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

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

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

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

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

Atlas is also not entirely new to our readers.

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

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

Heavy water, no enrichment

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

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

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

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

The fuel/supply chain catch

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

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

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

The Canadians are coming

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

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

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

The money keeps flowing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Nicholas Zifcak via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Commemorates Columbus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government should not be price-fixing consumer products.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

Indians Panic After Trump Sabotages Tech Firm Green Card Pipeline

Indians Panic After Trump Sabotages Tech Firm Green Card Pipeline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

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

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

She said fewer than 400 of them voted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

County officials will review those records one by one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dossier Source Scrutiny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Bell County Sheriff's Department

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

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

Pentagon Unveils $350 Million In Quantum Computing Initiatives

Pentagon Unveils $350 Million In Quantum Computing Initiatives

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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