These Are The Cities Where Burglaries Spike In The Summer

For years, homeowners have been told that summer is prime time for burglaries as families leave for vacations and homes sit empty. But a new analysis of FBI crime data suggests that advice only tells part of the story, according to Moneygeek.

After examining burglary reports from 74 of the nation's largest cities between 2022 and 2024, researchers found that while burglary rises modestly during the summer nationwide, the pattern varies dramatically depending on where you live. In many parts of the country, summer really is burglary season. Along much of the West Coast, however, the opposite is true.

Overall, burglaries were just 5.6% higher during June through August than during the rest of the year, far less than the large seasonal spikes often suggested by conventional wisdom. More importantly, that national average masks major regional differences.

Moneygeek notes that cities with cold winters experienced the strongest seasonal swings. Minneapolis posted the largest increase, with summer burglaries jumping roughly 47% compared to the rest of the year. Other northern cities, including St. Paul, Newark, Buffalo and Indianapolis, also recorded significant summer increases.

Researchers believe harsh winters may naturally suppress burglary activity by keeping more people indoors and reducing opportunities for break-ins. When warmer weather arrives, vacations, student departures and increased travel may create more opportunities for property crimes.

The picture changes almost completely along the Pacific Coast.

Cities including Riverside, Portland and San Diego actually experienced fewer burglaries during the summer than during the rest of the year. Riverside showed the strongest reversal, with burglary rates falling more than 12% during the summer months. Honolulu and several other coastal cities displayed similar trends.

Rather than peaking during vacation season, many West Coast cities recorded their highest burglary activity during the winter months. Researchers suggest that milder climates eliminate the dramatic seasonal shifts seen in colder regions, leading to a much different pattern of criminal activity.

The study grouped cities into three broad climate regions. Cold-weather cities averaged nearly a 12% summer increase in burglaries, while Sun Belt cities showed only a modest seasonal change of roughly 5%. Pacific Coast cities, meanwhile, averaged a slight decline in burglary during the summer.

The findings also challenge the idea that homeowners across the country should prepare for burglary risk at the same time each year.

For residents in northern cities, traditional summer precautions—such as using timers, security cameras, holding mail and checking alarm systems—appear well supported by the data. But homeowners along the West Coast may actually benefit more from increasing those precautions during the colder months instead.

Researchers caution that the data does not prove why these seasonal patterns exist. The FBI's monthly statistics also combine residential and commercial burglaries, making it impossible to isolate exactly what's driving the differences. Still, the geographic pattern was remarkably consistent, with cold-weather cities showing substantially stronger summer increases than their Pacific Coast counterparts.

The broader takeaway is that there is no single national "burglary season." Instead, burglary trends appear to be heavily influenced by regional climate and local conditions, suggesting that homeowners may want to think about seasonal security differently depending on where they live.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 05:45

Germany Stops Recommending COVID-19 Vaccination For Most People Under 75

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Germany has updated its COVID-19 vaccination recommendations, advising most people under 75 not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

A health worker at a mobile COVID-19 vaccination station in a shopping mall fills a syringe with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Ludwigsburg, Germany, on Nov. 11, 2021. Thomas Kienzle/AFP via Getty Images

Germany's Standing Committee on Vaccination, which offers vaccine recommendations for the country, on July 9 said in a 33-page document that its stance on COVID-19 vaccination was changing "to reflect the current epidemiological situation and the population's immune status."

The committee, known as STIKO, added: "A large proportion of the adult population now has hybrid immunity, characterised by exposure to a variety of antigenic contacts, and is therefore sufficiently well protected against severe cases of COVID-19.

"This also applies to healthy pregnant women. Consequently, the recommendation to achieve baseline immunity for the adult population (including pregnant women without underlying conditions or pregnancy-related complications) is no longer applicable. In [the] future, the standard vaccination recommendation will apply to those ≥ 75 years of age."

STIKO's recommendations are advisory, but form the basis of guidance adopted by states and the Federal Joint Committee's vaccination directives. STIKO comprises members from the Robert Koch Institut, with members representing specialties such as pediatrics and virology.

In January, STIKO's updated immunization schedule advised people aged 60 and older to receive a COVID-19 vaccine annually, and people aged 18-59 who had not received a shot in the past to receive one, including women of childbearing age and pregnant women, and people who had not achieved at least three antigenic contacts for baseline immunity, or a combination of at least three prior shots and COVID-19 infections.

STIKO also recommended COVID-19 vaccination for people aged 6 months and older with specific conditions that the committee said increased their risk of serious illness, such as chronic liver disease and obesity, as well as family members and close contacts of people in whom COVID-19 vaccination was not likely to produce a protective immune response.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January rolled back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, but a federal court blocked the update. An appeal is ongoing.

Four categories of changes precipitated the updated advice, STIKO said on July 9, including that much of the adult population has hybrid immunity.

STIKO also found that severe cases of COVID-19 during pregnancy have become "very rare"; that COVID-19 case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths have been steadily declining; that deaths are happening mostly among people aged at least 75 years; and that a seasonal pattern of COVID-19 has become established, with cases peaking in the late summer and early fall.

While removing the general recommendation for most of the population under 75 years of age, STIKO is still recommending vaccination for people at increased risk due to underlying illnesses, including pregnant women.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 05:00

Tipping Point: When Populations Peak

Last weekend (July 11 to be exact) marked World Population Day, celebrating the approximate day that the world's population reached 5 billion on July 11, 1987.

With that in mind, Statista's Felix Richter takes a closer look at one of the population trends that will affect many countries sooner or later in the 21st century: population decline.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Especially prevalent across Europe and developed Asia, this demographic trend is a consequence of declining birth rates and ageing populations and poses significant challenges to the countries affected.

In countries like Japan and Italy, where population decline is estimated to have begun in 2010 and 2014, respectively, fertility rates have fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 percent a while ago. Influenced by factors such as higher education and career opportunities for women, shifts in societal norms regarding family and childbearing and an ageing overall population, natural population change, i.e. the difference between births and deaths, turned negative years ago. For several years, positive net migration stopped the overall population from declining until the (negative) natural population change eventually became larger than the population growth from migration.

Countries with declining populations face a number of challenges, both economic and social. Economically, a shrinking workforce can lead to labor shortages, reduced productivity and increased pressure on social welfare systems. With fewer working-age individuals to support a growing elderly population, the financial burden on pension systems and healthcare services intensifies. Socially, a declining population can result in the depopulation of rural areas, shrinking communities and the ensuing challenges in maintaining infrastructure and public services.

Addressing these issues requires comprehensive strategies. Raising the retirement age or increasing taxes/social contributions can help alleviate the financial burdens associated with a demographic imbalance. Policies to support work-life balance and affordable childcare can help slow the population decline and immigration of young, skilled workers can help address labor shortages and increase productivity.

According to the latest revision of the United Nation’s World Population Prospects, many countries will face these challenges within this century if they don't already, such as the aforementioned Japan and Italy, China and South Korea, which were expected to see their first population decline in 2021. Brazil's population is expected to start declining in 2042, France's in 2049 and even India’s vast population is projected to start shrinking in 2062.

Among developed nations, the United States, Canada and Australia are notable exception, with none of them currently expected to see their first population decline in the 21st century.

Geographically, many African nations are still growing rapidly, resulting in a continental shift in global population that will see countries like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania among the most populous nations in the world by 2100.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 04:15

France Cuts 6.4 GW Of Nuclear Power As Heatwave Grips The Country

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com,

France’s nuclear power generation was slashed by 6.4 gigawatts (GW) on Monday amid a prolonged and intense heatwave that hiked river temperatures and limited the ability of the power plants to use the water to cool reactors.

As many as eight reactors in France, which is Europe’s leader in nuclear power generation, were forced to curtail power output, according to data from the plants’ operator EDF and grid operator RTE cited by Reuters.

The 6.4 GW of curtailed power output was equivalent to 14% of France’s overall power demand as of Monday morning. 

The reactors where output has been limited include Saint Alban 1 and 2, reactors 3, 4, and 5 at Bugey, Golfech 2, and Blayais 1 and 3.

The Golfech 2 and Bugey 3 reactors were taken fully offline, while the other six were operating at reduced rates as of Monday morning.  

This is not the first time France has had to curb output at reactors and limit the nuclear power production, due to high summer temperatures. 

France’s nuclear power generation accounts for around 70% of its electricity mix, and when its reactors are fully operational, it is a net exporter of electricity to other European countries. 

Despite the curbs of nuclear generation during the current heatwave, data from RTE suggests that France would remain a net exporter with over 10 GW of power exported to France’s neighboring countries on Monday. 

The hydropower generation would also be a concern amid the heatwave that has lasted a least a week and is expected to continue at least until Wednesday this week. 

With temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) for days, red alerts have been issued throughout France amid the heatwave, and thousands of people have died of heat-related conditions since late June, when the record-breaking extreme summer temperatures started to disrupt life. Even the most famous and prestigious cycling event, the Tour de France, held a shortened stage on Sunday for the first time ever, due to the extreme heat.  

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 03:30

German Parliament Moves To Criminalize Denying Israel's "Right To Exist"

Various European initiatives and policies which criminalize "holocaust denial" have for years dominated headlines and driven immense controversy over freedom of speech and public debate.

But Germany is now taking it a big step further, with the Bundesrat, Germany's upper house of parliament, having just approved a bill that would criminalize publicly denying Israel's "right to exist" or calling for its abolition.

via Reuters

If passed into law, a conviction would bring up to five years in prison, according to the proposed legal change. The legislation will now move to the lower house.

If ultimately approved, it would make Germany the first country in Europe to punish speech denying Israel's "right to exist".

Critics of such efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian activism and protests have pointed out that the question of any nation's "right" to "exist" is a highly philosophical and theoretical one, which makes it strange that any government would codify the statement into law, elevating it to a kind of of dogma.

The legal proposal would greatly expand Germany's existing Section 130 of the criminal code - which is what authorities currently use to prosecute Holocaust denial.

However, dissenters within the German government have warned the proposed expansion would be a violation of the German constitution, as it would establish a "special right against a specific opinion" in breach of Article 5. Here's what the constitution's "freedom of expression" clause says:

Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.

The Bundestag's research service has warned in a report on violation of individual rights: "Both the rejection of the right of the State of Israel to exist and the call for the elimination of the state are likely to constitute subjective value judgments."

Recently Tucker Carlson unpacked the difficulty inherent in the whole notion of a country having a "right to exist" in a testy exchange with a reporter. Carlson has also frequently pointed out that the phrase is a bizarre and uncommon formulation, given that not even Americans in all of history have spoken in terms of a nation-state or government 'existing' as a 'right'...

A reporter asks Tucker Carlson if Israel has a “right to exist.” When he presses her to define it, she can’t.

Tucker responds: “I believe in universally applicable standards, and if they’re not universally applicable, they’re not standards — they’re preferences.” pic.twitter.com/tUzmcDShSy

— Michael Hennessey (@Snowflake_News) March 21, 2026

More recently, Amnesty International has publicly come out in opposition to the German measure, stating, "The protection of Jewish life is of particular importance – but this initiative massively endangers freedom of expression."

In the United States, the Israel-Gaza conflict has increasingly split the Democratic Party, amid growing midterm related turmoil. But there's been an increasing debate raging on the Right as well, as younger generations of conservatives show much more willingness to criticize Israel and push against taxpayer funding for the Israeli government and military to the tune of billions.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 02:45

10,000 Excess Deaths During June European Heatwave, Official Data Show

Authored by Guy Birchall via The Epoch Times,

More than 10,000 excess deaths were reported across Europe during the recent heatwave that baked the west of the continent in late June, official data showed on June 13.

A man cools himself during a heatwave in Chamonix, France, on June 25, 2026. Reuters/Pierre Albouy

More than 9,000 of those who passed away were aged 65 and above, according to European Monitoring of Excess Mortality for Public Health Action (EuroMOMO), a continent-wide mortality monitoring network backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

The data, pooled from national mortality statistics in 27 European countries, included excess deaths from all causes, not just heat-related ones, during the week of June 22 to 28, when the heatwave peaked in France, Spain, the UK, and other countries.

Though the deaths cannot be attributed exclusively to the soaring temperatures, scientists have said there were no other known major factors, such as disease outbreaks, that would likely have contributed to the mortality spike during that week.

Extreme heat can kill by causing heat stroke or aggravating cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, with older people among the most vulnerable, according to the WHO.

"To have this kind of excess at this time of year is unusual. It's really high," Lasse Vestergaard, chief physician at Denmark's Statens Serum Institut, which hosts EuroMOMO, said. "It is difficult to explain this high excess mortality by anything but the extreme heat."

The combined mortality for the same 27 nations over the previous eight weeks averaged around 500 deaths per week below typical levels; however, EuroMOMO data is subject to revision, either up or down, as more data flow in over the coming weeks.

EuroMOMO does not publish excess deaths per individual country, but it noted that France and Belgium both logged "very high excess" mortality in the last week of June. Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands noted "moderate excess," England, Wales, Italy, and Germany registered a "low excess" of deaths, and the remaining 17 showed normal levels.

The heatwave at the end of June disrupted power supplies, shut schools, and smashed temperature records in France, Spain, and the UK.

Belgium's excess mortality was the highest during any heatwave in records going back to 2000, according to the country's public health institute Sciensano.

"Our latest analysis shows that 1,747 more people died than expected during this heatwave, corresponding to an excess mortality of 48 percent," Sciensano said in a July 10 LinkedIn post. "The deadliest days, 27 and 28 June, recorded mortality levels comparable to those observed during the peak of the first COVID-19 wave in April 2020."

During the heatwave, France experienced its hottest ever national average days on June 24 and June 25, with both days recording an average temperature of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) over 24 hours, surpassing the previous record set on June 23 of 29.8 degrees Celcisus (85.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to French weather agency Meteo-France.

That average is calculated using figures from 30 weather stations evenly distributed across the country.

According to Meteo-France, the highest temperature recorded in France was 46 degrees Celsius (about 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit) at Verargues on June 19, 2019.

In another scientific study from the UK - by Imperial College London, the UK Met Office, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine - it was estimated that some 2,700 people died from heat-related causes in England and Wales alone, amid the May and June heatwaves.

A 2007 study by the French Academy of Sciences on the 2003 European heatwave found that more than 70,000 excess deaths occurred across 16 countries that year.

American political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. has said that the increase in deaths in Europe in previous years is attributable to the lack of air conditioning across the continent.

"The math is simple," Pielke Jr., who has previously worked at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote in a June 25 post on Substack, discussing the deaths in the European heatwave of 2022.

"Today's heat deaths reflect today's level of AC coverage. Raise the coverage, and a share of those deaths are eliminated - in proportion to how protective AC is and how many more households gain it."

Pilke stated that if Europe had American levels of air conditioning penetration during that period, deaths would have been reduced by as much as 26,000.

A Dash Q400-MR Fireguard aircraft of the civil security drops retardant mixed with water during a demonstration of firefighting capacity by the Gironde's Fire and Rescue Departmental Service in Saint-Aubin-de-Medoc, France, on July 3, 2026. Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 02:00

Before The First Switch Goes Dark

Authored by Madge Waggy,

Most people imagine that the beginning of a crisis announces itself with unmistakable spectacle. We picture fighter aircraft crossing national borders, emergency broadcasts interrupting television programs or financial markets collapsing within a single afternoon. It is an understandable expectation because history is usually taught through decisive moments rather than the countless ordinary decisions that quietly shaped them. Yet those who spend their careers inside engineering firms, logistics agencies, intelligence communities or infrastructure operators often develop a very different understanding of how the modern world changes. They learn that the first indication of an approaching storm is rarely dramatic. It is more likely to appear inside revised procurement schedules, altered technical standards, infrastructure assessments, budget reallocations or conference presentations attended by specialists whose work almost never attracts public attention. By the time newspapers discover a story worth printing, the people responsible for keeping societies functioning have often been adapting to it for years.

That quiet transformation has become increasingly visible throughout the past decade. Public guidance issued by organizations responsible for protecting critical infrastructure has gradually adopted a vocabulary that barely existed in mainstream discussion twenty years ago. Engineers now speak routinely about degraded environments, operational resilience, segmented industrial networks, manual recovery procedures, continuity during communications failures and prolonged operation without external support. None of those expressions should be interpreted as evidence that catastrophe is imminent. They reflect a practical reality familiar to every experienced systems engineer: sufficiently complex networks cannot be made invulnerable, only more resilient. As industrial automation, cloud services, satellite communications and artificial intelligence have become intertwined with electricity, transportation, finance and healthcare, protecting every connection has become less realistic than ensuring that essential services continue operating even when individual components fail.

The evolution of that philosophy became particularly noticeable during (May 2026), when the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency introduced CI Fortify, a genuine initiative encouraging operators of critical infrastructure to strengthen their ability to isolate essential operational systems, maintain continuity under degraded conditions and recover safely after sophisticated cyber incidents. Read on its own, the guidance appears entirely reasonable. Governments prepare for unlikely events because preparing after they occur is no preparation at all. Utilities routinely rehearse emergency procedures, hospitals conduct disaster exercises and telecommunications providers regularly test continuity plans. None of that should surprise anyone familiar with critical infrastructure. What deserves closer attention is not the existence of those preparations, but the remarkable consistency with which similar assumptions have begun appearing across sectors that once planned almost independently.

When Separate Warnings Began Pointing in the Same Direction

Viewed individually, the defining infrastructure events of recent years appear entirely unrelated. The cyberattacks that disrupted portions of Ukraine’s electrical grid during (2015–2016) demonstrated that industrial control systems could become direct targets during geopolitical conflict. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident in (2021) revealed how disruption affecting digital business environments could rapidly produce consequences extending far beyond computer networks. Public advisories released between (2023–2025) described persistent activity attributed to groups such as Volt Typhoon, focusing less on immediate destruction than on quietly establishing access to communications and infrastructure considered strategically important. Around the same period, numerous governments expanded investment in transformer manufacturing, emergency communications, domestic semiconductor initiatives, resilience exercises and continuity planning for sectors supporting essential public services. Each development possesses a logical explanation when examined independently. Together, however, they reveal something more interesting than any single incident ever could: institutions responsible for infrastructure increasingly appear to be planning for prolonged disruption rather than isolated emergencies.

That distinction matters because it changes the questions engineers ask. Traditional emergency planning assumes that neighboring regions remain capable of providing assistance. Severe storms damage one area while another sends repair crews. Flooding interrupts one transportation corridor while alternative routes remain available. Cyber incidents affecting individual organizations can often be contained with outside expertise, replacement hardware and unaffected communications. Planning for prolonged disruption is fundamentally different. It quietly assumes that assistance itself may become slower, limited or temporarily unavailable because multiple systems are experiencing strain simultaneously. Once that possibility enters the equation, resilience is no longer measured by how quickly help arrives. It is measured by how effectively critical services continue functioning before help can arrive at all.

Among specialists, this shift has inspired an increasingly sophisticated discussion about dependency rather than vulnerability. Modern civilization depends upon far more than electricity alone. Reliable electrical transmission supports telecommunications. Telecommunications synchronize banking, emergency services, transportation and logistics. Satellite timing enables countless digital systems that most people never realize depend upon it. Cloud computing has become deeply integrated into industries that once operated almost entirely through local infrastructure. Hospitals rely upon uninterrupted electrical supply while simultaneously depending on communications, pharmaceutical logistics, refrigeration, digital imaging and increasingly interconnected medical equipment. Every improvement introduced over the past two decades has increased efficiency, yet every improvement has also woven another thread into a fabric whose overall strength depends upon thousands of relationships functioning at the same time.

One veteran electrical engineer, speaking during a public infrastructure symposium several years ago, summarized that reality in a sentence that received polite applause before disappearing into the conference proceedings.

“The strongest systems are rarely the ones with the fewest weaknesses. They’re the ones that continue working after the first weakness has already been discovered.”

At the time, the remark sounded like little more than professional wisdom shared among colleagues. Read today, against the backdrop of evolving resilience strategies, it carries a noticeably different weight. The conversation surrounding infrastructure is no longer centered exclusively on preventing failure. Increasingly, it asks how societies continue functioning when failure, in one form or another, inevitably arrives.

The Hardware Beneath the Illusion

The digital economy has cultivated an extraordinary illusion: that civilization has somehow detached itself from the physical world. Financial markets appear to move through invisible algorithms, artificial intelligence exists inside distant cloud platforms, governments communicate through encrypted networks that seem to occupy no tangible space at all. Yet every byte crossing an ocean still depends upon glass fibers resting on the seabed. Every intelligent machine relies upon semiconductor fabrication plants that cannot simply be replicated in another country within a few months. Every modern city remains anchored to substations, transformers, switchyards and transmission corridors whose design has changed far less dramatically than the software now controlling portions of their operation. Beneath the elegant surface of digital civilization lies an industrial skeleton assembled over generations, and unlike software, steel does not receive overnight updates.

Engineers responsible for maintaining electrical transmission systems rarely describe the grid as a machine. They describe it as a living balance. Electricity exists only because generation and consumption remain synchronized across enormous distances every second of every day. A disturbance in one region does not politely remain where it began; the network responds instantly, redistributing stress according to immutable physical laws rather than human expectations. Decades of engineering have produced protection systems capable of isolating faults before they propagate, making today’s electrical grids remarkably reliable by historical standards. That reliability, however, often conceals the extraordinary precision required to sustain it. Millions of people experience nothing more dramatic than a light switch responding exactly as expected, never realizing that countless automated decisions have already occurred long before the room became illuminated.

Large transformers occupy a unique position within that ecosystem. They are simultaneously ordinary and irreplaceable. Most consumers never notice them, yet they quietly regulate the flow of electricity between generating stations and distribution networks serving entire metropolitan regions. Manufacturing one is neither simple nor rapid. Specialized steel, precision winding, insulation systems, exhaustive testing and carefully planned transportation all contribute to production timelines measured in months rather than days. Industry reports have repeatedly highlighted concerns surrounding global manufacturing capacity for these components, encouraging utilities to diversify suppliers and improve long-term planning. Those discussions are rooted in practical logistics rather than sensational predictions, yet they reveal something important about the modern age: resilience increasingly depends not only upon defending infrastructure, but upon preserving the industrial capability required to rebuild it.

The Architecture of Dependence

If electricity forms the nervous system of contemporary civilization, information has become its circulatory system. The overwhelming majority of international internet traffic still traverses undersea fiber-optic cables stretching silently across the ocean floor, linking continents through infrastructure that receives remarkably little public attention considering the volume of global commerce it supports. Satellite constellations contribute precise timing signals essential for telecommunications, navigation, banking and electrical synchronization. Cloud computing has concentrated immense computational capability within a comparatively limited number of facilities distributed across strategic regions. Individually, each system possesses redundancy and sophisticated safeguards. Together, they form an intricate architecture whose greatest strength lies in cooperation rather than isolation.

Infrastructure researchers frequently note that efficiency naturally encourages concentration. Manufacturers specialize where expertise already exists. Logistics hubs expand because traffic is already flowing through them. Data centers emerge where energy, connectivity and climate create economic advantages. The process is rational, incremental and almost invisible while it unfolds. Only much later does the resulting map reveal itself, showing how entire industries gradually clustered around a relatively small collection of indispensable locations. Such concentration is not evidence of negligence. It is often the inevitable consequence of decades spent optimizing performance, reducing costs and increasing reliability. Yet optimization introduces a subtle trade-off. Systems become extraordinarily capable during ordinary conditions while requiring increasingly sophisticated planning to remain equally capable during extraordinary ones.

This changing landscape has influenced resilience planning across numerous sectors. Public frameworks released during recent years increasingly emphasize continuity under degraded conditions, regional cooperation, diversified supply chains and the preservation of essential industrial capacity. Rather than assuming uninterrupted global logistics, planners have begun considering scenarios in which replacement equipment arrives more slowly, specialized expertise becomes temporarily scarce and communication between organizations grows less predictable. None of these assumptions requires a dramatic trigger. Natural disasters, geopolitical tension, technical failures or overlapping disruptions could all produce similar operational challenges. The common denominator is not catastrophe itself, but the recognition that interconnected systems recover according to the pace of their slowest critical dependency.

The New Currency of Strategic Competition

Competition between major powers has evolved alongside the infrastructure supporting modern societies. During much of the twentieth century, strategic advantage was often measured through visible indicators—industrial production, military hardware or territorial influence. The twenty-first century has introduced a quieter dimension in which resilience itself has become a form of national capability. Governments invest not only in stronger defenses, but in redundancy, domestic manufacturing, emergency communications, diversified energy sources and continuity planning designed to ensure that essential services endure even when conditions become unusually demanding. Those investments are rarely accompanied by dramatic public announcements because preparedness seldom attracts sustained attention during periods of relative stability. Nevertheless, their cumulative effect reveals an increasingly sophisticated appreciation for how deeply national security and civilian infrastructure have become intertwined.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to influence that relationship in ways still unfolding. Defensive systems already employ machine learning to identify anomalous network activity, prioritize alerts and assist analysts responsible for protecting vast digital environments. At the same time, researchers openly acknowledge that similar technologies can accelerate reconnaissance, automate portions of vulnerability discovery and increase the speed at which complex information is analyzed. Like previous technological revolutions, AI is unlikely to eliminate the importance of human judgment; instead, it is gradually compressing the time available for that judgment to be exercised. Decisions that once unfolded over days may increasingly require responses within minutes, placing greater value on preparation completed long before any incident occurs.

Perhaps that explains why resilience has become one of the defining themes of contemporary infrastructure planning. The objective is no longer simply to construct stronger systems. It is to ensure that societies retain the ability to adapt when conditions depart from expectations. Whether future disruptions arise from cyber incidents, natural disasters, geopolitical crises or combinations that no planner can fully predict, the institutions responsible for keeping modern civilization functioning appear to be converging upon a remarkably consistent conclusion. The most valuable capability may not be preventing every failure. It may be preserving enough stability that recovery remains possible before uncertainty has an opportunity to become something far more difficult to measure: a loss of confidence in the systems people once assumed would always be there when they reached for the light switch.

The Last Illusion

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of modern civilization is not its technological sophistication, but the confidence it has quietly cultivated in the permanence of that sophistication. Entire generations have grown up believing that electricity, communications, digital finance, satellite navigation and global logistics are constants rather than achievements maintained every hour by millions of interconnected decisions. We rarely stop to consider how many engineers, technicians, dispatchers and operators stand between ordinary life and extraordinary disruption because, on most days, their greatest success is remaining invisible. The world functions so consistently that continuity itself has become almost impossible to appreciate until it is interrupted.

History, however, has rarely been generous toward assumptions of permanence. Every era eventually discovers that the systems appearing strongest are often those that have simply not yet encountered the combination of pressures capable of exposing their hidden limits. That observation is not a prediction of collapse, nor is it evidence that disaster waits just beyond the horizon. It is simply the lesson repeated by complex societies across centuries. Stability is never a destination reached once and preserved forever; it is a condition renewed continuously through preparation, maintenance and adaptation. The documents now published by infrastructure agencies around the world reflect that understanding with increasing clarity. They speak less about preventing every conceivable failure and more about preserving the ability to function when prevention proves incomplete. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, resilience has replaced certainty as the defining objective.

Imagine, then, a future evening that arrives without warning and without spectacle. There are no air raid sirens, no dramatic broadcasts interrupting television programming and no unmistakable declaration that history has changed course. Instead, the first indications are so ordinary that almost everyone dismisses them. A district experiences an unexpected outage lasting longer than anticipated. Mobile networks become unreliable in another region. Freight movements slow because several digital systems require manual verification. Financial transactions begin taking a little longer to settle. Emergency maintenance teams receive an unusually high number of unrelated service requests within the same twenty-four-hour period. Individually, every incident possesses a perfectly reasonable explanation. Collectively, they form a pattern that remains invisible precisely because no single event appears extraordinary enough to command immediate attention.

Days later, normality gradually returns. Electricity is restored, communications stabilize, transportation resumes its familiar rhythm and public attention shifts toward newer headlines. For most people, the episode survives only as a temporary inconvenience, another brief disruption absorbed into the endless flow of modern life. Yet inside the control centers responsible for keeping those systems alive, the memory lingers differently. Engineers archive operational data, compare response timelines, revise contingency procedures and quietly alter assumptions that had remained unchanged for years. The infrastructure looks exactly as it did before, but the confidence surrounding it has subtly evolved. Experience has introduced questions that routine maintenance alone cannot answer.

Perhaps that is the quiet transformation history records most often and society notices least. Great changes seldom announce themselves at the moment they begin. More often, they emerge gradually, hidden within revised engineering standards, procurement decisions, emergency exercises and technical language that appears too mundane to deserve public attention. Years later, when historians search for the moment everything started to shift, they rarely find a single defining event. Instead, they discover countless ordinary decisions made by people who recognized that the world had become more complicated than it appeared from the outside.

The unsettling possibility is not that the lights may one day fail. Every electrical system eventually experiences interruptions, and every infrastructure operator plans accordingly. The more thought-provoking possibility is that one day the lights will return exactly as expected, the streets will fill once again with traffic, financial markets will reopen, phones will reconnect and daily routines will continue almost unchanged—while somewhere beyond public view, the people entrusted with maintaining those systems quietly acknowledge that the assumptions guiding them for decades are no longer sufficient. If such a moment ever arrives, the most profound change may not be visible in darkened skylines or silent cities. It may exist only inside the minds of those who understand that the next interruption will no longer be measured by how quickly electricity returns, but by how much confidence disappeared before it did.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 23:25

Saudi Arabia Turns Taiwan Into Drone Export Leader As Iran War Reshapes Warfare

New data show that Saudi Arabia purchased a record $47.2 million worth of small drones from Taiwan last month, underscoring how governments are beginning to rapidly procure suicide drones.

Bloomberg was the first to cite new data from Taiwan's Ministry of Finance showing that drone exports surged in June, driven by a record order from Saudi Arabia. The timing suggests Riyadh absorbed many hard lessons during the US-Iran conflict and is moving quickly to build stockpiles of one-way attack and interceptor drones.

The exported drones weighed roughly 7 to 15 kilograms - or up to 30 pounds - and in a recent report by Piper Sandler analyst Clarke Jeffries, these drones are considered Group 1 and Group 2.

Jeffries laid out three key insights about the rapidly changing defense landscape:

He also listed ways to profit from the drone industry as the wave of orders begins:

Read:

• "Only The Beginning": How To Profit From The Asymmetric Warfare Boom

It's not only one-way attack and interceptor drones that will be produced en masse globally, but also counter-AUS technology to defend high-value assets such as refineries, ports, data centers, and power grid infrastructure

.Related:

• US Military Races To Harden Strategic Nuclear Bases With Counter-Drone AI Shield

In the mergers and acquisitions space, DZYNE Technologies - a maker of drones, loitering munition-type systems, and counter-drone technology - was recently sold by its investors to Nasdaq-listed defense and industrial technology firm Ondas Holdings for a handsome profit.

To begin the week, Bloomberg reported that drone company Helsing completed a $18 billion financing round from investors, including Goldman Sachs.

Refer to our note above on how to profit from the asymmetric warfare boom, as this theme will continue.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 23:00

We Can't Control This: The Populist Tide Is Coming For Both Parties

Authored by Charles Bass and Richard Swett via RealClearPolitics.com,

Who was David Brat?

Many Americans have forgotten the name. We haven’t.

In 2014, David Brat, then a little-known economics professor, stunned the political world by defeating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary in Virginia. At the time, most observers viewed the upset as an isolated event - a local revolt against an established leader who had lost touch with his district. In retrospect, it was something much larger. David Brat’s victory was an early warning shot. It signaled that a powerful populist movement was building within the Republican Party, one fueled by frustration, distrust of institutions, anger toward political elites, and a conviction among many voters that neither party was listening to them. Two years later, that same current helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency and fundamentally reshape the Republican Party.

As we watched with dismay the results of the New York Democratic congressional primaries, the memory of David Brat came floating back.

What happened in New York may prove to be a similar moment for Democrats. For years, political analysts have treated populism as primarily a Republican phenomenon. That was always a mistake. Populism is not an ideology. It is a political force. It can emerge from the left or the right. It thrives whenever large numbers of citizens conclude that the people running the country’s major institutions no longer understand or care about their concerns.

Today, both parties are confronting their own versions of that phenomenon.

The populism that has transformed the Republican Party often channels its frustrations toward immigration, globalization, cultural change, and government dependency. The populism now emerging within parts of the Democratic coalition directs its anger toward concentrated wealth, large corporations, and what it sees as entrenched political and economic power. The targets differ. The emotions do not. At its core, populism reflects a broad loss of confidence in elites – political, economic, academic, media, and corporate. Millions of Americans increasingly believe that the institutions that once commanded public trust are no longer delivering results, no longer accountable, and no longer responsive.

That sentiment has been building for years. The financial crisis damaged confidence in Wall Street. Endless political gridlock damaged confidence in Washington. Social media accelerated distrust of traditional news organizations. Rising housing costs, student debt, stagnant wages, and growing economic inequality left many younger Americans questioning whether the system works for them at all. When confidence in institutions erodes, voters look elsewhere.

They become more willing to embrace candidates who promise disruption rather than stability, confrontation rather than compromise, and sweeping change rather than incremental reform.

As former members of Congress who represented New Hampshire’s Second Congressional District from opposite political parties, we find this trend deeply troubling. American democracy has historically depended on a broad center. Progress came not because one side achieved total victory, but because competing interests eventually found common ground. The system was designed to reward coalition-building and compromise. Today, compromise is increasingly viewed as weakness.

Moderation is often treated as betrayal. Political incentives now favor outrage over persuasion and ideological purity over practical governance. That dynamic is affecting both parties.

The Republican Party has already experienced a dramatic populist transformation.

The Democratic Party may now be entering a similar period of internal upheaval.

Whether that process ultimately reshapes Democratic politics as profoundly as Trump’s movement reshaped the GOP remains to be seen. But the signs are increasingly difficult to ignore.

What concerns us most is that the underlying forces driving these movements are not going away. Neither party has yet found a convincing answer to the frustrations that fuel populism. Economic insecurity remains widespread. Institutional trust remains low. Political polarization continues to deepen. Younger voters are increasingly skeptical of traditional leadership. Social media amplifies anger faster than solutions. These are not temporary conditions. They are structural challenges.

As strange as American politics has seemed over the last decade, we should not assume we have reached the end of the story. We may only be in the middle chapters. The populist wave that transformed the Republican Party did not stop with Eric Cantor’s defeat. It gathered strength over time. The same could happen on the Democratic side.

We hope we are wrong. We hope both parties rediscover the value of practical problem-solving, responsible leadership, and the political center. Our country needs strong institutions and leaders willing to govern rather than simply mobilize outrage. But history suggests that once public confidence in elites begins to break down, the forces unleashed are difficult to contain. David Brat’s victory was not the cause of the populist transformation of the Republican Party. It was a symptom. What happened in New York may be another symptom. And if that is true, American politics is about to get a lot more unpredictable.

The tide is rising. We may not be able to control it. But we would be wise to understand it.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 22:35

GOP Uses Kavanaugh's Own Playbook To Take Another Swing At Birthright Citizenship

Last month, the Supreme Court struck down Trump's executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. Justice Kavanaugh joined that majority in striking down the order, but he also filed a separate partial dissent, and his reasoning did Republicans a favor.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in Trump v. Barbara, a 5-4 decision joined by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Barrett, and Jackson, and leaned on the 1898 case U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark to hold that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to "all children born in the United States and subject to its power."

Kavanaugh concluded Trump's order conflicted with an existing federal statute, not the Constitution or the 14th Amendment specifically. His complaint was narrower. Trump's order collided with a law Congress passed in the spirit of an amendment conservatives say was written mainly to secure citizenship for freed slaves and their children. Kavanaugh's fix was simple. Congress could rewrite the statute.

The Court today holds that the Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. I respectfully disagree with the Court's constitutional holding. In my view, the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Order does contravene a federal statute, 8 U. S. C. §1401(a). Congress could - consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment - amend §1401(a) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.

Now the GOP is seeking to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants via the roadmap that Kavanaugh laid out. Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) filed legislation on Monday called the Citizenship Act. It would strip automatic citizenship from children born in the United States to illegal immigrants and birth tourists by classifying their parents as "invaders" under federal statute, a designation drawn from the 2025 executive order President Trump signed declaring the crisis at the southern border an invasion.

Its text states that "any person who enters the United States without authorization or for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism is considered an invader," and it strips their children of automatic citizenship on that basis.

The bill leaves the Constitution untouched. The bill also finds cover from a source Republicans rarely quote approvingly. In the 2025 case U.S. v. CASA, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, confirmed in a separate opinion that "children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation" fall outside birthright citizenship. She stopped short of calling illegal immigrants invaders. Banks' bill closes that gap for her.

Beyond the Wong Kim Ark language, the bill rests on Article IV's requirement that the federal government "protect each state against invasion," and Congress' Article I power to "establish a uniform rule of naturalization," a direct challenge to blue-state officials who have floated their own citizenship rules.

The bill's supporting material goes further than the usual border-security framing. It notes that some Mexican nationals view northward migration as a means of reclaiming territory lost in the military conflicts of the 1840s, as formalized in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the agreement that made Texas and the surrounding Southwest part of the United States. It also cites Chinese birth tourism operations encouraged by the Chinese Communist Party as evidence that birthright citizenship has become a vector for foreign influence rather than a settled matter of domestic law.

"The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship decision was an unprecedented assault on American sovereignty, and we must do whatever it takes to save our country," Banks told Fox News Digital. He added, "I'm leading the Citizenship Act to reverse the effects of this consequential ruling and ensure the millions of illegal aliens that invaded our country can't continue to exploit our immigration system."

The Citizenship Act faces a much steeper climb than Kavanaugh's opinion ever cleared. Any immigration bill needs 60 votes to break a filibuster, and Democrats have shown zero appetite for handing Trump a win on birthright citizenship after fighting his executive order all the way to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh may have offered a roadmap, but the Senate remains a problem.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 22:10

Comfortably Bomb

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Hormuz update: Comfortably Bomb

Summary

• The US-Iran MoU appears to have collapsed sooner than we had thought.
• With both sides striking the other, US efforts will turn to ensuring energy can flow through Hormuz ‘the hard way’ via escorting ships through it.
• For now, markets are saying the US can ‘comfortably bomb’ and ‘there is no pain’ even if the ‘MoU are receding’, mostly due to finite SPR drains and low Chinese oil imports.
• That gives the US a window for action: if it can keep enough oil flowing through Hormuz, which is our base case, it underlines military action can move markets in a desired direction; if it fails, we face a far larger energy crisis with far less in the tank as mitigants - or a geostrategic reckoning.

We argued the June 17 US-Iran memorandum of understanding temporarily suited both sides but would last, at best, until the US midterm elections and would ultimately collapse due to its inherent contradictions over tolls, sanctions, Lebanon, and uranium. At time of writing on 13 July, the US and Iran have separately declared the “ceasefire” and “diplomacy” as over. Both were striking the other, albeit not yet all-out as at the start of the war. Typically, the IRGC has declared that the Strait of Hormuz is now closed - and the US that it is still very much open for business.

There is no pain

Regardless, the market response has been constrained. At Asian market open on Monday, Brent was only up around 4% to $79, for example (Figure 1). In short, markets continue to treat a new active conflict around the Strait of Hormuz as containable.

That’s the case for several reasons. First, inventory draws have eased immediate pressure. Second, China is keeping its oil imports subdued. Third, some energy workarounds have emerged. Lastly, there has been some demand destruction.

This is not a sustainable long-term dynamic, but for a few weeks, or months at most, the market may continue to say “there is no pain” in spot oil prices even if wide crack spreads were already telling another story on refined products before this latest fighting started.

The key question is if this is a temporary or a longer-term geopolitical issue: arguably it’s both. However, the US may be gambling it can resolve the Hormuz situation to the energy market’s satisfaction before things become critical.

MoU are receding

The Hormuz disagreement stems from the MoU’s Article 5, which stated:

“Upon the signing of this MoU, Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by Iran, will be instated within 30 days. Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman, to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf Littoral States, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran took this to mean it controlled all of Hormuz, including outside its own territorial waters, and could toll maritime traffic there.

The US took it to mean that Iran couldn’t and set up an alternative toll-free route via Omani waters. Iran has since attacked ships using this alternative route. That was the proximate trigger for the latest rounds of US strikes on Iranian facilities on islands within Hormuz and along its coastline aimed at degrading Tehran’s ability to project control over the waterway; and of Iranian counterstrikes.

The MoU therefore collapsed over the easiest of its contradictions to resolve, tolls, which could have been relabelled as ‘fees’. That presents a daunting challenge for market optimism as it implies US-Iran tensions are here to stay on multiple fronts.

However, it also focuses the immediate problem –and US and Iranian attention– on physical control of Hormuz.

A distant ship smoke on the horizon 

The message from US CENTCOM is clear: “The Strait of Hormuz is open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit the international waterway. US forces are positioned and prepared to ensure that freedom of navigation remains available despite unwarranted Iranian aggression, harassment, threats, and arbitrary declarations. Iran does not control the strait. Traffic is flowing.” In pledging this, the US aims to ensure that Hormuz doesn’t bother markets the way that it did earlier in the war. That implies: 

1. Taking out Iranian facilities in and along Hormuz so the threat to the southern Omani channel is diminished. 

2. Providing defensive cover for ships passing through from drones, missiles, small boats, and mines, etc.  

3. Shielding GCC allies, particularly their energy and critical infrastructure, but where stocks of missile interceptors are reportedly low. Very notably, Iran has so far not struck at these key GCC facilities again in recent attacks. That could suggest Tehran realises there are limits to what it can do to its neighbours if it also wants to offer alternative regional leadership ahead.  

These US tasks, mirroring the late-80’s Operation Earnest Will in the Iran-Iraq War's Tanker phase, may require help from the GCC and NATO. While US allies have been reticent to (publicly) act in this regard until now –and the Saudis blocked Operation Project Freedom with the same goal– that dynamic may change with the recent narrow avoidance of an energy crisis and the narrative that Iran alone is now blocking Hormuz.  

Moreover, it has been revealed that the US continued with a covert version of Project Freedom anyway without Saudi assistance. 

You are only coming through in waves 

It’s credible to assume US (and GCC/coalition) naval escorts with air cover could move substantial energy volumes through Hormuz via Omani waters even under duress. Recent operational data suggest the US military directly escorted tankers carrying significant amounts of oil successfully through the Strait. The US claims this was as high as 7 million barrels per day. Sustained throughput of meaningful amounts of oil and products via these military escorts appears theoretically feasible, albeit at higher costs from insurance premia and longer transit times. That turns a serious supply shock into a manageable disruption. 

At the same time, it’s realistic to expect that on top of a cancelled Iranian oil sanctions waiver, the US could reimpose its blockade on Iranian oil to increase economic pressure on it.  

We can also expect more efforts to build alternative supply chains and pipelines that avoid Hormuz as possible around it. None of them are a short-term palliative to match the Saudi East West pipeline to Yanbu, but in the longer run they will reduce Iran’s leverage even further.  

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying 

President Trump has called the Iranians “liars” and “scum” and Iran has stated it wants “revenge” and to kill him. Both sides have made their red lines explicit and have shown they are prepared to enforce them kinetically. The most positive near-term path is continued tit-for-tat pressure, punctuated by attempts at limited talks that produce little beyond contradictory statements.  

Markets pricing for a resolution of this crisis from a diplomatic perspective or a ‘TACO’ are likely wrong. However, US hard power could also achieve the same benign outcome.  

I can’t explain, you would not understand 

Markets and analysts are rightly confused by all the contradictory signals being seen around this crisis: declining inventories, wide crack spreads, the renewed cut-off of Iranian oil, intensifying military action and perhaps more later – yet energy prices have not blown out. It perhaps helps to underline who has been winning and losing and who could emerge as the final victor and how. 

This is not how I(ran) am

Iran was heavily beaten militarily while exposing key US defensive weaknesses; then it was handed a win in peace negotiations due to energy market pressure on Trump; now, with oil prices contained, it has overplayed its weak hand and is under a new phase of US pressure: 

• Iran could potentially lose effective control of Hormuz. 
• Iran gets no sanctions relief as well as no oil sales if the US blockades it. 
• Iran gets no assets unfrozen nor a $300bn in FDI for an economy shattered by the recent war. 
• In Lebanon, peace progress has been on Israeli and Lebanese not Iranian/Hezbollah terms; 
• Iran’s proxy in Syria has been lost and is working on a pipeline to help Iraq avoid Hormuz; Iraq’s pro-Iranian militias are being constrained by the government; the Houthis remain quiet; and Hamas has agreed to cede power in Gaza, if not disarm. 
• Iran’s highly enriched uranium will clearly not be discussed, with reports Tehran is trying to rebuild its nuclear facilities. The US will have to address this too, but that perhaps via the air rather than boots on the ground, as in 2025. 
• None of that means the US is aiming at regime change even if Israel says it is. Yet, Tehran could find itself regionally shrunken, economically ‘caged’, and geopolitically ignored. 

But that’s only if the US wins the Battle of Hormuz. As repeatedly stressed, a US defeat or retreat would flip the script. That’s why we have continuously argued the US will use kinetic force (and, if absolutely necessary, radical economic statecraft in the energy sector, i.e., NAFTA > NAPHTHA) 

I have become Comfortably Bomb

Markets can therefore enjoy a form of geopolitical anaesthesia: “geopolitical risk equals higher energy prices” is not firing fully because so much oil has been injected into our global system.

The US SPR cushion could last a few more months at current rates of depletion; so could Japan’s SPR; and China has kept its oil import volumes subdued and has vast reserves. Indeed, there’s little logic --beyond a statecraft escalation vs the US-- for China to restart buying oil aggressively while the US undertakes military action to try to free up Hormuz which, ordinarily, would suit China. (The only caveat being that Iran has promised a ‘friends and family’ discount to Chinese ships on its proposed tolls.)

As such, the market seems to be telling the US to ‘comfortably bomb’ – but only on the unspoken assumption that its attempts to keep Hormuz open work. That is our geopolitical base case given the historical track record and the overall stakes.

However, if it fails, and/or if Iran steps up its attacks against GCC energy and infrastructure regardless of the regional bridges (and refineries and desalination plants, etc) that it burns, then we would face a serious global energy crisis, and with much less left in the tank as potential mitigants.

At the least, the US --with midterms looming-- would again have to pause until after them; and at the most, we could see the return of narratives heard a few months ago and still echoing in places - that the US is unable to use its military power to achieve its strategic goals, with enormous geopolitical and geoeconomic consequences.

The full implications of that thought should be enough to leave any strategist comfortably numb.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 22:00

Why Is China Advertising Insane War Drones On Facebook

The proliferation of low-cost suicide drones and interceptor drones appears to be accelerating as nation-states begin stockpiling these expendable platforms, reflecting a rapid and structural shift in modern warfare toward mass, attritable weapons.

More concerning is that some of these drones appear to be marketed far beyond traditional military channels and potentially sold to the highest bidder.

We have already identified what appear to be Chinese companies advertising advanced dual-use drone systems on Facebook, suggesting that drone warfare technologies could soon be easily accessible on the commercial market.

Various companies on Facebook appear to be marketing low-cost suicide drones and interceptor drones that look on par with those seen in Ukraine, as shown on Reels.

Here are some of those advertising videos featured on Reels:

When reaching out to what appear to be Chinese or Hong Kong-based drone companies selling advanced AI interceptor drones to anyone, you're greeted with a sales document:

Pricing sheet.

The central question is whether these exporters are complying with China’s Export Control Law and the 2024 regulations governing dual-use items. The potential national security risk is clear: low-cost drone systems could be acquired by criminal groups, terrorist networks, or other non-state threat actors with limited technical or financial barriers.

A possible early warning came from Mexico, where authorities recovered a fiber-optic drone. The discovery suggests that technologies refined on modern battlefields, such as in Ukraine, may already be migrating toward the US homeland and other allied countries.

 

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 21:20

While The Political Circus Distracts Us, Flock Builds The Digital Police State

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,

“You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

- George Orwell, 1984

While Americans remain transfixed by the political circus - cheering for their preferred party, jeering at the opposition, obsessing over every manufactured outrage and waiting for the next spectacle - the Surveillance State continues its steady march forward.

The government is watching.

It watches where you go, whom you meet, where you worship, what medical offices you visit, what political rallies you attend, what protests you join, what books you read, what websites you visit and what causes you support.

It watches through your phone, your car, your doorbell, your appliances, your purchases, your social media accounts and the cameras positioned along the roads you travel every day.

This is how freedom dies in the digital police state: not always through dramatic declarations of martial law or soldiers stationed on every street corner, but through the gradual construction of a technological dragnet—an electronic concentration camp—so pervasive that privacy becomes impossible and anonymity becomes suspicious.

Enter Flock Safety, a private surveillance technology company whose automated license plate readers have spread throughout thousands of American communities.

These cameras, which do much more than photograph license plates, represent the next evolution of the government’s public-private surveillance partnership.

They document the time and location of every passing vehicle and record identifying characteristics such as its make, model, color, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other distinctive features. That information can then be placed in a searchable database and used to retrace a vehicle’s movements over time.

Yet the real power—and the real danger—of Flock does not come from the cameras alone.

It comes from artificial intelligence.

A camera can photograph a car. Flock’s AI-powered platform can identify and categorize a vehicle, compare an observation with stored records, generate alerts, identify connections and help police reconstruct where that vehicle has been.

AI is what transforms a photograph into the building blocks for a suspect society.

With AI, every driver becomes a data point. Every data point becomes a pattern. And every pattern becomes a suspicion.

This is how ordinary movements become potentially suspect and subject to government scrutiny. It allows law enforcement agencies to search not only for a complete license plate number but also for partial plates and physical descriptions such as vehicle color, make, model, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other identifying characteristics.

A police officer might ask the system to locate every red pickup truck with a ladder rack seen near a protest, every vehicle that repeatedly visited a particular address, or every car observed traveling between two locations.

The artificial intelligence does the sorting. The database supplies the history.

The government receives a list of potential suspects.

This is no longer surveillance conducted by individual officers following particular leads. It is surveillance conducted at machine speed, across entire populations, with algorithms deciding whose movements merit further scrutiny.

Consider the scale of what is taking place.

License plate cameras now log approximately 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

Twenty billion.

That is not targeted policing. That is mass collection.

The overwhelming majority of those scans do not involve stolen cars, wanted suspects, kidnappings or violent crimes. They document ordinary people carrying out the ordinary activities of daily life: driving to work, taking children to school, visiting friends, attending church, keeping medical appointments, participating in protests or simply going home.

Yet each of those innocent journeys becomes part of a searchable police database.

At 20 billion scans a month, Flock is not searching for particular suspects and then attempting to follow them. It is recording the movements of everyone so police can decide later whom they want to follow.

That is the digital equivalent of assigning a government agent to trail every driver in America—and preserving the agent’s notes in case the government someday finds them useful.

Yet mass collection is only the first stage of the AI surveillance state. The next is merging those billions of observations with everything else the government and its corporate partners know about us.

Flock is also part of a much larger shift toward AI-powered “data fusion,” in which license plate records are combined with facial recognition results, surveillance video, police reports, social media activity, commercially purchased information, gunshot-detection alerts and other government databases.

The danger is no longer merely that one system can track a car. It is the merger of previously separate streams of information into a single system capable of mapping a person’s movements, relationships, habits and associations.

These systems increasingly do more than provide officers with information to evaluate. They assign significance to associations, flag supposed threats and generate investigative leads—often through proprietary algorithms that neither the accused nor the public can examine.

Artificial intelligence does not eliminate human prejudice, institutional bias or bad information.

It industrializes them.

Feed a flawed system inaccurate data, biased arrest records or constitutionally suspect surveillance, and AI can reproduce those defects at a speed and scale no individual police officer could match.

Once the computer labels someone suspicious, moreover, officers may treat the algorithmic conclusion as objective fact.

The machine accuses. The police act. The citizen is left to prove that the machine was wrong.

Despite the extraordinary reach of this technology, Flock continues to portray its system as a limited, carefully controlled crime-fighting tool.

Flock insists that its cameras collect information about vehicles rather than people, that agencies control access to their own data, that searches are logged and that information is generally deleted after 30 days. Yet these assurances largely amount to distinctions without a difference.

Vehicles are extensions of the people who drive them.

Track a vehicle long enough, and you know where its owner sleeps, works, worships, shops, socializes, seeks medical treatment and participates in political activity.

You know when someone leaves home, when they return, whom they visit and how often.

You may not know the contents of their conversations, but you know enough to construct an intimate portrait of their life.

That is surveillance.

It does not become less invasive merely because the government has outsourced the cameras, databases and algorithms to a private corporation.

Nor does it cease to be surveillance because police claim that the information may someday be useful in solving a crime.

Indeed, that is the sleight of hand that has allowed the surveillance state to expand so rapidly.

The government no longer has to install every camera, maintain every database or directly collect every piece of information.

It merely encourages private companies, businesses, homeowners’ associations, schools and individual consumers to create an interconnected surveillance ecosystem—and then asks for access.

This public-private arrangement allows government agencies to acquire capabilities they might never receive public approval or sufficient funding to build on their own.

It also makes accountability almost impossible.

When abuses occur, local police blame the technology provider. The technology provider insists that local police control the data. Federal agencies claim they merely requested access. Local officials say they were unaware that information could be shared beyond their jurisdiction.

Everyone points elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the American people remain under observation.

Flock has become especially controversial because its network can transform what appears to be a collection of local cameras into something far more powerful: a searchable surveillance system that permits law enforcement agencies to look far beyond their own jurisdictions.

Flock says data sharing among agencies is optional and controlled by its customers. Yet the entire value of such a system lies in its interconnectedness.

A camera in one town is a traffic-monitoring device.

Thousands of cameras connected through searchable databases constitute a movement-tracking network.

The danger is not simply that police might search for a stolen car.

The danger is that the system permits government officials to begin with a location, a description or a fragment of information and work backward until someone emerges as a suspect.

That reverses the traditional order of constitutional policing.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police are supposed to develop individualized suspicion, establish probable cause and then apply for a warrant to search for evidence connected to a particular person or crime.

Mass surveillance systems begin by collecting information on everyone.

In the process, every innocent person is treated as a potential suspect whose movements must be recorded just in case the government someday decides they are relevant.

This is guilt by algorithm.

It is also the same constitutional inversion at the heart of geofence warrants, which allow police to demand information identifying every cellphone that happened to be near a particular location at a particular time.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Chatrie v. United States may signal that constitutional scrutiny is finally beginning to catch up with the surveillance state.

The case involved a geofence warrant used to obtain Google location records for cellphones near the scene of a robbery. Rather than beginning with an identified suspect, police demanded information about devices that happened to be within a designated area during a particular period and then worked backward to identify their owners.

The Supreme Court held that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain an individual’s cellphone location history from a technology company.

That conclusion matters.

It rejects the government’s increasingly convenient argument that intimate information loses constitutional protection merely because a private corporation collected, stored or analyzed it.

The Court did not rule on Flock cameras or automated license plate databases. Nor did it decide that every geofence demand is necessarily unconstitutional. The justices left it to the Fourth Circuit to determine whether the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s probable-cause and particularity requirements at each stage of the search.

Nevertheless, the constitutional principle at the heart of Chatrie extends far beyond cellphones.

The government should not be able to evade the Fourth Amendment by outsourcing mass surveillance to private technology companies.

It should not matter whether the location trail comes from Google, Flock, a cellphone provider, a data broker or an interconnected network of privately owned cameras.

A detailed record of a person’s movements does not become less revealing because it follows a vehicle rather than a phone. The government should not be permitted to accomplish through Flock what it could not constitutionally accomplish by assigning police officers to follow millions of Americans everywhere they drive.

Indeed, Flock may present an even more troubling inversion of constitutional policing.

Geofence searches generally begin with a particular crime, location and period. Flock continuously collects information on millions of vehicles before any crime has occurred and before any individual is suspected of wrongdoing.

Police can then reach backward into that stored history and reconstruct a person’s movements.

The surveillance comes first. Suspicion comes later.

A warrant, when one is sought at all, may arrive only after the government has already built the database it intends to search.

Chatrie may provide constitutional ammunition for challenging this arrangement, but no single court ruling will dismantle the machinery of mass surveillance.

The technology is already embedded in thousands of communities.

The databases are already being populated.

The agencies are already connected.

And the companies profiting from this infrastructure will fight to preserve it.

Unfortunately, constitutional protections have rarely kept pace with the government’s appetite for surveillance.

The dangers are no longer theoretical.

Flock data has reportedly been used in investigations far removed from the serious violent crimes routinely invoked to justify these systems.

This is the inevitable trajectory of every surveillance technology. First, it is introduced as an emergency measure. Then it is justified as a crime-fighting tool. Then it is expanded to lesser crimes. Then it is used for administrative enforcement, political monitoring, immigration investigations and personal purposes.

Eventually, it becomes part of the background machinery of government—a permanent feature of daily life that no longer attracts attention because everyone has become accustomed to being watched.

That is how mission creep works.

Surveillance powers created to find kidnappers and violent criminals do not remain limited to kidnappers and violent criminals.

Databases built to locate stolen vehicles do not remain limited to stolen vehicles.

Government agencies cannot resist the temptation to use whatever power is available to them, especially when the use of that power is cheap, easy and largely hidden from the public.

The technology’s potential for error makes this even more dangerous.

License plate readers can misread plates, rely on inaccurate hot lists or associate an innocent vehicle with a crime. Once the system issues an alert, officers may treat the computer-generated result as fact.

The individual on the receiving end may be pulled over, surrounded by armed police, handcuffed, searched or detained before anyone discovers that the machine was wrong.

This is not justice. It is automated suspicion.

Flock is only one component of a surveillance ecosystem that includes doorbell cameras, facial recognition, drones, cellphone tracking, biometric databases and real-time crime centers.

The result is 360-degree surveillance.

A person may leave a home monitored by a smart doorbell, drive past a network of license plate readers, enter a business equipped with facial recognition, carry a phone broadcasting location data and return home along streets monitored by police cameras and private security systems.

At no point does the government need to physically follow that individual, because the infrastructure does it automatically.

Algorithms sort the information. Databases preserve it. Private companies monetize it. Government agencies search it.

All of this is taking place while the country remains locked in an endless partisan cage match.

Both parties have contributed to the Surveillance State. Both parties have expanded it. Both parties have exploited fear to convince the public that freedom must be sacrificed for safety.

The targets may change depending on who is in power, but the machinery remains.

Once the infrastructure exists, there is no guarantee that it will be used only against people you dislike or with whom you disagree politically.

That is the lesson Americans repeatedly refuse to learn.

A surveillance tool created by one administration will be inherited by the next. A database assembled for one purpose will inevitably be used for another. A system established to monitor “them” will eventually be turned against “us.”

Communities across the country are finally beginning to recognize the danger.

Some cities have terminated or declined to renew their Flock contracts. Others have paused deployments or demanded stronger restrictions on data sharing, retention and federal access.

This resistance is long overdue.

We cannot afford to become so distracted by the theater of politics that we fail to notice the architecture of tyranny being assembled around us.

The surveillance state does not care which party you support. It does not care whom you voted for.

It does not care whether you believe you have nothing to hide.

The cameras are watching. The databases are growing. The networks are connecting.

And as I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we act now, there may soon be nowhere left to go without the government knowing exactly where we have been.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 17:40

China's Memory-Chip Challenger Faces A Test Of How Far US Curbs Can Reach

ChangXin Memory Technologies is approaching a turning point.

The Chinese memory-chip maker has advanced far enough to draw interest from some of the world's largest technology companies, including Apple Inc., which has considered using its chips. But the same growth that has raised CXMT's commercial standing has also made it a more prominent target in the widening technology confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

The Pentagon has blacklisted the state-backed company over alleged links to China's military. In South Korea, prosecutors have accused several former Samsung Electronics employees of leaking proprietary information to CXMT. The company's expansion is also being watched closely by US officials seeking to prevent Chinese semiconductor manufacturers from gaining access to advanced equipment and expertise.

CXMT's success will depend not only on whether it can narrow the technological gap with Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology, but also on whether it can continue expanding without provoking restrictions severe enough to disrupt its supply chain.

That challenge has shaped the company from its earliest days.

CXMT broke ground on its first factory in Hefei in 2017, as another Chinese memory-chip project, sFujian Jinhua, was running into mounting pressure from the US. Washington's actions ultimately derailed Jinhua's rise, creating a cautionary example for Chinese semiconductor companies with global ambitions.

According to Taiwanese think tank DSET, cited by Bloomberg, Jinhua's collapse helped CXMT secure funding from both central government-linked and private investors. It also taught the company to proceed more carefully around the boundaries of US policy.

"This incident not only brought CXMT both central and private investment but also helped the company learn from Jinhua's downfall and carefully navigate around US red lines," DSET said.

That caution has become increasingly important as Washington has broadened its efforts to restrict China's access to advanced semiconductor technology.

In October 2022, the administration of President Joe Biden imposed sweeping export controls covering high-end chips, manufacturing equipment and technical expertise. The measures were intended to slow China's progress in artificial intelligence, supercomputing and other strategically sensitive fields.

CXMT remains unable to obtain the most advanced lithography systems used by its foreign competitors. Its access is largely limited to deep-ultraviolet equipment, which is less capable than the extreme-ultraviolet machines used by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron to produce their most advanced memory chips.

CXMT's first 12-inch DRAM memory wafers displayed at the 2024 World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei.Source: Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images

That constraint is particularly significant in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, a class of chips that has become critical to artificial-intelligence infrastructure. HBM allows advanced processors to move large quantities of data rapidly, making it essential to the systems used to train and operate generative AI models.

Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron dominate the global market for those products. CXMT is trying to close the gap without access to the same manufacturing tools, placing greater pressure on its engineering capabilities and domestic suppliers.

Its strategy has been to reduce exposure to Washington by building a supply chain increasingly centered on Chinese companies. A domestic network can make CXMT less vulnerable to direct US controls, while also supporting Beijing's broader campaign to replace foreign semiconductor technology with local alternatives.

The approach does not eliminate CXMT's dependence on overseas equipment and expertise. China still lacks domestic substitutes for some of the most sophisticated tools used in chip production. But CXMT's progress suggests that export controls have not stopped Chinese companies from improving less advanced manufacturing processes or expanding production at scale.

The company has climbed to fourth place in the global memory-chip market, behind Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It remains substantially smaller and less technologically advanced than those rivals, but its emergence has begun to challenge an industry structure that has long been dominated by three companies.

CXMT is considering using about 30 billion yuan, or $4.4 billion, from a planned initial public offering to upgrade its technology and expand research and development, according to its listing application.

That investment would support Beijing's goal of securing a larger role in a sector increasingly treated as a foundation of economic and military power. Memory chips are essential to smartphones, computers and data centers, and the artificial-intelligence boom has made advanced products even more strategically valuable.

"Memory is a critical component in the AI infrastructure, and the US and China are the only two countries fueling the infrastructure boom," said He Hui, a Shanghai-based semiconductor research director at Omdia, in a comment to Bloomberg. 

China's restrictions on Micron have also created a commercial opening for CXMT. With one of the three dominant global suppliers facing limits in the Chinese market, domestic customers have stronger incentives to consider a local alternative.

"There are only three players - Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, and China sanctioned Micron years ago, so this provides a great opportunity for CXMT," He said.

The company's founder, Zhu Yiming, brought experience from both the American and Chinese technology sectors. He studied at Tsinghua University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook before leaving doctoral study to work in the chip industry.

In 2004, Zhu founded the company that would become GigaDevice in a garage in Milpitas, California, with $100,000 in angel investment. When the startup ran short of money, a manager at Tsinghua University's incubator offered funding on the condition that Zhu relocate it to China.

He moved to Beijing with slightly less than $1 million and formally launched GigaDevice in 2005. The company later became a major chip designer and listed in Shanghai in 2016.

By then, Zhu was preparing the venture that would become CXMT. His background helps explain the technical and commercial foundations of the company, but CXMT's current importance extends far beyond its founder.

The company is now a test of two competing strategies.

For Beijing, CXMT is evidence that sustained financing, domestic procurement and industrial policy can produce a viable alternative to foreign chip suppliers. For Washington, its rise raises questions about whether export controls are containing China's technological progress or merely encouraging Chinese companies to build around them.

CXMT's growing profile increases both its opportunities and its risks. Interest from customers such as Apple would validate its technology and give it greater international credibility. But deeper integration into global supply chains would also expose the company to more scrutiny over ownership, security and intellectual property.

The Pentagon blacklist and the South Korean leak allegations show how quickly commercial progress can become a geopolitical liability.

CXMT does not need to overtake Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron to alter the global market. Establishing a dependable Chinese source of memory chips would reduce Beijing's reliance on foreign manufacturers, strengthen domestic equipment suppliers and weaken one source of US leverage.

Zhu Yiming, second right, at GigaDevice’s listing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Jan. 13, 2026.Photographer: Li Xukui/NBD/VCG/Getty Images Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 17:20

US Officials Say Iran's Ahmadinejad Was Mossad Asset, Met With Intel Chief In Hungary

Iran's former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of all people? 

The New York Times is out with a bombshell report on Monday which alleges that Israel's Mossad has for years sought to cultivate him as an Israeli intelligence asset.

Flash90

The apparent multi-year effort to recruit and re-install Ahmadinejad as leader of Iran has come to nothing, at a moment his status and fate remains unclear amid the fog of war, and after a prior US-Israeli strike on his house during the opening salvos of Operation Epic Fury resulted in him being whisked away from his Tehran neighborhood by his bodyguards.

The story, which cites US officials who are for whatever reason choosing this moment to 'leak' the insider info, begins in the following:

In early 2024, the rector of a university in Budapest received a startling request from a top Hungarian government official.

The official told the rector, Professor Gergely Deli, that Ludovika University of Public Service should hold a climate change conference and extend an invitation to an unlikely guest: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the widely reviled former president of Iran.

Even more shocking was the reason. The official told Mr. Deli that the conference was merely a front for Mr. Ahmadinejad to have secret discussions in Budapest with intelligence operatives from Israel, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s avowed enemy.

Back in early March, there were even some (premature) headlines of his death, saying he was 'assassinated' at a moment he was under house arrest at his residence. Supposedly this is what 'freed' him, and since then his whereabouts are unknown.

However, regional reports say he did attend the funeral of slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month, and was briefly spotted surrounded by guards while wearing a mask and heavy coat.

The Mossad plot goes all the way back to 2022, NYT detailed based on the sources, and the suggestion is that he played along - seeing some kind of foreign intervention as his path back to leadership over the country. His house arrest sprung from the Iranian government being suspicious of contacts with the Israeli government.

He received Israeli financial support to cover travel and accommodation expenses while going to meet with Israeli operatives in Europe - which Israel prioritized to such an extent that even then-Mossad Director David Barnea personally met Ahmadinejad in the Hungarian capital in 2024. The NYT says that the CIA was eventually read in to the high-risk plan.

But upon the start of Operation Epic Fury and the bombing of his home, Ahmadinejad reportedly soured on the plan - becoming distrustful of the Israelis - and saw it as unrealistic.

From Mossad's point of view, he could emerge as a controllable puppet and new 'face' of the Islamic Republic regime, despite is prior well-documented rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel and advancement of Iran's nuclear program.

The more believable aspect to this whole alleged saga is that Ahmadinejad was top of the list of West-Israel 'favored' candidates to lead Iran after he personally praised President Trump in a 2019 interview, and argued for a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington.

"Mr Trump is a man of action," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying. "He is a businessman and therefore he is capable of calculating cost-benefits and making a decision. We say to him, let’s calculate the long-term cost-benefit of our two nations and not be shortsighted."

If Ahmedinejad was a Mossad asset, then everyone could be one?

This is like straight out of a movie. Mind blowing. https://t.co/RU9glcEGyG

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) July 13, 2026

Apparently some of the aspects which made him a candidate, or potential future US-Israeli puppet in Tehran (Delcy Rodriguez-style), was that he had been barred three times from running for president by Iran's unelected 12-member Guardian Council (in 2017, 2021, and 2024). Following his 2017 disqualification, he apparently flipped, becoming a highly vocal critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

This isn't the first time the NY Times has floated this story, but the publication is now seeking to fill in more details, apparently.

Amid the ongoing fog of war and heavy propaganda coming from all sides, this could simply by mythology - Hollywood script style - in order to continue sowing fragmentation, distrust, and discord among Iranian ranks. It wouldn't be the first time such a tall tale was spun for such purposes, and the whole thing ultimately will remain unverifiable, for likely at least years to come. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 16:40

Believe All Women - Unless They're Inconvenient

Authored by Frank Salvato via The American Spectator,

The political Left has spent years promoting the slogan "Believe All Women," using it as a powerful weapon against conservatives, especially during critical events like the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. But this mantra has never been about seeking justice or protecting victims; instead, it serves as a cynical tool for gaining power - a way to undermine opponents while conveniently overlooking the serial abusers, gropers, and predators within their own ranks.

When the alleged victims are conservative women, or when the accused belong to the "right" political party, the Left's proclaimed solidarity vanishes, replaced by silence, excuses, and even cover-ups. This hypocrisy is a fundamental aspect of a movement that prioritizes tribal loyalty over truth, power over principles, and narrative over the genuine suffering of women.

True protection for women requires consistency, evidence, and fairness - not selective blindness from those on the Left.

Take Joe Biden, the dilapidated standard-bearer of the Democrat Party. Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer, came forward with detailed allegations that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 by pinning her against a wall and digitally penetrating her. There was corroboration for her claims, including a friend she confided in at the time and a 1993 call to Larry King's show in which her mother referenced the incident.

However, the mainstream media, which claims to support the #BelieveWomen and the #MeToo movements, downplayed the story, questioned Reade's credibility, and defended Biden. The New York Times and the Washington Post published skeptical investigations that minimized Biden's pattern of "inappropriate touching" with multiple women. When Biden denied the allegations, the Left largely shrugged it off and continued to support him.

In contrast, any conservative accusation is met with immediate, intense scrutiny. Reade's claims posed a threat to the favorable image of their presidential candidate, so the media largely ignored them. Women only seem to matter when their stories align with the cause.

Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York who was once celebrated as "America's Governor" during the COVID-19 pandemic, faced credible allegations of sexual harassment from multiple women, including former staff members. These women described a troubling pattern of unwanted advances, groping, and a hostile work environment. Cuomo resigned amid the scandal; however, many Democrats rallied to his defense, with some downplaying the allegations as mere political attacks.

The media, which called for resignations in response to lesser offenses by conservatives, treated Cuomo's downfall as a reluctant necessity rather than a justified outrage. Where were the #BelieveAllWomen and #MeToo movements during this situation? Nowhere - because Cuomo was a powerful Democrat.

Al Franken, a comedian who later became a Senator, faced accusations from multiple women regarding inappropriate touching and forced kisses during his career in entertainment and politics. Photos surfaced of him mock-groping a sleeping colleague. Although Franken resigned from his position, many prominent voices on the Left, including some feminists, expressed regret over the loss of what they considered a "good man" and questioned whether the response was proportional. The urgency for judgment, typically directed at Republicans, was replaced by concerns about due process - only when it was convenient for their side.

Keith Ellison, a Congressman from Minnesota and former deputy chair of the Democrat National Committee, faced serious domestic abuse allegations from his ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan. Her son claimed to have witnessed a video showing Ellison dragging her off a bed by her feet while shouting obscenities and making threats. Medical records and text messages supported aspects of her claims of abuse. Ellison denied all the allegations, and many on the left largely ignored the situation. As a rising star in progressive circles, his actions went overlooked.

There was no sustained outrage or calls for investigation from the usual advocates. In contrast, conservative women making similar allegations would likely have faced heavy scrutiny. Monahan, Ellison's alleged victim, faded into the background.

Eric Swalwell, the California Democrat, continues to face mounting scandals. Multiple women, including a former staffer, have accused him of sexual misconduct, ranging from sending naked, unsolicited messages to rape while the women were intoxicated or incapacitated. One woman provided a detailed account of being assaulted in a hotel room, which is corroborated by texts and eyewitnesses. Although Swalwell has denied these allegations, the consistent pattern raises serious concerns about entitlement.

Despite this troubling situation, the partisan machinery that typically amplifies accusations against conservatives has reacted sluggishly. Swalwell remains prominent in Leftist and Democrat circles, and his ambitions have only recently faced setbacks.

Even Graham Platner, the Democrat Senate nominee in Maine challenging Susan Collins, exposes the farce. Platner enjoyed robust support from the progressive apparatus, including Bernie Sanders allies, as a populist veteran and oysterman - until Jenny Racicot, a Maine woman from the Left who had dated him, came forward with a rape allegation. She detailed how in 2021, an intoxicated Platner entered her home uninvited, ignored her repeated objections, and forced himself on her despite her clear refusal. Only after this credible accusation from within their own camp - reported by outlets like Politico - did the Democrat establishment and mainstream media, including the New York Times, finally cease their backing, with calls for him to withdraw flooding in.

Prior controversies, including other troubling claims about their relationship, hadn't stopped them. But a Democrat woman's direct rape accusation? That finally pierced the protective bubble. The selective timing reveals everything: their #BelieveAllWomen and #MeToo piety is reserved for enemies, not inconvenient allies.

Conservative women, such as those who were criticized during the #MeToo movement or attacked for supporting America First policies, find little support from the Left. The Kavanaugh hearings demonstrated the strategy: use unproven allegations against those who threaten the agenda, and then discard principles when they implicate allies. The media-Democrat complex doesn't genuinely "believe all women"; rather, it selectively supports women at the right time for political gain; for the political "kill shot." Victims who do not fit this narrative - whether they are Republican, conservative, or simply inconvenient - are often dismissed as liars, opportunists, or fabricators; dragged through the mud into the public square.

This hypocrisy undermines trust in institutions - especially the media - and the experiences of genuine victims. Real abuse exists and deserves serious investigation with due process, rather than being used for partisan gain.

The Left's #BelieveAllWomen and #MeToo movements were never based on principles; instead, they served as a performative tactic to consolidate power. They overlook crimes against conservative women because acknowledging those victims would expose the underlying hypocrisy. This mandate only applies when it supports the Marxist, identity-focused agenda that reduces women to mere props in a cultural battle.

True protection for women requires consistency, evidence, and fairness - not selective blindness from those on the Left who preach empathy while practicing ruthless expediency.

Their silence regarding their own predators speaks volumes: power always trumps principle.

Frank Salvato is a 30-year independent journalist focused on constitutionalism and threats to the free West.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 16:20

Appeals Court Revives Tylenol Autism Lawsuits Against Kenvue

A federal appeals court has breathed new life into litigation accusing Kenvue of failing to disclose alleged risks tied to taking Tylenol during pregnancy, reversing an earlier ruling that had effectively stopped hundreds of cases, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

On Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the trial judge went too far in throwing out testimony from three expert witnesses. The panel said the experts relied on recognized scientific approaches and that disagreements over how to interpret the available research should be weighed through the legal process rather than dismissed outright. The lawsuits will now return to the lower court.

The decision overturns a 2023 ruling that prevented roughly 500 claims from moving forward against Kenvue, the consumer health business that was spun off from Johnson & Johnson. Bloomberg Intelligence has previously estimated that the company could ultimately face thousands of similar lawsuits, creating the potential for billions of dollars in legal exposure.

Bloomberg notes that attorneys representing the plaintiffs said the appeals court recognized that their experts relied on legitimate scientific evidence. Kenvue countered that the ruling was procedural, not a finding that Tylenol causes autism or ADHD. The company continues to argue that the best available independent research has not established a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Recall back in September we noted when President Donald Trump advised pregnant women to avoid Tylenol, bringing renewed public attention to a debate that has divided researchers.Even so, many medical experts and large reviews of existing studies continue to say the evidence does not demonstrate that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes autism, ADHD, or similar developmental conditions.

"With Tylenol, don't take it, don't take it," Trump said last year, adding that the FDA would issue a notice to physicians over the risk of acetaminophen during pregnancy, and begin the process to make a safety label change. "I think we've found an answer to autism."

In October, we noted that in a Feb. 8, 2018, email obtained by The Epoch Times, Rachel Weinstein, director of epidemiology at Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen, wrote, “The weight of evidence is starting to feel heavy to me.”

Weinstein was emailing Jesse Berlin, Johnson & Johnson’s global head of epidemiology, about a review that concluded that nine studies suggested that use of acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol—by pregnant women was linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental issues in the women’s children.

The legal battle is unfolding while Kimberly-Clark works to complete its planned $40 billion purchase of Kenvue. The company has said it reviewed the potential litigation risks before agreeing to the acquisition.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 15:45

US Energy Efficiency: We Have Come A Long Way

Via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The graph below paints a very interesting picture of US energy efficiency and a key structural economic change in this country.

For roughly 25 years after WWII, the US economy’s crude oil consumption nearly tripled. Feeding the growth were a booming post-war economy and strong population growth.

To put consumption in a different context, the graph shows consumption as a ratio to a dollar of real GDP, on a per capita basis.

It shows that consumption per dollar of GDP declined rapidly starting in the mid-1970s, suggesting an increase in US energy efficiency.

The US per capita energy efficiency is less pronounced but noticeable.

In addition to productivity gains and urbanization, there are a few reasons for the gains in efficiency.

• The 1973 Arab oil embargo was a shock to the economy. During this time, a quadrupling of gas prices and long gas lines forced policymakers and consumers to treat oil as a strategic vulnerability rather than a cheap given.

• Washington enacted numerous measures in response to persistently high oil prices in the 1970s. For instance, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 mandated US energy efficiency standards for appliances and introduced fuel-economy standards. Legislators also encouraged a shift from oil and natural gas to coal for power generation. Utilities largely stopped building oil-fired plants.

• Structural change was equally important. The economy shifted from heavy manufacturing to services and technology, sectors that require far less energy per dollar of output.

Ironically, AI data centers are now driving a renewed focus on efficiency, this time with natural gas and renewables.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 15:25

Credit Card Chargebacks Surge As E-Commerce & Cashless Society Gets Messy For Consumers

US consumers are disputing card purchases at a record pace, as online fraud, confusing billing practices, and sneaky subscription charges drive a surge in chargebacks.

Bloomberg cites new data from research firm Juniper Research on consumers' aggressive use of chargebacks. Last year alone, US consumers filed 158 million transaction disputes, up 29% from 2021 and outpacing overall growth in card spending. Global disputes jumped 46% over the same period.

The increase may reflect not only more legitimate fraud but also subscription traps, unfamiliar merchant names, poor service, and "friendly fraud," in which shoppers mistakenly or knowingly challenge legitimate purchases.

The report continued:

Some of this growth in reported fraud is indeed a reflection of growth in real fraud. More people are getting scammed, especially online.

But according to Michael Greenwood, a senior research analyst at Juniper who focuses on digital payments, that's not the main source of dispute rates. Instead he points to two other phenomena responsible for the ballooning number of chargebacks: growing confusion among consumers over how the transactions on their monthly statements correspond to their actual purchases, as well as an increasing willingness, especially among younger shoppers, to engage in a little bit of fraud of their own.

Rising chargebacks may also signal growing consumer stress, as online fraud and distrust of merchants increase. This appears to be one of the drawbacks of going cashless for some people in the era of e-commerce. Some shoppers are struggling with subscription traps, unclear billing, and deteriorating service, while a growing share are also using disputes to reverse legitimate purchases.

The spike in chargebacks is also hurting retailers, resulting in higher fraud losses and processing costs.

Business revolt? 

Meanwhile, consumers are carrying near-record credit card balances as inflation remains elevated. The average credit card interest rate is hovering near a record high of 22%.

The good news is that consumer credit figures in May fell for the first time since Nov. 2024 as interest rates spiked.

So one drawback of e-commerce and an increasingly cashless economy is the rise in chargebacks. Digital transactions create more opportunities for fraud, billing confusion, and subscription disputes.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 15:05

Mick Jagger Has Some Sage Advice For Trump-Hater Springsteen

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Mick Jagger is pushing back against the trend of rock stars turning stages into campaign rallies, offering a refreshing contrast to Bruce Springsteen's repeated anti-Trump outbursts.

In a recent New York Times podcast interview, Jagger made his position crystal clear. While contrasting his approach with Springsteen's, he stated: "My job in the live music world is for those people that come to have the best time ... And you don't want to lecture them."

Mick Jagger Says It's Not His Job to Lecture Rolling Stones' Fans on Politics

NYT: "Bruce Springsteen clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back and forth."

MICK JAGGER: "My job in the live music world is for those people that come to have the best time ... And you... pic.twitter.com/PmNaTgLjs7

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 11, 2026

This comes as Springsteen has made a habit of injecting leftist political commentary into his shows, often targeting President Trump and his administration.

From calling Trump "treasonous and corrupt" during his European tour to labeling America itself a "reckless, unpredictable, predatory, untrustworthy, rogue nation" in a DC concert, the so called Boss has turned performances into platforms for activism.

Grammy-winning musician Bruce Springsteen began his European tour by calling President Donald Trump a "treasonous and corrupt" leader.

Springsteen urged the crowd to rise up, speak out against authoritarianism, and "let freedom ring."

Springsteen has supported every Democratic... pic.twitter.com/eSRpQuFGQl

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) May 15, 2025

Bruce Springsteen goes on anti-Trump tirade mid-concert.

pic.twitter.com/6LKM0MuZXg

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 15, 2025

Leftist activist Bruce Springsteen went on an unhinged anti-Trump rant during his recent DC concert, calling America a "reckless, unpredictable, predatory, untrustworthy, rogue nation." pic.twitter.com/wkolcjuh5S

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 29, 2026

Springsteen has relied on a teleprompter for his anti-Trump and anti-billionaire rants, scripting attacks on the "richest men in America" and claims about a president who "cannot handle the truth."

Billionaire Bruce Springsteen uses a teleprompter to read a script bashing Trump and billionaires.

"The richest men in America have abandoned the world's poorest children to death and disease...We have a President who cannot handle the truth." pic.twitter.com/VJPm443zst

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 26, 2026

His latest efforts include an angry 'look at my serious playing face' anti-ICE music video titled "Streets Of Minneapolis," railing against the Trump administration.

JUST IN: Singer Bruce Springsteen releases angry, highly political new anti-ICE music video titled "Streets Of Minneapolis," which was uploaded to YouTube.

Springsteen raged against the Trump administration and called some out by name in the song.

The Hollywood clown... pic.twitter.com/wRGlqRccU9

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 29, 2026

Trump has continually clapped back at Springsteen's criticisms.

Trump goes off on Bruce Springsteen: pic.twitter.com/CQurpihfvZ

— johnny maga (@johnnymaga) April 2, 2026

Never forget that Springsteen was among those pushing strict COVID-era restrictions, endorsing concerts limited to the fully masked and vaccinated.

@springsteen is a pedantic tool of govt oppression pic.twitter.com/7k90sMYXZg

— David Dougherty (@Nahanchi7068) July 11, 2026

Fans and commentators have taken notice of Jagger's stance, with many applauding the decision to prioritize the audience's enjoyment over boring lefty sermons.

He gets it. pic.twitter.com/nQFv6sAqyL

— Dennis Michels (@lonecavalryman) July 11, 2026

Springsteen is not engaging in a meaningful back and forth, he's engaging in lies and propaganda.

— Matt Marsden (@matt_marsden123) July 12, 2026

Jagger's been around the block enough times to know how that sort of thing plays out. He's witnessed first hand what happens when musicians lose themselves in political messaging. Good on him for not stepping in it.

— ConquestBarbie (@DParadisio43137) July 12, 2026

Too bad more musicians and actors don't heed Jagger's advice. I have zero interest in supporting any entertainment personality who thinks they have some moral high ground obligation to tell me who I can support politically. It's none of their GD business.

— Sherry Kerdman (@sherry_kerdman) July 11, 2026

Mick knows. I was at a private event where U2 played and the entire show they used the monitors and interstitial comments to tell me to give all my money to Democrats and eradicate the evil that is Trump. Fuck them. pic.twitter.com/5WEhW5pcpU

— Todd Ensz (@EnszTodd) July 11, 2026

Jagger's comments strike a chord in an era where many entertainers seem more focused on pushing ideology than delivering the escapist joy fans pay for.

While Springsteen sees his role as political engagement, Jagger understands that most concertgoers want to rock out, not endure lectures - especially from multimillionaire performers far removed from everyday struggles.

This divide highlights a broader fatigue with celebrities who lecture from their bubbles while ignoring their own inconsistencies. America First means putting fans and freedom first, not turning every stage into a partisan soapbox. Jagger gets it. More should follow.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/13/2026 - 14:45