArtCraft's own figure, WordCraft remains about 38 percent short of real feature parity, and the documentation makes clear that important functionality is still missing.

What has changed is the cost and speed of producing a plausible competitor. One engineer working with a coding model has released rough but working versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint only days after doing the same for Adobe's creative suite - and he is aiming directly at a market where the incumbents have spent years moving customers toward recurring subscriptions.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 22:35

Southeast Asia Needs 100TWh More Power, But Its Weak Grid Is A Problem

By Haley Zaremba of OilPrice.com

The war in Iran has exposed a critical vulnerability in Southeast Asia’s energy markets. The region is heavily dependent on fossil fuel imports, and demand is continuing its steep growth trajectory even as global crude oil prices remain punishingly high. Though the Strait of Hormuz is finally reopening, restoring flows of crude oil out of the Persian Gulf and toward Asian buyers, global oil markets have a long road toward recovery. Luckily, the wheels are already in motion to electrify the continent and move away from heavy dependence on imported oil and gas, but the interim will be a rocky chapter for energy security in the rapidly developing region. 

When the Strait of Hormuz initially closed in February, in response to the United States and Israel’s military campaign in Iran, Asian markets were hit hard and hit early by the cutoff. Southeast Asian nations were especially vulnerable to price volatility because of the region’s relatively high dependence on energy imports and low capacity to absorb market shocks thanks to economic constraints. 

In the weeks and months after the Strait closed, the Philippines declared a national energy emergency, and governments across the region turned to energy rationing, work-from-home mandates, and even four-day work weeks to manage the strain. However, the same crisis has also kickstarted a much-needed and arguably overdue renewable revolution that will bolster regional energy security, independence, and autonomy going forward. Getting there is the hard part. 

“Rising fuel imports and fast-growing electricity demand are increasing [Southeast Asia’s] exposure to market disruptions and volatility,” the International Energy Agency fwrote in a news report earlier this week. However, “closer cooperation can strengthen its ability to respond,” the article continued.

“Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most dynamic regions, but its rising needs for energy to power its economic growth face challenges in an increasingly uncertain global energy landscape,” said International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol. “Energy security must be built into decisions across the whole system from oil stocks and gas infrastructure to electricity grids and more efficient use of energy. By working more closely together, ASEAN countries can make better use of their collective resources and respond more effectively when disruptions occur.”

A large part of the coordinated response will need to focus on building up supportive clean energy infrastructure in addition to clean energy production capacity. While solar energy is taking off across the region, grid expansion and refurbishment, energy storage capacities, and transmission infrastructure are lagging behind, risking a major bottleneck in the region’s electrification trajectory. 

According to an August report from Climate Home News, “inadequate grid capacity and maintenance is already proving a major factor in the region’s stuttering rollout of new clean energy projects.” The report also points to “issues ranging from unclear power purchase agreement (PPA) structures, a failure of power policies to keep up with investor needs, permitting and licensing approval delays, grid connection constraints, limits to private sector involvement in electricity markets, and policy and tariff uncertainty.”

Indeed, the region’s renewable revolution risks stalling out before it even really starts if these issues are not addressed quickly. A May report from consultancy Bain & Company and Standard Chartered found that between the years of 2021 and 2025, 50 to 60 percent of renewable energy projects in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia were cancelled or stalled thanks to inadequate infrastructural and policy support.

These issues are set to intensify as rapid economic development continues across Southeast Asia. “More than 100 TWh of new electricity demand is expected to arrive by 2030, driven by data centers, electric vehicles (EVs), and industrial clusters,” the Bain & Company report finds. “However, while demand from these sources is set to materialize in one to three years, grid infrastructure takes five to fifteen years to build. This mismatch has made the grid a key binding constraint that increasingly determines where capital flows.”

Source: Bain

The International Energy Agency’s new report argues that there is still hope, however, if the region’s governments work together to forge and maintain increased resilience in the face of volatile global markets and local pressures. The report recommends “stronger national preparedness and deeper regional cooperation across different sectors and fuels to help members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) withstand supply disruptions and volatile prices.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 21:45

Tragedy Strikes Israeli School Hike When Teen Puts Remnant Hezbollah Ordinance In Backpack

Tragedy has unfolded Monday during an Israeli school field trip in the north of the country. A 15-year old was killed and around 20 more teens and teachers injured when unexploded Hezbollah ordinance detonated.

The incident is being widely reported in Israeli media, and happened in the Ramim Ridge area in the north of the country. The group came upon what was "believed by the military to be a submunition from a Hezbollah rocket."

Scene of blast aftermath, via YNet

The group was on a hike of Naftali Mountains Forest scenic route, but it was reportedly also in an area previously targeted by Hezbollah rockets, given that at some point the Israeli army used it as a staging ground related to the Lebanon campaign.

Throughout prior years of war going back to the Gaza and Iran conflicts, Hezbollah routinely launched Grad rockets containing dozens of BRB1-type submunitions on northern Israel. This caused a largescale exodus of residents from the area, and mass school closures.

But even though a sense of normalcy has returned amid an uneasy Lebanon ceasefire (which also gets not infrequently broken), and schools and public events have long reopened, certain dangers still clearly remain.

Israeli's YNet details the following:

One of the schoolchildren is believed to have picked up a submunition during a hike along the Naftali Mountains Forest scenic route and put it in his backpack. Several minutes later, the submunition exploded, according to a preliminary probe by authorities.

The blast killed a teenager and wounded 19 others, including two in serious condition and three in moderate condition.

Over a dozen ambulances and a bomb disposal unit were dispatched to the chaotic scene. Three Israeli Air Force helicopters also helped in the rescue efforts. Some of the surviving teens described taking off running after the blast, given also confusion over whether they were under attack.

Israel's military and security services have launched an investigation centered on whether the class outing had authorization to be in a military zone. Times of Israel separately puts the number of injured at 24.

Exampled of a BRB1-type submunition from a Hezbollah rocket that struck the northern border community of Metula, March 4, 2026. Recovered by Israeli police.

Authorities are also urging citizens to not touch military items or ordinance, and to call an emergency hotline so it can be safely disposed of. The whole ordeal raises the possibility of future such tragedies happening, as the countryside is likely littered with much more dangerous ordinance after years of Israeli-Hezbollah war.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 21:20

$427,000 In Salaries, No Employees: FBI Raid Puts Baltimore City Nonprofit In Spotlight

A Baltimore City nonprofit that received $1 million in federal pandemic funding reported more than $427,000 in salaries and wages while listing zero employees on its federal tax filing, according to Chris Papst, lead investigator for FOX45's Project Baltimore.

Papst has tracked nonprofit KEYS Empowers since FBI agents raided the nonprofit linked to a Baltimore City school board member who abruptly resigned.

KEYS Empowers' latest Form 990 filing, covering 2024, reported $2,001,754 in revenue, with $427,201 paid out in salaries and wages. But as Papst noted, the filing lists no employees.

Papst added more color to KEYS Empowers' filing:

• $2,001,754 in revenue
• $427,201 in salaries and wages
• $79,701 in travel expenses
• $242,288 for conferences, conventions, and meetings
• Zero employees

At the center of KEYS Empowers is Mujahid Muhammad, who resigned as a member of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners after the FBI raided his nonprofit.

"I'm extremely concerned," said Torrey Snow, a contributing member of the Baltimore Sun's editorial board.

Snow continued, "Maryland taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the work in Baltimore City, and they need to know that officials that are in these areas are keeping an eye on where this money is going."

In 2022, left-wing Mayor Brandon Scott's office announced a $1 million award in American Rescue Plan Act funding to KEYS Empowers.

"If public money is going into these nonprofits, it is the official's responsibility to ensure that these nonprofits are engaging in activities that are necessary and benefiting the public," stated Snow.

Publicly available data show KEYS Empowers' corporate structure and link Muhammad and Ashiah Parker, both appointed to the Baltimore City school board by Mayor Scott, to the nonprofit. This points to overlapping nonprofit leadership, school board appointments linked to Scott, and government funding for a highly questionable nonprofit.

The relationship map places Mujahid Muhammad between not just KEYS Empowers but also K.E.Y.S. Development T.A. LLC. 

Reporting more than $427,000 in salaries and wages yet listing zero employees is a major red flag.

The questions remain: who received the taxpayers' money, what services did they provide, and who approved the payments? Whether this is simply sloppy Form 990 reporting or something more serious, taxpayers deserve answers.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 20:55

Secret UFO Arms Race? US, China And Russia Battle To Unlock Mysterious Technology

The United States, China and Russia could be locked in a secretive new arms race involving unidentified flying objects, raising extraordinary questions about whether America's biggest adversaries are competing to unlock technology that could transform modern warfare, according to the New York Post.

The possibility of a UFO arms race is drawing renewed attention as lawmakers, former intelligence officials and military veterans warn that Washington could be falling behind its geopolitical rivals in the race to understand mysterious aerial phenomena.

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) has warned that America's failure to release promised UFO information could give China and Russia a major propaganda victory, allowing the rival powers to portray themselves as more transparent than Washington.

"I think it would definitely be a misstep because of what we would be demonstrating to our people," Burlison said in an interview with the New York Post. "We're supposed to be the most transparent country in the world to its citizenry and if another country is able to be more transparent than the United States on this topic it would be a blemish on our otherwise pristine legacy on transparency."

WHAT DOES GPT KNOW!?!?

Former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch has also claimed, without public evidence, that China and Russia possess crashed UFOs, suggesting that America's adversaries could be attempting to reverse-engineer technology of unknown origin.

Grusch made headlines in 2023 after testifying before Congress about alleged secret government programs dedicated to recovering and studying mysterious spacecraft.

In 2021, China publicly acknowledged investigating unexplained aerial sightings, including using artificial intelligence to analyze reports of mysterious objects.

The South China Morning Post reported at the time:

According to Wuhan-based researcher Chen Li from the Air Force Early Warning Academy, human analysts have been overwhelmed in recent years by the rapidly mounting sighting reports from a wide range of military and civilian sources across the country.

"The frequent occurrence of unidentified air conditions in recent years ... brings severe challenges to air defence security of our country," said Chen, in a 2019 report to a conference of senior information technology scientists in Beijing in 2019.

Russia's interest in UFOs reportedly dates back to the Soviet era.

The New York Post noted:

Investigative reporter George Knapp released a trove of documents on Russia in February that he snuck out of the USSR in 1991. Those documents point to the Soviets investigating thousands of reports of UFOs while officially denying their existence in public.

However, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has repeatedly pushed back against claims of secret alien technology programs, reporting that investigators found no verifiable evidence that the U.S. government or private companies possess extraterrestrial technology.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 20:35

Colombia's Richest Man Turns Venezuelan Oil Contract Into $500 Million GeoPark Stake

Colombian billionaire Jaime Gilinski is positioned to take control of GeoPark Ltd., a Latin American energy producer, after converting a Venezuelan oil agreement secured at almost no upfront cost into an equity stake initially valued at more than $500 million, according to Bloomberg.

The transaction illustrates the competition for Venezuelan assets following Nicolás Maduro’s removal in January and Washington’s subsequent relaxation of energy sanctions. Investors with government connections are moving quickly into a country whose enormous oil reserves have suffered from years of mismanagement, sanctions and inadequate investment.

Bloomberg writes that Gilinski, worth approximately $40 billion according to Bloomberg, made his fortune in banking and acquisitions, including his takeover of food manufacturer Nutresa SA. His son Gabriel reportedly visited Caracas more than ten times this year, meeting with acting President Delcy Rodríguez in March while pursuing opportunities in Venezuela’s energy sector.

Those efforts resulted in a 25-year agreement to operate Bare, a heavy crude field in Venezuela’s Orinoco region. Located near existing Chevron facilities, the property could benefit from established infrastructure.

Photo: Bloomberg

Shortly after securing the contract, Gilinski arranged to transfer his interest to GeoPark in exchange for newly issued shares initially worth approximately $515 million. The transaction would make him the company’s majority shareholder despite requiring little personal investment in the underlying project.

GeoPark would finance development and retain a 65% net working interest, with the remaining 35% belonging to state-owned PDVSA. The company hopes to increase production from approximately 11,000 barrels per day to 95,000, although achieving that target will require substantial spending and access to materials needed to transport Venezuela’s unusually thick crude.

Gilinski had already acquired approximately 20% of GeoPark in March, effectively disrupting a competing takeover attempt. Rather than negotiating the Venezuelan agreement entirely through GeoPark, however, he secured most of the operating rights separately before offering them to the company.

GeoPark says it participated in the negotiations and initially held a 5% interest in Bare. The company is now seeking to acquire Gilinski’s remaining 95% at a valuation reportedly 5% below estimates prepared by its advisers.

The deal remains subject to conditions that must be satisfied by December. If the underlying Venezuelan contract expires before completion, the GeoPark transaction will be canceled.

Gilinski is hardly alone in pursuing Venezuela’s reopening. Pacific Coast Energy has begun operating two heavy oil properties, while newcomers including Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam have negotiated agreements. Established players such as Chevron and Repsol remain active as other international producers consider returning.

For Gilinski, the arrangement could deliver an extraordinary return: majority control of an established energy company in exchange for oil development rights obtained with minimal upfront capital, while GeoPark assumes the financial burden of expanding production.

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2026 - 20:20