Aug 07

Today’s News 7th August 2024

  • The Day After A Nuke Goes Off In Space
    The Day After A Nuke Goes Off In Space

    Authored by Luke Widenhouse via RealClearDefense,

    In February, it was revealed that Russia has been developing a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon. The Biden administration’s response has focused mainly on arms control efforts aimed at preventing Russia from acquiring a space-based nuclear weapon in the first place. These efforts are important, but they are also insufficient. Steps must be taken now to prepare for the possibility that diplomacy fails. Nuclear anti-satellite weapons have the potential to fundamentally alter existing nuclear paradigms, creating a much more destabilizing environment than exists today. The U.S. must take action now to ensure it is ready to deal with the challenges posed by nuclear weapons in space. By preparing now, before nukes are put in orbit, the U.S. can better work to prevent such a day from ever happening at all.

    U.S. deterrence strategy has long centered on its ability to tailor both conventional and nuclear response options to a wide range of different contingencies, as well as deliberate ambiguity surrounding when it would use nuclear weapons. Both these concepts would be thrown out the window if a nuclear anti-satellite weapon were detonated today. While the exact capabilities of Russia’s space weapon are unknown, it is likely to pose as much a threat to its own satellites as it is those of the United States.

    In May, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb testified that Russia’s weapon would be “indiscriminate,” and “pose a threat to all satellites operated by countries and companies around the globe.” The U.S. would therefore likely be left without the ability to retaliate against Russia in space if it detonated its weapon. The only option would be to strike targets on the ground. At present, conventional U.S. forces rely heavily on access to satellite-provided GPS, intelligence, and communications. A conventional strike in this environment would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to carry out. A nuclear strike would be more feasible (though also challenging). A serious conversation should address whether a surface nuclear strike would be an appropriate response to a nuclear attack that does not directly kill people on Earth.

    However, it is still critical that the president retain a variety of options to respond to the use of such a weapon. Thus, central to deterrence in a world of nuclear anti-satellite weapons will be the ability of conventional military forces to operate without access to satellites.

    If satellites went down in the aftermath of the detonation of a nuclear space weapon, the ability of long-range strike fighter aircraft and bombers to carry out non-nuclear surface attacks against enemy targets would be crucial to maintaining the option of a conventional response to such an action. There have been some efforts to improve the ability of U.S. forces to fight in an environment without access to space, but these have been limited compared to activities aimed at maintaining such access. The latter efforts are important, but they will likely not be options once a nuclear anti-satellite weapon goes off.

    The Navy and Air Force, with support from the Space Force, should wargame different “denied space” contingencies aimed at learning how to operate in an environment without access to satellites. The lessons from these wargames should then be applied and continued in actual live military exercises. These exercises would be aimed both at training pilots, aircrews, and commanders to conduct operations in a denied space environment but would also demonstrate to Russia and other potential U.S. adversaries that it will always have the option of retaliating with varying degrees of force to any type of nuclear aggression.

    The U.S. should continue pursuing arms control efforts aimed at preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in space. However, it must also be prepared for the possibility that these efforts fail. By preparing conventional strike fighter assets to conduct operations in a denied space environment, the U.S. will be adequately ready for a world where nuclear weapons are orbiting the Earth.

    Luke Widenhouse is a research assistant at the Yorktown Institute and rising senior at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 23:25

  • These Are The Most Dangerous Jobs In The US
    These Are The Most Dangerous Jobs In The US

    Some jobs inherently carry significant risks due to factors such as hazardous working conditions, exposure to harmful substances, and the physical demands of the tasks.

    Unfortunately, work injuries can sometimes be fatal, with the the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recording 5,486 fatal work injuries in 2022.

    2022 saw a 5.7% increase from the 5,190 fatal work injuries in 2021, and meant that a worker died every 96 minutes from a work-related injury that year.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, visualizes the six occupations in the U.S. with the highest rates of fatal work injuries per 100,000 full-time workers, and their number of fatal work injuries in 2022.

    The figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and are updated as of December 2023.

    What are the Most Dangerous Jobs in the United States?

    Some of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. involve significant physical labor and working in hazardous environments, like loggers, roofers, and fishing and hunting workers.

    Many of these jobs also are usually done in isolated areas, like logging and fishing, where access to emergency medical attention is limited.

    While logging workers saw the highest fatal work injury rate, over 1,000 truck drivers died due to work injuries in 2022—the most fatalities out of any occupation.

    Operating extremely large vehicles for many hours, often in remote and unfamiliar areas, are some factors that contribute to the dangerous nature of truck driving as an occupation.

    Transportation incidents remained the most frequent type of fatal event accounting for 38% of all occupational fatalities. In 2022, there were 2,066 fatal injuries from transportation incidents, a 4.2% increase from 1,982 in 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 23:00

  • Capitulation: Yen Plunges, Nikkei Soars After BOJ's Uchida Says "Will Not Raise Rates When Markets Are Unstable"
    Capitulation: Yen Plunges, Nikkei Soars After BOJ’s Uchida Says “Will Not Raise Rates When Markets Are Unstable”

    It hasn’t been even a full week since the BOJ’s catastrophic decision to hike rates by 25bps in a slowing, deflating economy, a decision which we said the BOJ would make for purely political reasons, yet which touched on in our preview last week….

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    … a decision which we also said would be reversed on very short notice…

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    … once the Japanese stock markets crashed after the weekend, just as expected…

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    … and not just any crash but the biggest point crash in Nikkei and Topix history, surpassing even Black Monday and guaranteeing that whatever political considerations were prevalent when the BOJ decided to throw away its own rulebook and follow political pressure to spike the yen in order to contain inflation – while also crashing the stock market by 20% in 3 days – would be promptly overruled and the BOJ would capitulate in due course, as we explained just last night in “After A “Perfect Storm In The Vol Market”, Goldman Says “We Are About To Enter The Central Bank Response Phase“, in which we wrote that “we are not going down because of recession but because of an unwind of circa 20trilion carry trades” adding that “only BOJ can stop this.”

    And while we were correct in predicting that “the BOJ has no choice and is merely prolonging the inevitable”…

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    … little did we know just how soon the BOJ would stop prolonging the inevitable – and admit it has no choice – because less than a day later, the Japanese central bank confirmed everything we said in the past 72 hours when BOJ Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida capitulated shortly after 10am local time, when, pressed for answers to the ongoing market collapse, he sent a strong dovish signal in the wake of historic financial market volatility in Japan by pledging to refrain from hiking interest rates when the markets are unstable.

    Uchida tried to save face, but in the end the only thing the market heard is that rate hikes are basically over after last week’s teeny, tiny 10-25bps rate increase unleashed a global deflationary tsunami and crashed Japan’s market.

    “I believe that the bank needs to maintain monetary easing with the current policy interest rate for the time being, with developments in financial and capital markets at home and abroad being extremely volatile,” Uchida said in a speech Wednesday to local business leaders in Hakodate, northern Japan, where apparently he did not make a Freudian slip confusing “tightening” with “easing” because he actually did mean easing!

    Uchida spoke after Japanese stocks crashed in predictable reaction to the BOJ crushing the yen carry trade… or rather predictable to anyone but the erudite policymakers at the BOJ.

    More importantly, the deputy chief suggested that the bank will carefully consider the state of financial markets in future decisions on rate policy, and as noted above, will refrain from any more rate hikes when markets are unstable.

    “In contrast to the process of policy interest rate hikes in Europe and the United States, Japan’s economy is not in a situation where the bank may fall behind the curve if it does not raise the policy interest rate at a certain pace,” Uchida said. “Therefore, the bank will not raise its policy interest rate when financial and capital markets are unstable.”

    Well, dear central banker, a quick primer: this is called passive aggressive forward guidance. The Japanese market will now NEVER become “stable”, in doing so preventing any more rate hikes, and in fact will become so unstable the BOJ will have to cut again.

    According to Bloomberg, Uchida, a dovish veteran policy architect, who was heavily involved with designing the BOJ’s massive monetary easing program that ran for more than a decade, is widely known for playing a prominent role in mapping out Governor Ueda’s journey toward normalizing policy. The BOJ ended the ultraeasy policy in March with its first hike in 17 years. And it now appears that the BOJ’s attempts to renormalize policy ended with a thud on the morning of August 7.

    For confirmation one has to look no further than the yen which immediately tumbled by more than 2% against the dollar…

    …. and Japanese stocks soared immediately after his comments…

    … which were not only the first public remarks by a BOJ board member since the bank hiked interest rates on July 31, but also the first remarks to admit that last week’s rate hike had been a catastrophic policy error.

    And now, we sit back and watch as the carry trade is put back on, and the BOJ desperately tries to refloat the $20 trillion carry trade titanic which as we reported on Sunday night, is now in the process of sinking. The good news, at least for the Kamala administration, is that the BOJ’s panicked concession will enable US stocks to surge once again as the carry trade is promptly re-established.

    The sellside brigades, especially those who were predicting a 130 USDJPY in the very near future, were quick to jump on the realization that the BOJ just capitulated:

    • According to Credit Agricole CIB, Uchida comment confirms the BOJ will likely be gun-shy about hiking rates again soon (or ever) which will weigh on the the yen.
      • “The 3-way meeting between the FSA, MOF and BOJ left the BoJ substantially chastized with new Vice Minister for International Affairs, Mimura, saying the BoJ will pay attention to the volatility in financial markets,” said the bank’s FX strategist David Forrester.
    • The Bank of Singapore also chimed in, writing that “the outsized yen rally is making policymakers uncomfortable”, which is evident from BOJ Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida’s comments on interest rates.
    • And the punchline comes from UBS trader Alex Limwho writes that “the last thing the BoJ wants is to be blamed for triggering one of the sharpest market selloffs that coincidentally followed its hawkish July 31 policy decision.” 
      • “Press reports [Bloomberg paywall] have earlier suggested that political pressure may have been a factor behind the BoJ’s decision to hike the key rate and taper JGBs at the same meeting.”
      • “Now the BoJ is clearly under pressure to respond to the market selloff and possibly to justify its previous hawkish policy decision.”

    Unfortunately for the BOJ, by admitting defeat it has just dug its own grave for the last time, and having capitulated on further tightening just because of a modest bear market in stocks, the full court press to short the yen is now back on and we expect it won’t stop until the currency hits new record lows in the very near future, with the BOJ now completely powerless to do anything as Japan’s hyperinflation finally kicks in.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 22:56

  • The Trump Assassination Attempt & The Kennedy Connection
    The Trump Assassination Attempt & The Kennedy Connection

    Authored by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann via American Greatness,

    It’s amazing. The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump happened a little more than three weeks ago. But if you follow the current coverage in the mainstream media, it’s like it never happened. The mainstream media has moved on. Of course, we’ve had a sitting president end his reelection bid and Kamala Harris ascend to the top spot without getting a single vote. This is the same as with her doomed 2020 bid when she exited the nominating race after getting eviscerated by Tulsi Gabbard in a pre-Iowa Democrat debate.

    All that Harris and her campaign surrogates can talk about is how “weird” JD Vance is. This coming from a candidate who made a pre-taped campaign announcement on RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s these Democrat parrots like Donny Deutsch and other droids on MSNBC that have ZERO self-awareness. Their narratives have effectively been debunked.

    With that being said, you won’t see this on MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, or just about any MSM broadcast, online outlet, or in print. Those outlets will continue with their Trump-as-Hitler narrative every day up to November 5.

    The circumstances surrounding the attempted assassination of Trump and the successful assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 23, 1963, are shockingly similar.

    We are still waiting for information on all of the serial failures to protect Trump as well as the actions taken by the shooter in the days leading to the attack, but the motivations of our government seem to be very similar.

    It is historically known that Kennedy tried to reduce U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War after the Cuban Missile Crisis and his worry that a nuclear exchange with the Soviets would result in catastrophic loss of life. This compelled him to strongly resist a military-industrial complex comprised of government institutions and wealthy corporate interests that were invested in escalating the Vietnam War effort and keeping the weapons and hardware flowing.

    Kennedy made a lot of enemies in government, trying to reform systems that were in place for decades and angering a lot of powerful groups that were heavily invested in America’s war machine. Starting right after the end of World War II, through the establishment of the CIA 76 years ago in 1947, the CIA has been the central linchpin of the U.S. Intelligence community (IC), the so-called Deep State that is accountable to no one (not the president, either House of Congress, or any other serious oversight organization.)

    Kennedy pledged to reform the intelligence community (IC) after the Bay of Pigs fiasco that took place under the lead of the IC as a way to depose Fidel Castro. Kennedy was appalled at the usurpation of his authority and made it clear that change was going to come.

    We know how this ended. Kennedy’s hurriedly planned visit to Dallas, driven through an unsecured area, in an unprotected, open-air limousine, with very little Secret Service protection, and in line of sight of buildings with multiple opportunities for snipers to hide. If our government did not intend for this assassination to happen, it certainly laid out a very workable plan to fatally ambush Kennedy that could not have been more perfect.

    Which brings us to Trump’s brush with death on July 13. In his first term, Trump made efforts to reform the Deep State to at least slow down the expansion of government size and the intrusion into the lives of American citizens. He put the Pentagon on notice to stop warmongering in foreign lands.

    He ordered NATO countries to start paying their fair share of America’s commitment to protect them. He slowed the influx of illegal aliens, infuriating a welfare bureaucracy counting on an ever-growing underclass of immigrants to justify their existence.

    Trump made a lot of enemies in government just as Kennedy had by trying to reform many of the same systems and angering many of the same moneyed interests. With four years of experience in dealing with these Deep State operators and now knowing how to really reform the administrative state, Trump has a lot of career bureaucrats worried about their jobs, perks, and power. And now Trump looks to be unbeatable in the coming election, even with the soft coup with Democrat power brokers—Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, and others—despite the current media infatuation and love fest with Cackling Kamala.

    It is not unreasonable to assume that the organized left operation that runs the federal government from the shadows of Washington, D.C.—which sought to remove Trump from state ballots, drive him into bankruptcy, imprison him, frame him as an asset of Russia, compare him to Hitler, portray him as an existential threat to democracy, and accuse him of an insurrection—would be desperate enough to recruit an Oswald-like patsy to kill him and make sure he had the opportunity to do it.

    Let’s remember that these are the same reprehensible people who have spent the last eight years telling us that Trump is a unique threat to all Americans and will imprison his rivals and act as a dictator.

    Are they capable of murder? Of course they are. That is why they are demanding that all discussion of the assassination attempt be stopped and that the serial failures of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) not be explored by anyone. Three sessions before Congress have shown us the game of CYA (cover your ass) going on by the members of the Deep State who have already testified, including disgraced former Unites States Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle, current FBI director Chris Wray, and Cheatle’s replacement, acting USSS Director Ronald Rowe.

    • Serial failures such as:

    • Why repeated requests for additional USSS resources were denied by the Biden White House,

    • Why Trump’s regular USSS team was replaced by a veritable B-team of ill-trained and equipped agents, including three short females who could not holster their weapons, with one cowering behind Trump as shots were being fired at him,

    • How an obvious high-elevation perch only 450 feet away from the rally podium with unobstructed line-of-sight was left unguarded,

    • How a 20-year-old with a long rifle and a ladder could enter a secured perimeter,

    • How the shooter was seen by rally attendees over an hour before the attack, all the while shouting to law enforcement that milled around but did nothing to confront the shooter,

    • How the shooter was identified by police snipers at 5:51 PM, before Donald Trump, the most famous person in the world and the most targeted by his enemies, took the stage at 6:02 PM, without telling him or preventing him from taking the podium,

    • How the police snipers had the shooter in their scopes for minutes but waited until after the attack at 6:11 PM, after eight shots were made, before finally neutralizing him,

    • Why the USSS chose not to record their radio communications on this particular day at this particular rally, and,

    • Why Congressional investigators cannot get any straight answers from either USSS or DHS leadership on how this could have happened.

    Only after the assassination attempt failed were Democrats power brokers like Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries successful in forcing Biden out of the presidential race at the behest of the Democrat donor class. Now the question is: will Biden actually serve out his term until January 20, 2025? Biden looked confused when meeting the released Russian hostages at Joint Base Andrews last week, ceding lead at the event to Vice President Harris.

    We can surmise that the Secret Service is either completely inept or that it cooperated in a conspiracy to allow for the assassination of a man that the Biden administration wanted stopped after everything else had failed and after he became inevitable as the next elected president.

    The entire scenario stinks of conspiracy and cover-up. This is not something we say lightly.

    There is no excuse for such a blatant failure to protect the most famous and targeted person in the world. The USSS operates under a $3 billion yearly budget. There is no shortage of resources, human or otherwise, that can justify such incompetence and dereliction of duty. What the testimony found was that the USSS is plagued by management ineptitude. As a place to work in the Federal government, it ranks 319 out of 320 government agencies.

    How do we move forward from here? Well, we don’t need a Warren Commission to whitewash this stunning attempt to neutralize the Republican front-runner. We don’t need a compliant legacy media to call this a “Republicans pounce” moment or to minimize their role in ratcheting up the Trump hate on their platforms. We don’t need a sorely compromised FBI to investigate this horrific attempt on Trump’s life—the same FBI that is also known for calling Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation” and raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for FBI-doctored evidence of classified documents.

    Will a House of Representatives probe get to the truth? It might but we’re not holding our breath for that to happen.

    What we need here is for someone to come clean. And that someone, interestingly enough, could be Kimberly Cheatle. Yes, the former director of the USSS herself.

    Why did she resign as director if there was no malfeasance or conspiracy to kill Trump? As director of the USSS, she reported to the head of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas. All USSS plans for events, such as the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, would have been signed off by Mayorkas or someone within his direct management. By resigning her post and, assumingly, receiving some form of immunity from prosecution, she could expose the entire plot. A lot of heads could roll.

    Or not. As we’ve seen, it’s hard for anyone in government—and Democrat administrations in particular—to face accountability for failure. Even a failed attempt to murder the most famous person in the world live on television. If not for a turn of his head, history would have been far different. As a nation, we literally dodged a bullet.

    A bullet that would have resulted in a civil war that would have generated untold acrimony and violence among otherwise peace-seeking patriots. A bullet that would have changed the entire world order. A bullet that would have pulled the mask away from the ridiculous notion that we are being led by a responsible and accountable government that everyone would have finally realized was a fraud.

    Is this what our so-called leaders have wanted all along?

    One has to wonder. What interesting times we live in.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 22:35

  • The Post-Coup Political Violence In Bangladesh Bodes Ill For Its Future Direction
    The Post-Coup Political Violence In Bangladesh Bodes Ill For Its Future Direction

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

    The resignation of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday and her government’s replacement with a military-led interim administration was followed by a spree of political violence. The parliament was taken over, Hasina’s palace was stormed, some of the former ruling party’s offices and the homes of its members were looted, and minority Hindus were attacked. Despite being regrettable, retributive political violence and the targeting of minorities are predictable in “revolutionary” situations.

    What few could have foreseen though was that symbols of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who’s known as “Bangabandhu” and is revered as the Father of the Nation, were also attacked. This included vandalism against his statues and murals as well as the burning of his memorial museum in the capital, which used to be his home and from where he declared Bangladesh’s independence.  Even though he was Hasina’s father, he’s not guilty of the crimes that the so-called “peaceful pro-democracy protesters” accuse her of.

    Some hated him at the time for his secularism as well as his non-Western alignment, thus explaining his assassination in 1975 and the military coup that followed, but much of that anger has passed since most of the population wasn’t even born by then and therefore has no personal memory of him. Regardless of whatever any Bangladeshi’s views might be about his policies, Bangabandhu is still the Father of the Nation, and targeting his symbols during the latest unrest bodes ill for Bangladesh’s future direction.

    Only religious and political extremists would attack his symbols, which discredits the participants’ claims that they’re “peaceful pro-democracy protesters” and lends credence to Hasina’s that they’re actually radical anti-state forces. What happened bears all the hallmarks of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and their allies. They’ve been accused of cavorting with religious extremists and being political radicals, the claims of which aren’t unfounded.

    The party’s founder Ziaur Rahman implemented Islamist policies upon coming to power two years after Bangabandhu’s assassination and then pivoted towards the West (including its then-Arab and -Chinese partners at the time). The rivalry between the BNP and Bangabandhu’s Awami League (AL) has remained a constant since then, as has the threat posed by the legally contentious Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) movement, which is comprised of Pakistani loyalists who later allied with the BNP due to its Islamist policies.

    Nevertheless, attacking Bangabandhu’s symbols in such a high-profile way at this crucial moment in national history sends the message that political violence will continue, with none of the AL’s supporters being safe. Unless the military can restore order, and it’s too early to tell even though everything appears to be moving in that direction, then the BNP-JEI might go on a killing spree against the AL. A huge exodus to India could then follow, which risks destabilizing already demographically tense border regions.

    Even if that dark scenario doesn’t materialize, it’s clear that the BNP’s JEI foot soldiers won’t be pleased until their country erases the AL’s legacy of secularism and alignment with India. After all, that’s precisely what Bangabandhu represents, so targeting his symbols conveys their hatred of those policies and implies that some level of unrest might continue so long as they remain in force. Bangladesh has the sovereign right to promulgate whatever policies it wants, but this mustn’t be done under pressure.

    It’s too early to predict whether the BNP-JEI will get all of what it wants, but the parliament in which the BNP didn’t participate due to boycotting January’s elections was just dissolved and its jailed leader was released right after, so it’s likely poised to play a role in the interim administration before new elections. In that event, the BNP and its JEI foot soldiers would stand a much greater chance of pressuring the authorities into distancing Bangladesh from India in some way, which could worsen regional tensions.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 22:10

  • Why Your Job Is More At Risk If You're Working Remote
    Why Your Job Is More At Risk If You’re Working Remote

    Authored by Mark Gilman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    No longer just a by-product of the pandemic, remote work has become a prevalent option for most workforces, with the expectation that nearly a quarter of all workers will be fully remote by 2025, according to a Forbes Advisor report.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik, Shutterstock)

    However, remote workers are also being laid off at a higher rate than in-house workers, according to data firm Live Data Technologies.

    In response, many workers have changed their work habits in an effort to stay relevant.

    Leslie Dunbar, a project manager for a national accounting practice based on the West Coast, told The Epoch Times that she has a specific daily ritual to ensure she’s viewed as a vital part of the team, though she’s based in the East Coast.

    “I work Pacific time hours by my own choice because that is when my boss and the rest of the team work,” she said.

    “No one asked me to do this. I was proactive in thinking through the adjustments I could make for myself that would help my success and the team’s success.”

    Terri Kurtzberg, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School, said that Ms. Dunbar’s strategy is “spot on,” but also says some burden for effective employee communication needs to be placed on the employer.

    “The out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem is very real. But it’s not realistic to say it didn’t work and just come back to the office,” Kurtzberg told The Epoch Times.

    “The billion-dollar question is, how do employers manage work without the intangibles that make employees comfortable and how do you know that the work is being done at the levels you expect?”

    Another area of concern for remote employees, according to analysis from Live Data Technologies, is that remote workers were promoted 31 percent less often than employees working an in-office or hybrid schedule in 2023.

    Live Data Technologies said it looked at a sample size of 2 million white-collar workers split evenly between remote workers and in-office workers.

    In 2023, 599,000 people changed jobs within the sample size. Of those, 168,000 individuals left a company and didn’t start a new job within 60 days, which Live Data Technologies classified as involuntary or a “layoff.”

    Employees work in an office in Washington on Feb. 11, 2014. Remote workers are promoted 31 percent less often than employees working an in-office or hybrid schedule, according to an analysis. (Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images)

    Remote Workers Need to Be More Visible

    Dell CEO Michael Dell made that clear in an employee memo released earlier this year that “for remote team members, it is important to understand the trade-offs: Career advancement, including applying to new roles in the company, will require a team member to reclassify as hybrid onsite.”

    Rachelle Klozik holds two remote hats as a team supervisor and employee at a Michigan IT company while living in Florida.

    She told The Epoch Times that remote employees and supervisors need to engage with co-workers about more than work to remain consistently visible.

    “I meet with my team online frequently, and we talk about what’s going on in their lives and how I can work with them better,” she said.

    “We have things … like after-hours Zoom calls and parties and you have to show your face and be involved, showing the company you’re engaged. But there’s more than work to discuss.”

    Klozik said the onus to show a human side to remote employee interactions is her responsibility as a supervisor. “I manage people, and if I don’t give them something relatable, people won’t like working for me.”

    Not everyone is enamored with remote employees.

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in a recent speech trying to share why working downtown in Minneapolis was beneficial to companies, called those who choose to work remotely “losers,” according to a video released by Fox 9.

    “I don’t know if you saw this study the other day, but what this study clearly showed is that when people who have the ability to come downtown but don’t. When they stay home, sitting on their couch with their nasty cat blanket, fiddling on their laptop. If they do that for a few months, you become a loser. It’s a study. We’re not losers, are we?” he said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 21:45

  • Uninsured Americans Now More Than 27 Million: CDC Report
    Uninsured Americans Now More Than 27 Million: CDC Report

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    The percentage of uninsured Americans rose to 8.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to survey findings published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Aug. 6.

    The report estimated that 27.1 million Americans of all ages were without health insurance as of March this year, up from 25.5 million or 7.7 percent at the end of the previous year.

    The percentage of uninsured people earning below the federal poverty level increased from 13.9 percent last year to 15.7 percent in the first quarter of 2024, the highest percentage among income levels.

    Almost two-thirds (64.9 percent) of people under age 65 were covered by private health insurance and more than a quarter (27.7 percent) were covered by public health insurance in the first three months of 2023.

    The number of people of all ages who enrolled in public health insurance plans decreased from 39.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 39.2 percent this year, according to the CDC.

    A report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in June projected that the rate of uninsured Americans will increase to 8.9 percent over the next 10 years due to immigration, among other factors.

    “The surge in immigration that began in 2021 (and that CBO projects will continue through 2026) will contribute to the increase as well, as those newly arrived immigrants will, the agency expects, be substantially less likely to have health insurance coverage than the overall population,” the report stated.

    The CBO also attributed the rise in the uninsured rate to the end of a COVID-19 pandemic-era policy extending Medicaid eligibility and the expiration of enhanced marketplace subsidies.

    The number of uninsured Americans aged between 18 and 44 is projected to see the largest increase over the next decade, according to the CBO report.

    In March, President Joe Biden rolled back a Trump-era policy that expanded the availability of limited health insurance policies that are exempt from coverage requirements under the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare.”

    These limited health insurance policies, commonly described as “short-term” policies and referred to by Biden as “junk health insurance,” provide a limited range of coverage for lower premiums.

    Under President Barack Obama, individuals could be covered through these limited insurance plans for only three months.

    In 2018, however, the Trump administration approved a new rule allowing people to obtain coverage under these limited policies for an initial period of 12 months, with the ability to extend the coverage for up to 36 months.

    The Biden administration announced a rule that largely reverts to the Obama-era constraints, capping the duration of these limited insurance policies to three months with the ability to extend the policies for one additional month.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 21:20

  • Pakistani National With Alleged Iranian Ties Charged In Plot To Assassinate US Officials
    Pakistani National With Alleged Iranian Ties Charged In Plot To Assassinate US Officials

    Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

    A Pakistani national with alleged ties to Iran has been charged in connection with a foiled plot to assassinate a politician or U.S. government officials on U.S. soil, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release and indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

    Asif Merchant, also known as “Asif Raza Merchant,” 46, was charged with murder-for-hire as part of a scheme targeting public figures within the United States. He was apprehended and is currently in federal custody in New York.

    The arrest underscores what the DOJ said is its commitment to thwarting Iran’s ongoing efforts to retaliate against American officials, particularly in response to the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

    Soleimani was killed in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Jan. 3, 2020, under the Trump administration.

    “For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    “The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens and will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”

    The plot was uncovered through a coordinated effort involving multiple FBI field offices and the New York City Police Department, among other agencies, DOJ said.

    According to court documents, Merchant arrived in the United States from Pakistan in April, following a period in Iran.

    He is described as a citizen of Pakistan, born in Karachi, with a wife and children in both Pakistan and Iran, and he traveled frequently to Iran, Syria, and Iraq.

    Merchant allegedly sought to hire hitmen to carry out assassinations on American soil, believing he was working with a trusted contact who reported his activities to law enforcement and became a confidential source.

    He used operational security measures, such as multiple cellular phones and removing them during sensitive discussions, to avoid surveillance, the court documents claim.

    During meetings in New York, Merchant outlined a plan involving multiple criminal schemes, including the theft of documents, organizing protests as distractions, and the assassination plot. These activities were discussed using coded language; for instance, “tee-shirt” referred to protests, “flannel shirt” to stealing, and “fleece jacket” to murder.

    In June, Merchant met with individuals he believed to be hitmen, who were actually undercover FBI agents, to arrange the logistics of the plot.

    He provided an advance payment of $5,000 and indicated that instructions for the assassination would be issued after his planned departure from the United States in mid-July, the DOJ said.

    However, law enforcement intervened and arrested Merchant on July 12, before he could leave the country, DOJ said.

    “Fortunately, the assassins Merchant tried to hire were undercover FBI Agents,” said Acting Assistant Director Christie Curtis of the FBI New York Field Office.

    “This case underscores the dedication and formidable efforts of our agents, analysts and prosecutors in New York, Houston and Dallas. Their success in neutralizing this threat not only prevented a tragic outcome but also reaffirms the FBI’s commitment to protecting our nation and its citizens from both domestic and international threats.”

    The complaint also highlighted Merchant’s intent to recruit trusted individuals for various roles in his scheme, including reconnaissance and organizing a protest, with further instructions to be conveyed in coded language.

    The DOJ emphasized at the time of filing in mid-July that premature disclosure of the complaint’s contents could have jeopardized the investigation, with risks including fleeing suspects and tampering with evidence before it was ultimately unsealed this week.

    [ZH: We have one question:]

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Of course this is not the first Iranian-linked assassin on the loose in America.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 20:55

  • Homeowners Increasingly Tap Home Equity Lines As Savings Rate Plummets
    Homeowners Increasingly Tap Home Equity Lines As Savings Rate Plummets

    With home values at or near record highs nationwide, and savings rates plunging, Americans are increasingly tapping into home equity.

    While some are using it for home renovations, others likely need extra cash amid the Bidenomics blowback, which has created an environment of elevated inflation and high interest rates.

    A new report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit on Tuesday shows originations of both home equity loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) balances increased by $4 billion, representing the ninth consecutive quarterly increase since the first quarter in 2022. The total stood at $380 billion, a $63 billion increase from the low of $317 billion reached in the third quarter of 2021. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    “Homeowners continued to increase HELOC balances as an alternative way to extract home equity,” Andrew Haughwout, Director of Household and Public Policy Research at the New York Fed, wrote in the report. 

    Besides home renovations, other considerations that drive homeowners into taking out a HELOC include debt consolidation and emergency cash management as credit card debt hits record highs and the cost of living increasingly becomes unaffordable for the working poor and middle class under Biden’s first term. 

    Home equity products are the most viable option for homeowners in these challenging economic times.

    While tapping home equity has many benefits, it also has many risks, including putting the property at risk by accruing significant debt and diluting the valuable asset when home prices reverse.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 20:30

  • Undeterred, CCP To Ignore Risks Of AI Weapons, Experts Say
    Undeterred, CCP To Ignore Risks Of AI Weapons, Experts Say

    Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Cutting-edge weapons powered by artificial intelligence are emerging as a global security hazard, especially in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to several experts.

    Industrial robots at a booth the day before the 2015 China International Industry Fair at National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai on Nov. 2, 2015. (Getty Images)

    Eager to militarily surpass the United States, the CCP is unlikely to heed safeguards around lethal AI technologies, which are increasingly dangerous in their own right, the experts have argued. The nature of the technology is prone to feeding some of the worst tendencies of the regime and the human psyche in general, they warned.

    “The implications are quite dramatic. And they may be the equal of the nuclear revolution,” said Bradley Thayer, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, an expert on a strategic assessment of China, and a contributor to The Epoch Times.

    Killer Robots

    The development of AI-powered autonomous weapons unfortunately is rapidly progressing, according to Alexander De Ridder, an AI developer and co-founder of Ink, an AI marketing firm.

    “They’re becoming quickly more efficient and quickly more effective,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that “they’re not at the point where they can replace humans.”

    Autonomous drones, tanks, ships, and submarines have become a reality along with more exotic modalities, such as the quadruped robot dogs, already armed with machine guns in China.

    Even AI-powered humanoid robots, the stuff of sci-fi horrors, are in production. Granted, they’re still rather clumsy in the real world, but they won’t be for long, De Ridder suggested.

    “The capabilities for such robots are quickly advancing,” he said.

    Once they reach marketable usefulness and reliability, China is likely to turn its manufacturing might to their mass production, according to De Ridder.

    “The market will be flooded with humanoid robots, and then it’s up to the programming how they’re used.”

    That would mean military use, too.

    “It’s kind of inevitable,” he said.

    Such AI-powered machines are very effective at processing images to discern objects—to detect a human with their optical sensors, for example, explained James Qiu, an AI expert, founder of GIT Research Institute, and former CTO at FileMaker.

    That makes AI robots very good at targeting.

    “It’s a very effective killing machine,” he said.

    AI Generals

    On a broader level, multiple nations are working on an AI capable of informing and coordinating battlefield decisions—an electronic general, according to Jason Ma, an AI expert and data research lead at a multinational Fortune 500 company. He didn’t want the company’s name mentioned to prevent any impression he was speaking on its behalf.

    The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the CCP military, recently conducted battle exercises in which an AI was directly put in command.

    The U.S. military also has projects in this area, Ma noted.

    “It’s a very active research and development topic.”

    The need is obvious, he explained. Battlefield decisions are informed by a staggering amount of data from historical context and past intelligence to near-real time satellite data, all the way to millisecond-by-millisecond input from every camera, microphone, and whatever sensor on the battlefield.

    It’s “very hard” for humans to process such disparate and voluminous data streams, he said.

    “The more complex the warfare, the more important part it becomes how can you quickly integrate, summarize all this information to make the right decision, within seconds, or within even sub-second,” he said.

    A Shield AI V-BAT Teams, a vertical take-off and lift (VTOL) Artificial Intelligence (AI) piloted Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), on the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow 2024, south west of London, on July 22, 2024. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

    Destabilization

    AI weapons are already redefining warfare, the experts agreed. But the consequences are much broader. The technology is making the world increasingly volatile, Thayer said.

    On the most rudimentary level, AI-powered weapon targeting will likely make it much easier to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles, detect and destroy submarines, and shoot down long-range bombers. That could neutralize the U.S. nuclear triad capabilities, allowing adversaries to “escalate beyond the nuclear level” with impunity, he suggested.

    “AI would affect each of those components, which we developed and understood during the Cold War as being absolutely essential for a stable nuclear deterrent relationship,” he said.

    “During the Cold War, there was a broad understanding that conventional war between nuclear powers wasn’t feasible. … AI is undermining that, because it introduces the possibility of conventional conflict between two nuclear states.”

    If people continue developing AI-powered weapon systems without restrictions, the volatility will only worsen, he predicted.

    “AI is greatly affecting the battlefield, but it’s not yet determinative,” he said.

    If AI capabilities reach “the effect of nuclear war without using nuclear weapons,” that would sit the world on a powder keg, he said.

    “If that’s possible, and it’s quite likely that it is possible, then that’s an extremely dangerous situation and incredibly destabilizing situation because it compels somebody who’s on the receiving end of an attack to go first, not to endure the attack, but to aggress.”

    In warfare lexicon, the concept is called “damage limitation,” he said.

    “You don’t want the guy to go first, because you’re going to get badly hurt. So you go first. And that’s going to be enormously destabilizing in international politics.”

    The concern is not just about killer robots or drones but also various unconventional AI weapons. An AI, for example, could be developed to find vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure such as the electric grid or water supply systems.

    Controlling the proliferation of such technologies appears particularly daunting. AI is just a piece of software. Even the largest models fit on a regular hard drive and can run on a small server farm. Simple but increasingly lethal AI weapons, such as killer drones, can be shipped in parts without raising alarm.

    “Both vertical and horizontal proliferation incentives are enormous, and it’s easily done,” Thayer said.

    De Ridder pointed out that the Chinese state wants to be seen as responsible on the world stage.

    But that hasn’t stopped the CCP from supplying weapons or aiding weapon programs of other regimes and groups that aren’t so reputationally constrained, other experts have noted.

    It wouldn’t be a surprise if the CCP were to supply autonomous weapons to terrorist groups that would then tie up the U.S. military in endless asymmetrical conflicts. The CCP could even keep its distance and merely supply the parts, letting proxies assemble the drones, much like Chinese suppliers provide fentanyl precursors to Mexican cartels and let them manufacture, ship, and sell the drugs.

    The CCP, for example, has a long history of aiding Iranian weapon programs. Iran, in turn, supplies weapons to a panopticon of terrorist groups in the region.

    “There would be little disincentive for Iran to do this,” Mr. Thayer said.

    An Iranian military truck carries an Arash drone during a military parade as part of a ceremony marking the country’s annual army day in Tehran on April 17, 2024. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

    Human in the Loop

    It’s generally accepted, at least in the United States and among its allies, that the most crucial safeguard against AI weapons wreaking unforeseen havoc is keeping a human in control of important decisions, particularly the use of deadly force.

    “Under no circumstances should any machines autonomously independently be allowed to take a human life ever,” De Ridder said.

    The principle is commonly summarized in the phrase “human in the loop.”

    “A human has a conscience and needs to wake up in the morning with remorse and the consequences of what they’ve done, so that they can learn from it and not repeat atrocities,” said De Ridder.

    Some of the experts pointed out, however, that the principle is already being eroded by the nature of combat transformed by AI capabilities.

    In the Ukraine war, for example, the Ukrainian military had to equip its drones with some measure of autonomy to guide themselves to their targets because their communication with human operators was being jammed by the Russian military.

    Such drones only run simpler AI, Ma said, given the limited power of the drone’s onboard computer. But that may soon change as both AI models and computers are getting faster and more efficient.

    Apple is already working on an AI that could run on a phone, says Ma.

    “It’s highly likely it will be in the future put into a small chip.”

    Moreover, in a major conflict where hundreds or perhaps thousands of drones are deployed at once, they can share computational power to perform much more complex autonomous tasks.

    “It’s all possible,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point where it’s not science fiction; it’s just [a matter of] if there is a group of people who want to devote the time to work on that. It’s tangible technology.”

    Removing human control out of necessity isn’t a new concept, according to James Fanell, former naval intelligence officer and an expert on China.

    He gave the example of the Aegis Combat System deployed on U.S.-guided missile cruisers and destroyers. It automatically detects and tracks aerial targets and launches missiles to shoot them down. Normally, a human operator controls the missile launches, but there’s also a way to switch it to automatic mode, such as when there’s too many targets for the human operator to track. The system then identifies and destroys targets on its own, Fanell said.

    In mass drone warfare, where an AI coordinates thousands of drones in a systematic attack, the side that gives its AI autonomy to shoot will gain a major speed advantage over the side where humans must approve each shot.

    “On the individual shooting level, people have to give up control because they can’t really make all the decisions so quickly,” Ma said.

    De Ridder pointed out that a drone shooting another drone on its own would be morally acceptable. But that could unleash a lot of autonomous shooting on a battlefield where there may be humans too, opening the door to untold collateral casualties.

    No Rules

    Whatever AI safeguards may be practicable, the CCP is unlikely to abide by them anyway, most of the experts agreed.

    “I don’t really see there will be any boundaries for China to be cautious about,” Ma said. “Whatever is possible, they will do it.”

    “The idea that China would constrain themselves in the use of it, I don’t see that,” Fanell said.

    “They’re going to try to take advantage of it and be able to exploit it faster than we can.”

    An UAV is shown during the military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China on Oct. 1, 2019. (Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images)

    The human-in-the-loop principle could simply be reinterpreted to apply to “a bigger, whole battle level” rather than “the individual shooting level,” Ma said.

    But once one accepts that AI can start shooting on its own in some circumstances, the principle of human control becomes malleable, Fanell said.

    “If you’re willing to accept that in a tactical sense, who’s to say you won’t take it all the way up to the highest level of warfare?” he said.

    “It’s the natural evolution of a technology like this, and I’m not sure what we can do to stop it. It’s not like you’re going to have a code of ethics that says in warfare [let’s abide by] the Marquess of Queensberry Rules of boxing. It’s not going to happen.”

    Even if humans are kept in control of macro decisions, such as whether to launch a particular mission, AI can easily dominate the decision-making process, multiple experts agreed.

    The danger wouldn’t be a poorly performing AI but rather one that works so well that it instills trust in the human operators.

    De Ridder was skeptical of prognostications about superintelligent AI that vastly exceeds humans. He acknowledged, though, that AI obviously exceeds humans in some regards, particularly speed. It can crunch mountains of data and spit out a conclusion almost immediately.

    It’s virtually impossible to figure out how exactly an AI comes to its conclusions, according to  Ma and Qiu.

    De Ridder said that he and others are working on ways to restrict AI to a human-like workflow, so the individual steps of its reasoning are more transparent.

    But given the incredible amount of data involved, it would be impossible for the AI to explain how each piece of information factored into its reasoning without overwhelming the operator, Ma acknowledged.

    “If the human operator clearly knows this is a decision [produced] after the AI processed terabytes of data, he won’t really have the courage to overrule that in most cases. So I guess yes, it will be formality,” he said.

    “Human in the loop is a comfortable kind of phrase, but in reality, humans will give up control quickly.”

    Public Pressure

    Even if humans are kept in the loop only nominally, it’s still important, De Ridder said.

    “As long as we keep humans in the loop, we can keep humans accountable,” he said.

    Indeed, all the experts agreed that public pressure is likely to constrain AI weapon development and use, at least in the United States.

    Ma gave the example of Google terminating a defense contract over the objections of its staff.

    He couldn’t envision an analogous situation in China, though.

    Qiu agrees.

    “Anything inside China is a resource the CCP can leverage,” he said. “You cannot say, ‘Oh, this is a private company.’  There is no private company per se [in China].”

    Even the CCP cannot dispose of public sentiment altogether, De Ridder said.

    “The government can only survive if the population wants to collaborate.”

    But there’s no indication that the Chinese populace sees AI military use as an urgent concern.

    On the contrary, companies and universities in China appear to be eager to pick up military contracts,  Ma said.

    De Ridder called for “an international regulatory framework that can be enforced.”

    It’s not clear how such regulations could be enforced against China, which has a long history of refusing any limits on its military development. The United States has long vainly attempted to bring China to the table on nuclear disarmament. Recently, China refused a U.S. request to guarantee that it wouldn’t use AI for nuclear strike decisions.

    If the United States regulates its own AI development, it could create a strategic vulnerability, multiple experts suggested.

    “Those regulations will be very well studied by the CCP and used as an attack tool,” Qiu said.

    Even if some kind of agreement is reached, the CCP has a poor track record of keeping promises, according to Thayer.

    “Any agreement is a pie crust made to be broken.”

    Solutions

    De Ridder says he hopes that perhaps nations would settle for using AI in less destructive ways.

    “There’s a lot of ways that you can use AI to achieve your objectives that does not involve sending a swarm of killer drones to each other,” he said.

    “When push comes to shove, nobody wants these conflicts to happen.”

    The other experts believed, however, that the CCP wouldn’t mind starting such a conflict—as long as it would see a clear path to victory.

    “The Chinese are not going to be constrained by our ruleset,” Fanell said. “They’re going to do whatever it takes to win.”

    Reliance on the whispers of an AI military advisor, one that instills confidence by processing mountains of data and producing convincing battle plans, could be particularly dangerous as it may create a vision of victory where there previously wasn’t one, according to Thayer.

    “You can see how that might be very attractive to a decision maker, especially one that is hyper aggressive, as is the CCP,”  Thayer said. “It may make aggression more likely.”

    “There’s only one way to stop it, which is to be able to defeat it,” Fanell said.

    An AI chip of Tongfu Microelectronics is displayed during the World Semiconductor Congress in Nanjing in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province on July 19, 2023. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    Chuck de Caro, former consultant for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, recently called for the United States to develop electromagnetic weapons that could disable computer chips. It may even be possible to develop energy weapons that could disable a particular kind of chips, he wrote in a Blaze op-ed.

    “Obviously, without functioning chips, AI doesn’t work.”

    Another option might be to develop an AI superweapon that could serve as a deterrent.

    “Is there an AI Manhattan Project that the U.S. is doing that can create the effect that Nagasaki and Hiroshima would have on the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party, which is to bring them to the realization that, ‘Okay, maybe we don’t want to go there. This is mutually assured destruction?’ I don’t know. But that’s what I would be [doing],” Fanell said.

    That could leave the world in a Cold War-like stand-off—hardly an ideal state, but one likely seen as preferable to abnegating military advantage to the CCP.

    “Every country knows it’s dangerous, but nobody can stop because they are afraid they will be left behind,” Ma said.

    De Ridder’s says it might take a profound shock to halt the AI arms race.

    “We might need like a world war, with immense human tragedy, to ban the use of autonomous AI killing machines,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 20:05

  • Middle East On The Brink: Goldman Heads Discuss 'Interconnected Realities' Of Markets & Geopolitics Amid Looming Iran Strike 
    Middle East On The Brink: Goldman Heads Discuss ‘Interconnected Realities’ Of Markets & Geopolitics Amid Looming Iran Strike 

    The war drums in the Middle East are getting louder by the hour as the world braces for an imminent Iranian (or Iranian proxy forces) strike on Israel. The US faces the daunting task of defending Israel from Iranian strikes if deterrence missile defense shields fail, which could potentially ignite a regional conflict. 

    Jared Cohen, President of Global Affairs and Co-Head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute, and Sam Morgan, Global Head of FICC Sales and Co-Head of One Goldman Sachs, discussed Tuesday the latest developments in the Middle East, structural changes across the region, and how markets are responding to the overseas crisis as war risks soar. 

    Here’s the complete transcript of the conversation between Cohen and Morgan released for clients on Tuesday:

    MORGAN:

    Last month we witnessed a series of shocks and escalations in the Middle East, and tensions are only increasing. How have these developments changed the post-October 7 conflict in the Middle East?

    COHEN:

    A wider war has been possible since the beginning. In particular, a war between Israel and Hezbollah has been possible since October 8, when Hezbollah fired its first rockets after Hamas’s attack. More than 80,000 Israelis have evacuated their homes in northern Israel since, and most remain displaced. The killing of 12 Druze children playing on a soccer field on July 27 made a larger war between the two sides much more likely.

    An all-out war with Hezbollah could be more violent, for both Lebanon and Israel, than the conflict with Hamas has been to date. Hezbollah has an arsenal of 120,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles, including hundreds of precision guided missiles and 65,000 short-range rockets. These munitions could strike cities throughout Israel, as well critical infrastructure, such as electricity grids.

    Israel has also reshaped the war in the last few weeks. Despite ten months of conflict, Israel’s longest since its War of Independence from 1948 – 1949, the Israel Defense Forces and intelligence services have shown themselves to still be tremendously capable. In retaliation for the Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv, Israel’s air force struck the Houthi-controlled Hudaydah port in faraway Yemen, refueling mid-air during the long-distance mission. The bomb that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was reportedly planted in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) guesthouse months ago. This was a shock for the Supreme Leader, who is aging and now never leaves the country. Combined with the elimination of Hamas leader Mohammed Deif and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr, who played a role in the 1983 Marine Corps Barracks bombing in Beirut, and other targeted assassinations, Israel may be trying to retake the initiative and show Iran the unexpected and high costs of escalation.

    MORGAN:

    Many observers are expecting retaliation by Iran, possibly including a direct assault against Israel. Is such an attack likely, and are Israel, the US and their partners prepared for such an escalation?

    COHEN:

    We don’t know the timing of a potential Iranian retaliation, and it’s impossible to predict the scale with certainty. But a direct Iranian-led assault against Israel looks increasingly likely, and Israelis and their partners are preparing.

    This is a very precarious moment for the region, and the risks are high. In April, Iran broke the geopolitical seal on direct confrontation, when it fired 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles against Israel. Israel reportedly struck back. After the killing of Haniyeh, on August 1 in Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met in Tehran with proxy groups from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to discuss retaliation against Israel.

    What could make this potential attack different from April’s? There is an increased level of coordination among Iran and its proxies across seven fronts. In addition, it’s possible that Iran could use more munitions, attack different targets, and engage in prolonged assaults that could overwhelm Israel’s defense systems, or even use its proxies to simultaneously attack US forces in Syria or Iraq, where several servicemembers were injured earlier this week. Iran or its proxies could also attack Israel or Jewish targets abroad, such when Hezbollah attacked a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994 or attempted to execute a plot in Brazil at the beginning of the current war. And the closer we get to the US election, the more uncertainty there will likely be about US politics and engagement in the region.

    The preparations to defend against Iranian attacks are extensive. Israel and its partners intercepted almost all Iran’s missiles and drones four months ago, and Jerusalem and its allies and partners are working together again. Countries are urging their citizens to leave Lebanon. The US and Arab countries have in recent days sent envoys and messages to Tehran to work to deescalate the situation, so far without success. The commander of US Central Command arrived in Israel earlier this week. The US is moving more defensive assets to the region, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group, which will replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Israel is likely closely coordinating with its Sunni Arab neighbors – what Prime Minister Netanyahu now refers to as the “Abraham Alliance” – to defend against their shared rival in Iran. And, depending on the scale of the attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said the military is ready for a “swift transition to offense.”

    MORGAN:

    How do the events of the last month fit into Iran’s broader regional strategy, and do you expect any change in Iran’s calculus?

    COHEN:

    In my view, Iran relies on proxies to achieve its objectives to attack Israel, push the US out of Iraq and Syria, and become the dominant power in the Middle East. Those objectives likely have not changed. But, as April’s Iranian attack against Israel showed, Tehran is now more prepared than it was before to engage in direct confrontation, rather than relying exclusively on proxies and covert action. If Iran directly attacks Israel, the US, or their allies and partners in the next few days or weeks, we will be able to better calculate if Tehran is seeking a wider, all-out regional war, with all the costs that would bring, or if its strategy is to save face and continue the conflict at its current levels. An attack is increasingly likely, but as Israel’s actions over the last few weeks have shown, escalation presents enormous risks to the regime in Iran as well.

    MORGAN:

    How do you think about the broader geopolitical setup in the Middle East and the incentives and positioning of each of the key regional actors?

    COHEN:

    There have been two key strategic questions since October 7. First, can Iran and its proxies create a new normal in the Middle East, with constant conflict and attrition that wears down Israel, the US and their allies and partners, without imposing unacceptable direct costs on Tehran? And second, can they break apart an emerging Israel-Sunni Arab bloc and become the dominant power in the region?

    On the former, Iran has so far succeeded. The damage that Iran and its proxies have done to Israel, Palestinians, and populations throughout the region is enormous. The costs to Iran – including attacks on Iranian soil and the targeting of IRGC commanders – have so far not been high enough to change Tehran’s overall strategy.

    But Iran has not yet succeeded in breaking apart the Israel-Sunni bloc. We saw that in April, when Israel coordinated its defense with countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and even Sudan continue to hold. The incentives for this bloc – as diverse as the actors are – to not let Iran dominate the Middle East are clear. And if anything, this geopolitical test has reinforced the direction of travel for wealthy Gulf countries, who have been pushing for economic integration and diversification and for greater influence on the global stage. To succeed, however, Israel and Washington’s partners in the Gulf will likely need US support.

    COHEN:

    How have markets reacted to the rise in geopolitical tensions?

    MORGAN:

    There has been a significant re-pricing of regional assets (e.g. Israel CDS, USDILS FX, ILS interest rate swaps) since mid-July, but the impact on commodities has been limited (and the oil price is down on the month). Equity markets (SPX in particular, but notably Nasdaq and Topix as well) and bond markets (such as short dated UST) have re-priced meaningfully in recent weeks, and Middle Eastern escalations have contributed to a sense of market nervousness, but the primary drivers of market moves have been a changing market perception around US recession risk, US tech earnings reports, questions about the timing and magnitude of the impact of developments in Gen(AI), and de-risking of crowded trades.

    COHEN:

    If the market reactions to the events in the Middle East have (so far) been limited, what escalations in the region could shift how the markets view the current crisis and its effects on global growth? What lessons have we learned that could be useful for future geopolitical shocks?

    MORGAN:

    The primary market nexus through which Middle Eastern tensions could have global growth impact would be via the oil market (as was the case in the 1970s). To date, the oil market has largely shrugged off geopolitical concerns and focused on the impact on demand of US and China slowdowns (and the potential impact of the US election on supply). A further escalation could impact oil markets to the upside if critical oil infrastructure were endangered. The broader lesson remains that the markets focus first and foremost on the economy and policy. Geopolitical tensions have major impacts on specific companies, sectors (e.g. defense), and countries, but for global impacts there needs to be a direct knock-on to growth, inflation (e.g. via oil prices), or monetary and fiscal policy. The focus for now will remain on the US economy and areas of potential concern (such as low-end consumers, and housing), the extent of the Fed’ put’ and their willingness to ease rates fast (e.g. the possibility of 50bp increment cuts), and big tech AI expenditure and earnings.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 19:40

  • Harvard To Offer Class Examining Medieval Texts Through Lens Of 'Queer Theory'
    Harvard To Offer Class Examining Medieval Texts Through Lens Of ‘Queer Theory’

    Via Campus Reform,

    Harvard University will be offering a course examining medieval texts by using “queer theory.”

    Harvard’s English department will be featuring a “Queer/Medieval” class in the upcoming spring 2025 semester. The course will be an “introduction to queer theory as an intellectual tool with which to read texts far removed from the political, cultural, and social discourses from which queer theory emerged,” specifically, in this case, medieval texts. 

    “We will ask: what can queer theory offer readers of medieval literature in its explorations of gender, sexuality, race, power, narrative, trauma, and time?” the course description states.

    The course will use the lens of “queer theory” to examine classic medieval texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

    Though the course is listed on Harvard’s website as taking place in the spring 2025 semester, a Harvard official told Campus Reform that it will actually take place in the fall of 2024.

    The course will be taught by Assistant Professor of English Anna Wilson, Harvard’s “Medieval Studies Faculty Liaison for Equity and Diversity,” whose faculty profile lists “BGLTQ Studies” as one of her academic specialties. Her research interests include “medieval Christian visionary writing,” “women’s writing,” “fanfiction and fan communities,” “queer theory,” “gender and sexuality studies,” and “race in medieval literature,” among others.

    “I am delighted to mentor all Harvard students,” her page reads.

    “As a queer woman, I am particularly happy to support students who identify as LGBTQAII+.”

    Harvard offers a wide array of services catered to LGBTQ-identifying students, including its “Office of BGLTQ Student Life” which hosts a number of events each year, including “a National Coming Out Day open mic, a vigil for Trans Day of Remembrance, and Lavender Graduation in honor of graduating members of the BGLTQ community.”

    “The Office of BGLTQ Student Life serves as a central resource for bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, and questioning (BGLTQ) students at Harvard College,” the office’s website reads.

    “Through our work, we foster the inclusion, affirmation, and celebration of all BGLTQ identities and expressions. We strive to create a community where BGLTQ students can thrive and where all students are well-equipped to engage knowledgeably and compassionately with regard to gender and sexuality.”

    Campus Reform has reached out to Anna Wilson for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 19:15

  • Elon Musk Revives Lawsuit Against OpenAI And Co-Founders
    Elon Musk Revives Lawsuit Against OpenAI And Co-Founders

    Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

    Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, X, and SpaceX, has reignited a legal battle against OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, months after initially dropping his lawsuit.

    The revived complaint, filed Aug. 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the defendants of multiple counts, including fraud, breach of contract, and violations of federal civil racketeering laws.

    Musk had originally sued in February before dropping the suit in June with no explanation given at the time.

    Musk’s revived lawsuit includes several allegations against OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman—at the heart of which is a claim that Altman and Brockman “intentionally courted and deceived” Musk into co-founding OpenAI under false pretenses.

    Musk asserted in the 81-page suit that he was misled into believing that OpenAI would be a nonprofit organization focused on developing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies “for the benefit of humanity,” operating as a counterbalance to for-profit tech giants.

    According to the lawsuit, OpenAI’s co-founders allegedly manipulated Musk by making repeated promises and assurances that the organization would remain open-source and not driven by profit.

    The suit defines “open source” as the practice of making AI technology and research freely accessible to the public, allowing for transparency and collaboration.

    “Altman assured Musk that the non-profit structure guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value,” the suit claimed. “But as it turns out, this was all hot-air philanthropy—the hook for Altman’s long con.”

    Musk claims that these representations were part of a scheme to attract significant funding and expertise, which he provided, including “tens of millions of dollars” and the recruitment of top AI scientists.

    The complaint further accuses Altman and Brockman of engaging in “rampant self-dealing” and transforming OpenAI into a for-profit entity in partnership with Microsoft, thereby abandoning its original mission.

    Musk argued that OpenAI’s pivot to a for-profit model has resulted in substantial unjust enrichment for the defendants, which he contends was at the expense of the nonprofit’s mission.

    Company Responds to Lawsuit

    OpenAI responded to the latest legal filing in a statement.

    “As we said about Elon’s initial legal filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves,” a spokesperson for the company told The Associated Press in an emailed statement.

    In March, OpenAI released emails purportedly written by Musk showing initial support for making the company for-profit to secure the necessary funding to compete with Google DeepMind. Musk also supported the idea of merging OpenAI with Tesla.

    “We may wish it otherwise, but, in my and [redacted]’s opinion, Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google. Even then, the probability of being a counterweight to Google is small. It just isn’t zero,” Musk wrote in an email dated Feb. 1, 2018.

    Musk’s legal team has outlined several demands for relief, including compensatory and punitive damages, restitution, and surrendering ill-gained profits.

    The lawsuit seeks to impose a “constructive trust” on the alleged ill-gotten gains of the defendants, demands an accounting of all profits derived from the purported misconduct, and requests a judicial declaration that the licensing agreement between OpenAI and Microsoft is “null and void” or that certain OpenAI technologies fall outside the scope of this license.

    Additionally, the complaint seeks an injunction to prevent further harm, alleging that the defendants’ actions have caused substantial injury to Musk’s reputation and commercial interests, impacting his ability to recruit leading scientists.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 18:50

  • World War 3's Decisive Battle
    World War 3’s Decisive Battle

    Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

    As I’ve discussed recently, I believe proxy wars will determine who wins WW3 and gets to shape the new world order.

    There are numerous ongoing proxy wars in World War 3.

    However, the ones I believe will prove decisive will be in Taiwan, Ukraine, and the Middle East. The others are peripheral in comparison.

    I think it’s clear the proxy wars in Ukraine and Taiwan are likely to end in favor of BRICS+.

    That’s why I expect NATO & Friends will make their last stand to scuttle the emergence of a multipolar world order and preserve the US-led world order in the Middle East.

    The Middle East is on the precipice of its largest war in generations.

    The region is roughly divided into two different geopolitical groups.

    The first is the US and its allies—Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and others.

    (Though Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are members of BRICS+, their true allegiance is with the agenda of NATO & Friends).

    The second group describes itself as the Axis of Resistance. It consists of Iran, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, several Palestinian groups (including Hamas), and an assortment of militias in Iraq. Russia and China are standing behind the Axis of Resistance.

    If there is a regional war in the Middle East, it will undoubtedly be between these two groups.

    In the context of World War 3, the US and its allies represent NATO & Friends, and the Axis of Resistance represents BRICS+.

    Here is a geopolitical map of the Middle East as I see it (click to enlarge).

    Iran is the main sponsor of the Axis of Resistance, and it does not have nuclear weapons.

    Unlike in Europe (Russia) or East Asia (China), there is no sophisticated nuclear power to deter NATO & Friends from more aggressive military action in the Middle East. Iran is, therefore, the weak link in the BRICS+ alliance to push for a multipolar world order.

    That’s why I expect NATO & Friends will make their last stand to scuttle the emergence of a multipolar world order in the Middle East by trying to neutralize the Axis of Resistance.

    Here is a brief overview of where things stand now in various areas of the Middle East. It will help us zoom out and put together the pieces to see the big picture.

    Gaza

    While Israel has caused widespread destruction in Gaza, they are nowhere close to their goal of totally destroying Hamas.

    Even the US government acknowledges that Israeli military action will be unable to totally destroy Hamas. The Israeli military has also come to reluctantly admit that Hamas cannot be defeated by military force alone.

    That’s because Hamas is waging a classic guerrilla warfare campaign against the far superior Israeli military on the ground in Gaza.

    Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare that relies on unconventional tactics such as hit-and-run attacks, sabotage, and ambushes to harass and exhaust a much stronger, better-equipped enemy force.

    The main objective is not to achieve a decisive victory through conventional means but rather to undermine the enemy’s morale and force them to expend resources in a war of attrition.

    The emphasis on survival and persistence allows guerrilla fighters to maintain their presence in the conflict, inspire more people to join their cause, and create a sense of frustration and demoralization among the enemy troops.

    This strategy has been employed successfully by various groups throughout history—the Taliban, the Viet Cong, etc.—demonstrating the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare to challenge much more powerful adversaries.

    Simply put, in a guerrilla war, to survive is to win.

    That’s because merely surviving allows guerrillas to continue exhausting their enemies. By surviving, they undermine attempts to destroy their movement and demonstrate their resilience and determination to continue fighting.

    Moreover, their enemy’s inability to completely eliminate the guerrilla fighters can lead to the perception that they are losing the war, as they cannot achieve a decisive victory despite their superior resources and technology.

    Here’s the bottom line.

    Israel has been trapped in a no-win situation with two unappealing choices:

    1. Negotiate a ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners on unfavorable terms. The region will likely view it as a victory for the Axis of Resistance because Hamas will have forced the much stronger Israel to accept some of its terms.

    2. Engage in a fruitless protracted guerrilla war that drains its military, economy, and diplomatic capital. Such a scenario will also risk sparking a much larger full-scale regional war against the Axis of Resistance—with Russia and China standing behind them—that Israel, the US, and its allies aren’t guaranteed to win.

    No matter how the Gaza war ultimately ends, the events of October 7 and afterward have likely shattered the aura of invincibility of the Israeli military. In other words, Israel has lost its deterrence, and it will not easily or quickly regain it.

    In short, Israel’s regional position is deteriorating. That weakens the geopolitical position of NATO & Friends in the Middle East.

    Syria

    Since 2011, NATO & Friends have tried to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and replace him with someone more pliable. However, that effort failed thanks to the intervention of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.

    Syria will remain a crucial member of the Axis of Resistance and sympathetic to BRICS+.

    Iraq

    After the US overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, they hoped to mold Iraq in the shape of Jordan, one of its most reliable allies in the Middle East.

    Though, it didn’t work out the way they had hoped.

    Instead, the removal of Sunni Saddam empowered Iraq’s Shia majority, which is much more sympathetic to Iran than the US agenda for the region.

    Numerous powerful Iraqi militia groups are members of the Axis of Resistance. The Iraqi central government cannot challenge them and is more or less on the same geopolitical page anyway.

    However, there are still a couple of thousand US soldiers in Iraq, which the Iraqi central government recently asked Washington to withdraw. Negotiations are ongoing.

    Regardless of whether the relatively small number of US troops stays or leaves, Iraq’s geopolitical orientation has tilted towards the Axis of Resistance and BRICS+.

    Yemen

    Yemen has sometimes been called “the Afghanistan of the Middle East” because it is an impoverished tribal society that is well-armed, situated on mountainous terrain, and generally inhospitable to foreign invaders.

    The Houthis, an Iran-backed group that controls most of Yemen, frustrated a military coalition of Saudi Arabia and its allies. Despite waging war since 2015, the Saudis have not been able to defeat the Houthis.

    However, most people are unaware of this war or its details. It’s remarkable that the Saudis, who are among the wealthiest in the Middle East and backed by the military and political support of the US, could not defeat the Middle East’s most impoverished people in Yemen.

    The Houthis—and thus the Axis of Resistance—remain firmly in control of most of Yemen.

    Amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, the Houthis have demonstrated an ability to disrupt global shipping in the Red Sea—some of the most important sea lanes in the world. They have targeted ships associated with the US and Israel with missiles and drones and have also hit Israeli cities.

    However, there is little appetite for anyone to take on the Houthis. The Saudis’ poor performance against them is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

    Here’s the bottom line with Yemen.

    The Houthis will likely remain in power and sympathetic to the BRICS+ agenda for a multipolar world order.

    Iran

    Unlike most other nation states in the Middle East, Iran (known as Persia before 1935) is not an artificial construct. By race, religion, and social history, it is a nation. European bureaucrats didn’t dream up Iran by drawing zigzags on a map. The map reflects the geographic reality of a country with natural, fortress-like mountain borders. In the east, the Roman Empire generally ended where the Persian Empire began.

    Iran leads the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East and is the main power pushing for the BRICS+ goal of a multipolar order in the region.

    The US and its allies have not been successful in limiting Iran’s power. They’ve tried pretty much everything short of a full-scale invasion.

    Instead, the opposite happened: Iran’s influence grew.

    Iran’s economy has strengthened thanks to expanding relations with China, and its military has strengthened thanks to expanding ties with Russia and a well-developed domestic military-industrial complex.

    In short, NATO & Friends have few cards to play against Iran.

    If the US really wants to decapitate the BRICS+ agenda in the Middle East, it would need to overthrow the Iranian government. That would require waging a full-scale regional war against all members of the Axis of Resistance and launching a ground invasion of Iran.

    Remember, during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)—back when Saddam was a “good guy”—he threw over 500,000 Iraqi soldiers at the Iranian meat grinder, had the backing of the US AND the Soviet Union, and used chemical weapons on a scale not seen since WW1… and he barely made a dent in Iran.

    The reality is that if the US is serious about invading Iran, it would likely require total mobilization and bringing back the draft. That is not likely to happen, but even if it did, it would not guarantee US victory.

    If Iran thought the US was going to invade, it could also develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent within a matter of weeks or less. It might also already have a couple of secretly obtained nukes.

    Given those unfavorable prospects, NATO & Friends could decide to use nuclear weapons on Iran preemptively.

    Iran is well aware that the US or Israel could use nuclear weapons against it. It has contingency plans for that outcome to ensure the survival of its government. Iran’s plans also likely include making a dash for developing its own nuclear arsenal to be able to respond in kind.

    Further, it’s doubtful that Russia and China would just sit back and do nothing if NATO & Friends looked like they might nuke Iran. For example, Russia could decide to station nuclear weapons and Russian soldiers on Iranian soil as a deterrent.

    In short, NATO & Friends using nukes on Iran could lead to an unpredictable series of events that could quickly spiral out of control, so I don’t view it as a likely outcome.

    Here’s the bottom line.

    NATO & Friends don’t have any attractive options when it comes to dealing with Iran.

    Conclusion

    NATO & Friends are not in a weak position in the Middle East. They have nuclear weapons, advanced militaries, and some of the largest regional armies—notably Egypt, Israel, and Turkey—at their disposal.

    That being said, when you take a step back and put it all together, it is clear that the geopolitical momentum is with the Axis of Resistance, which is eroding the power and influence of NATO & Friends in the Middle East.

    The situation is trending in favor of the Axis of Resistance and BRICS+. If those trends continue—and I think they will—sooner or later, NATO & Friends must make a fateful decision.

    They can either cede the region to BRICS+, which would seal the creation of a multipolar world order, or launch a full-scale war with the Axis of Resistance as a last-ditch Hail Mary attempt to scuttle the emergence of a multipolar world order.

    There is no guarantee that NATO & Friends would win such a war. I think it’s likely it would end in disaster for them. That’s probably a big reason it hasn’t happened yet, despite no shortage of hostile intentions.

    However, if NATO & Friends feel the sun is about to set on the US-led unipolar world order, they may go for it anyway. That would require them to take a bad hand and double down in a desperate attempt to get even. They may do so if they have nothing to lose, but I doubt it will change the ultimate outcome.

    The situation is fluid and volatile. It’s impossible to quantify the conflict precisely.

    That being said, when you put everything together, I think there is a good chance that BRICS+ will prevail in the three key proxy wars of WW3—Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Middle East.

    The main implication is that we’re likely to see the end of the unipolar world order and the emergence of a multipolar world order.

    Many people will be unprepared for that change of historical significance. However, when you look at the Big Picture, that is where I think we’re headed.

    Unfortunately, most people have no idea what really happens when the world order changes, let alone how to prepare…

    The coming crisis will likely be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen since World War 2.

    We’ll likely see entirely new political, social, and economic structures established to replace the crumbling ones from the post-WW2 era.

    Countless millions throughout history were wiped out financially—or worse—during the previous world wars because they failed to see the correct Big Picture and take appropriate action.

    Don’t be one of them.

    But what if you get the Big Picture right?

    The wealth-creating opportunities for those who correctly see what is happening and act upon it could be enormous.

    That’s the difference between being on the right and wrong side of these changes of historical proportion.

    It’s a rare fortune-building opportunity for those who see the investment implications of WW3 before others figure out what is really happening and how it’s likely to end.

    That’s why I just released an urgent new report with all the details, including what you must do to prepare. It’s called The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now. Click here to download the PDF now.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 18:25

  • Harvard Loses Bid To Toss Lawsuit Over Campus Anti-Semitism
    Harvard Loses Bid To Toss Lawsuit Over Campus Anti-Semitism

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Harvard University on Aug. 6 lost its bid to throw out a lawsuit that accuses university officials of ignoring discrimination against Jewish students and breaching university policies with their handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

    Facts outlined in the suit, brought by a Jewish student and a nonprofit with students who stand against anti-Semitism, “show that Harvard failed its Jewish students,” U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns said in a 25-page decision.

    Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars universities that receive federal funds, including Harvard, from intentionally discriminating against students on the ground of national origin. Violations of the law occur when a university exhibits deliberate indifference, or “affirmatively choosing to do the wrong thing, or doing nothing, despite knowing what the law requires,” according to court precedent.

    Harvard argued that it did respond to the campus protests and acts of anti-Semitism. Even if the response was less than ideal, it was not clearly unreasonable, lawyers for the university told the court.

    Stearns disagreed, calling Harvard’s response “at best, indecisive, vacillating, and at times internally contradictory.”

    As an example, he pointed to how Harvard Dean of Students Stephen Ball informed all students that a lounge on campus was only for “personal or small group study and conversation.” After Ball’s email, though, demonstrators hosted a pro-Palestinian vigil in the lounge. Administrators not only did not seek to respond, but the dean himself attended the vigil.

    “To conclude that the [complaint] has not plausibly alleged deliberate indifference would reward Harvard for virtuous public declarations that for the most part, according to the allegations of the [lawsuit], proved hollow when it came to taking disciplinary measures against offending students and faculty,” Stearns wrote.

    The lawsuit was originally filed by Alexander Kestenbaum, a Jewish student, and Students Against Antisemitism Inc. in January, shortly after Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down over criticism of her handling of the pro-Palestinian protests and unearthed plagiarism in her scholarly work.

    Brown University and New York University faced similar lawsuits but settled them in July. Brown University agreed to conduct annual nondiscrimination training for employees and students while New York University said it would create a new position of Title VI coordinator.

    Columbia University in June said in its settlement announcement that officials would start providing security escorts upon request.

    Harvard could choose to settle its case since its motion to dismiss was largely rejected. Stearns said plaintiffs’ claims of contract breach could also move forward, while the plaintiffs did not provide sufficient evidence to advance a claim that Harvard enforced its policies inconsistently.

    He directed Harvard to file a response to the lawsuit by Aug. 27 and set other deadlines as the case heads toward trial absent a settlement.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 18:00

  • Supermicro Craters On Shocking Margin Collapse Despite Euphoric Revenue Guidance, 10-For-1 Stock Split
    Supermicro Craters On Shocking Margin Collapse Despite Euphoric Revenue Guidance, 10-For-1 Stock Split

    More bad news for the slowly bursting AI bubble.

    Shares of server-maker Super Micro Computer, which have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the AI euphoria over the past two years as it emerged as a proxy for AI demand (and server installs), soared as much as 16% before crashing more than 10%, after the company reported Q2 revenue and profit that missed estimates, but it was the company’s plunging profit margins that which outweighed the company’s ecstatic sales outlook that was billions above Wall Street projections as well as the 10-1 reverse stock split announcement.

    For Q2, SMCI reported revenues of $5.31 billion, which missed the average estimate of $5.32 billion; while Adjusted EPS dropped to $6.25, well short of Super Micro’s own previous forecast and the $8.25 average analyst estimate.

    But what truly spooked Wall Street was the incineration in margin which collapsed 580bps YoY (and 430bps QoQ) to just 11.3%, amid a fierce price cutting war with competitors such as Dell and Hewlett Packard.

    Also, the $635 million in cash burn – the 3rd straight quarter of negative cash from operations – did not help.

    While the company tried to blame the collapse in margins on “customer and product mix and investments in Talent and Research & Development, Wall Street did not buy it, and in fact it sold it aggressively, sending the stock collapsing to the lowest level of the year.

    Not even the company’s blowout outlook, which has 2025 full-year revenue between $26 and $30BN on Wall Street estimates of $23.6BN, nor the company’s announcement of a 10-for-1 stock split after Oct 1, did anything to inspire buying, but judging by the afterhours action, certainly inspired selling as investors are suddenly worried about the longer-term profitability of AI-optimized servers sold by companies like Super Micro, Dell Technologies, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise if the company’s margins are already cratering this fast.

    A jump in demand for the equipment that powers artificial intelligence training and applications has helped drive sales at San Jose, California-based Super Micro, which makes data center servers. “We are well-positioned to become the largest IT infrastructure company,” CEO Charles Liang said in the statement. Alas, judging by the epic plunge in SMCI stock after hours, nobody believed him.

    While the shares had more than doubled in value this year and been added to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes following increased demand for servers. Still, the stock has declined about 48% from a peak in March.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 17:37

  • WTI Dips Back Toward Six-Month Lows After API Reports Across-The-Board Inventory Builds
    WTI Dips Back Toward Six-Month Lows After API Reports Across-The-Board Inventory Builds

    Today saw some respite in the recent rout for oil prices as WTI stalled its decline around $73 (just off six-month lows) as stocks bounced and lifted Treasury yields, supporting crude for now.

    Concerns remain about the outlook for crude demand in China and the U.S. A run of softer-than-expected economic data late last week set in motion the stock-market selloff and weighed on oil futures, analysts said.

    Downside appeared to be limited, however, by expectations that Iran would launch retaliatory strikes after it blamed the assassination of a top Hamas official visiting Tehran last week on Israel. U.S. officials have been pressing Tehran not to escalate the conflict, news reports said.

    “Oil prices have fallen in the last few days in lockstep” with equities, with limited reaction to developments in the Middle East, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts including Daan Struyven wrote in a note.

    The big question is – will the streak of crude draws continue…

    API

    • Crude +0.18mm

    • Cushing +1.07mm

    • Gasoline +3.31mm

    • Distillates +1.22mm

    The five-week streak of crude inventory draws is over as API reports builds across the entire energy complex…

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTI was trading around $73 ahead of the API print and faded modestly lower, back towards six-month lows, after the across-the-board builds…

    The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that crude oil prices will recover from recent losses as draws on global inventories accelerate in the second half of the year.

    “Although crude oil prices have fallen recently, we continue to expect crude oil prices will rise in the second half of 2024,” the EIA said Tuesday in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook. The agency expects international benchmark Brent to return to between $85 and $90 a barrel by the end of the year.

    The EIA anticipates withdrawals from global oil inventories will double to 800,000 barrels a day in the second half of the year from an estimated 400,000 barrels a day in the first half. A return to moderate inventory builds is predicted in mid-2025.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 17:20

  • Convention Visitors, Here's The True Impact Of Progressive Government On Illinois And Chicago
    Convention Visitors, Here’s The True Impact Of Progressive Government On Illinois And Chicago

    Via Wirepoints.org,

    Led by Gov. JB Pritzker in national TV appearances, the political establishment in Illinois and Chicago is listing its triumphs as the Democratic National Convention in Chicago nears. Mayor Brandon Johnson, too, is “looking to spread his vision for progressive governance on everything from raising wages for workers in Chicago to achieving a ceasefire in Gaza,” as The Nation recently put it.

    Through a progressive’s lens, successes are real: a higher minimum wage, establishment of the state as an abortion haven, a major capital budget, aggressive green energy mandates, welcoming and sanctuary policies for migrants and more. We publish those claims as they are made. Illinois may indeed be “the most progressive state in the nation and damn proud of it,” as Gov. Pritzker says.

    But there’s another side to the story, thousands of pages long, of severely crippling results of progressive policies.

    What follows is a summary of the other consequences of progressive policies for Illinois and Chicago. Each point is documented by facts and data. Links are to original sources or to Wirepoints reports that cite the original sources.

    • Fleeing population and tax base

    • Stagnant economy and job market

    • Expensive and broken education system

    • Rampant crime

    • Suffocating taxes

    • Pension crisis ignored

    • Massive spending on illegal immigrants

    • No equity – a failure by their own standards

    • Economic policy centered on statism and doomed focus on renewable energy

    • Free speech under assault and autocracy reigns

    • Disastrous pandemic management yet no accountability

    • Still more

    For still more details, see our page linked here collecting all our pertinent articles and research grouped by topic.

    *  *  *

    Fleeing population and tax base

    • The Census Bureau’s decennial count (2010-2020) showed Illinois was one of only three states to lose population over the decade. The bureau’s latest estimates show Illinois has lost another 240,000 in population since 2020.

    • More than 1.5 million people on net have moved out of Illinois since 2000 according to IRS migration data. Illinois would have taken in an estimated $3.6 billion more in income tax revenue in 2022 alone were it not for that exodus.

    • IRS migration data shows Illinois netted a loss of 87,000 residents and $9.8 billion in adjusted gross income in tax year 2022. Illinois’ losses were the nation’s 3rd-worst, behind only New York and California.

    • Illinois had 24 U.S. House Representatives after the 1970 Census. Today it has just 17.

    Stagnant economy and job market

    • Illinois’ current unemployment rate of 5.0% is 3rd-worst in the nation.Chicago is ranked dead last among major cities for creating new millionaires.

    • Illinois ranks 45th through 47th in the country in economic metrics used by the state’s own Commission on Government Accountability and Forecasting to compare itself to other states: GDP, employment and personal income.

    • Illinois is a “net taker” from the federal government and has been since around 2019.

    • Illinois’ credit rating and budgets were greatly assisted by the nearly $200 billion in covid funds distributed by the federal government to the state’s public and private sectors.

    • Illinois has created no net new employment in five years – the nation’s 3rd-worst performance. Fewer people are on Illinois’ employment rolls today than when Gov. Pritzker took office.

    • Annual state claims to “balanced budgets” aren’t true because, among other reasons, Illinois consistently underfunds its pension contributions by about $5 billion every year.

    Expensive and broken education system

    • Illinois has dismal student outcomes. Just 35% of students statewide can read at grade level and only 27% are proficient in math. It’s worse for minorities: Just 16% of black students and just 22% of Hispanics can read at grade level. In all, 1.2 million Illinois students can’t read at grade level.

    • Illinois is spending nearly $24,000 per student in 2024, up more than 30% compared to 2019.

    • Only 25% of Chicago Public School students can read at grade level and just 18% can do math. Yet CPS graduates 83% of its students. Chicago Public Schools spent nearly $30,000 per student in 2024, up 39% compared to 2019.

    • Not a single child tested proficient in math in 67 Illinois schools. For reading, it’s 32 schools.

    • The state’s accountability metrics are broken. Ninety-seven percent of teachers statewide are rated “excellent or proficient” and 83% of schools are rated “exemplary” or “commendable.”

    • Based on Census Bureau data, Illinois spends the most per student of any state in the Midwest. Illinois’ total per student spend grew 98% between 2022 and 2007, the 3rd-largest increase of the nation’s 50 states.

    • Illinois’ “evidence-based” school funding formula has failed. After seven years and $8.5 billion in dedicated funding to the formula, the number of students reading at grade level has not improved.

    • While 19 states have adopted some form of school choice since 2023, Illinois politicians last year killed off the state’s only choice program: a small tax-credit scholarship.

    Rampant Crime

    • Chicago has led the nation in total homicides for 12 years in a row.

    • Pritzker has said “violent crime in the City of Chicago … has been coming down for three years, in particular, over the last year” and frequently made similar claims. In truth, Chicagoans are suffering under a six-year high in violent crimes.

    • Thanks to crime levels and overwhelmed police, if you’re shot, robbed or assaulted in Chicago, there’s a 50/50 chance there will be no police to respond to your 911 call.

    • Since the implementation of the controversial SAFE-T Act which eliminated cash bail, Cook County’s jail population has fallen to its lowest levels in 40 years.

    • Prosecuting criminals in Chicago and all of Cook County is in the hands of Kim Foxx, widely regarded as among the most pro-criminal prosecutor in the nation and notorious for dropping charges against actor Jussie Smollett. She was endorsed in both her election and reelection to Cook County State’s Attorney by the entire Illinois ruling progressive establishment.

    Suffocating taxes

    Pension crisis ignored

    • Illinois has the worst pension crisis in the nation under most metrics.

    • The unfunded liability for Illinois state pensions grew from $137 billion in 2019 (when Pritzker took office) to $142 billion in its most recent report.

    • Chicago’s worst-in-nation pension crisis is worsening. Chicago’s pension shortfall across the city’s four major retirement funds rose to $37.2 billion in 2023. Add in the teachers fund, and Chicagoans are on the hook for $53 billion in unfunded pension liabilities – over $45,000 per Chicago household.

    • The number of Illinois public sector workers or retirees with pension benefits or salaries exceeding $100,000 per year has jumped by 50% since 2018, now at 140,000.

    • Illinois and Chicago have the nation’s worst credit ratings, largely due to the pension crisis.

    • Pritzker and other Illinois officeholders refuse to consider an amendment to the state’s constitutional pension protection clause, dishonestly claiming that the federal Constitution would be an impediment. Other states prove it’s not so.

     Massive spending on illegal immigrants

    No Equity – Failure by Their Own Standard

    • By their own primary measure of success – “equity” – Illinois and Chicago have failed miserably. Study after study, looking at equity from many angles, says progressive equity efforts in Illinois and Chicago have flopped miserably.

    • The biggest pension in the state, for teachers and school administrators, is structurally set up to shift money to the richest school districts. Lawmakers could easily fix that but don’t.

    Economic policy centered on statism and doomed focus on renewable energy

    • Virtually all major, recent Illinois announcements of new or expanding Illinois employment centers were induced through taxpayer subsidies. Most new major projects subsidized by the state are renewable energy projects, which are the centerpiece of Illinois central planning. They include subsidized facilities for Stellantis, Rivian, Lion Electric and Gotion.

    • The Gotion project is particularly controversial. The Chinese company with multiple ties to the Chinese Communist party is scheduled to receive over $8 billion in state and federal subsidies for a plant that will cost the company less than $2 billion. The project is widely opposed by the public and is for manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles, demand for which is languishing. Full reporting on those facts and the rest of the Gotion controversy is collected in our special section here. Pritzker has expressly refused to answer any questions whatsoever about the project.

    • Illinois is aggressively pursuing a goal of having one million EVs on the road by 2030, but Illinois would have to quadruple its current adoption rate for EVs to meet the state’s goals.

    • In 2021, Illinois passed legislation to push 50% of its electricity production to renewable sources by 2040 and 100% from clean energy sources by 2050, which became law last year and was called by one of its sponsors “the most aggressive, most progressive climate bill in the nation.”

    • Partly as a result of those policies, electricity costs have already risen 50% in much of the state with high risks of brownouts. As in most of the nation, many planned renewable electricity projects are now on hold because grid connections don’t exist, which may be prohibitively expensive to fix.

    • Last month the state announced a major bet on quantum computing. Illinois will provide $200 million to PsiQuantum for a Chicago projected to create just 154 jobs. The state is also contributing another $500 million to the industrial park for quantum computing in which the facility will be located, which the state says will result in “thousands” of jobs. However, those additional jobs are entirely speculative at this point.

    • Most recently, Lion Electric, an electric school bus maker that last year built a new Illinois plant with state incentives is struggling for survival. The project was highly touted by Pritzker, who projected 1,200 jobs by 2028. Lion also benefits from the $5 billion subsidy program for electric school buses championed by Vice President Kamala Harris, which is also failing.

    Free speech under assault and autocracy

    • Illinois has established itself as the state most hostile to First Amendment free speech rights. A list of examples is linked here. In one instance, a federal judge labeled a law the state was trying to defend as “stupid and likely unconstitutional,” so Attorney General Kwame Raoul gave up on the case.

    • Illinois’ highly touted “ban on book bans”  is an empty, dangerous and hypocritical stunt. It delegates censorship powers to libraries and to an unelected national association headed by a self-described Marxist. It conflates questions of age appropriateness with censorship, and is a transparent attempt by the leaders of the cancel culture to wrap themselves in the flag of free speech.

    • Pritzker has expressed views particularly hostile to established First Amendment law, saying on CNN that what the government deems to be lies should be subject to criminal prosecution.

    • The University of Illinois maintains one of the most onerous “loyalty oaths” for faculty, demanding proof of their active commitment to wokeness.

    • Illinois Congressmen have implored social media to do more censorship in at least five separate hearings where tech platform CEOs were grilled.

    • During the covid pandemic, Illinois was ruled under 45 consecutive monthly emergency orders giving unparalleled power to the executive.

    • For illegal immigrants, Illinois was ruled under 24 monthly emergency orders. The proclamations broadcast inducements for illegals to come, including “transport, emergency shelter and housing, food, health screenings, medical assessments, treatments, and other necessary care and services.”

    • Illinois this year retroactively changed the rules on candidate slating for General Assembly elections, which targeted Republicans only. A lower court ruled against the law, which is now on appeal.

    • Most recently Illinois passed a ban on employers from discussing “religious or political matters” at meetings where worker attendance is mandatory. Violations will be punishable with fines up to $1,000 per employee. It’s patently unconstitutional and absurdly overbroad.

    Disastrous pandemic management yet no accountability

    • A full list of covid response failures by the State of Illinois and City of Chicago is here, many of which were obvious errors even as they were being made. No remorse has been shown or accountability imposed.

    • That list includes massive fraud in pandemic relief, suppression of dissent and conflicting data, unfounded projections portrayed as “science” and willful indifference to the rule of law.

    • Most importantly, Illinois kept schools closed long after prevailing opinion and the CDC advised otherwise, among the greatest policy errors in healthcare history. 

    Still more

    • “After years of Republican failure, Pritzker says, Illinois Democrats have turned the state around.” In truth, Democrats have held the majorities in both houses of the Illinois General Assembly for 21 years and super majorities in both houses for 11 years. A Democrat has been governor for 17 of the last 21 years. Chicago has not had a Republican mayor for 93 years.

    • A catalog of deceitful or dishonest claims by Pritzker and the state is here. 

    • For voting, Illinois maintains aggressive mail-in voting rules, no requirement for picture IDs and the probably the most gerrymandered maps in the nation.

    • Antisemitism has been the predictable result of DEI preached by JB Pritzker and his sister, Penny Pritzker. Like Penny Pritzker at Harvard, JB Pritzker’s tenure on Northwestern University’s board of trustees contributed to the current wave of antisemitism at the school.

    • Illinois is in fact a moderate state not properly represented by its progressive political establishment. On virtually every major issue, Illinoisans are centrists.

    • Mayor Johnson and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle are among the nation’s strongest supporters of Universal Basic Income. Cook County claims its UBI program is the biggest in the nation. But neither Chicago nor the county have any way to pay for continuation of the programs, most of which have been paid for with temporary covid relief money.

    • The commercial property “Doom Loop” is a growing concern. Chicago, like many cities, faces a frightening, downward spiral from declining office building valuations. Though the problem may derive primarily from the work-from-home trend, it’s worsened by Chicago crime. Actual, daily occupancy of downtown offices hovers around 55% of pre-pandemic levels. Lower valuations will force massive residential property tax increases or severe budget cutbacks.

    • Johnson was elected mayor of Chicago despite his calls for defunding the police and justifying violent protests.

    • Mayor Johnson routinely places blame for Chicago’s problems on racism, disinvestment and even Richard Nixon.

    • Illinois progressives celebrate December 4 as Fred Hampton Day. Hampton was a member of the Black Panthers and advocated for violent, Marxist revolution.

    • Pritzker’s approval rating is 41% according to the most recent poll by a major pollster. Mayor Johnson’s is 28%.

    • “Social justice” principles guide investment of state cash. Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs remains an unapologetic champion of ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing. He manages an average balance of well over $100 billion of state money which he subjects to his social justice goals.

    • A 2018 Cook County inspector general’s report concluded that more than $330,000 in property tax breaks and refunds that Pritzker received on a property he owned — in part by removing toilets to render the property uninhabitable — constituted a “scheme to defraud.” Pritzker repaid the county treasurer’s office, and said the repayment was not an acknowledgment of anything improper. A federal criminal investigation of Pritzker, his wife and brother-in-law was reported to have begun on the matter in October 2018, though nothing further has been reported on that.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 17:00

  • Hezbollah Commander Warns Retaliation Strikes Will Target New Sites Deeper Into Israel
    Hezbollah Commander Warns Retaliation Strikes Will Target New Sites Deeper Into Israel

    As the world awaits an Iranian retaliation strike against Israel, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah warned Tuesday of ‘strong and effective’ attacks on Israel.

    The leader of the Lebanese militant group spoke on national television earlier Tuesday at the one-week memorial of Fuad Shukr, the group’s top military commander, who was killed in Israeli air strikes in Beirut. 

    Iran “finds itself obliged to respond, and the enemy is waiting in a great state of dread,” Nasrallah said, adding that Hezbollah will respond “alone or in the context of a unified response from all the axis” of Iran-backed proxy groups “whatever the consequences.”

    He added that “Israel is no longer as strong it was in the past and neither are its defensive capabilities. Israel is asking for help from the US, from the West, from Europe and from Arab regimes – this is evidence of Israel’s decline in prestige. The command and control centers, Iron Dome, ‘David’s Sling,’ and the Israeli and US satellites are on high alert – while today a missile fell east of Acre.”

    “The entire region today is in the face of a real danger,” Nasrallah noted. He said, “Everyone needs to understand the risks in the current situation regarding Palestine, because if the Israeli government wins in the struggle over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – then there is no Palestinian people, there won’t even be Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

    Nasrallah also said the militant group will be targeting new Israeli high-value asset targets much deeper in the country than ever before. 

    Listen here… 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Stay updated on the latest developments in the Middle East crisis:

    Meanwhile, President Biden was briefed on Monday about preparations to support Israel should all hell break out in the Middle East.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken said officials are working “around the clock” to prevent a broadening conflict. 

    Axios reported that Monday’s Middle East briefing with Biden and officials provided little details about the timing and nature of an Iranian attack. 

    Biden said:

    “We received updates on threats posed by Iran and its proxies, diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, and preparations to support Israel should it be attacked again.”

    Both U.S. and Israeli leaders have continued to ready their forces to respond to a heightened level of attacks across the Middle East.

    “Israel is in a state of very high readiness for any scenario—on both defense and offense. We will exact a very high price for any act of aggression against us from any quarter whatsoever,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in an Aug. 1 press statement.

    Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh also announced that additional U.S. missile defense capabilities were deploying to the region on Aug. 2.

    Singh said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to deploy to the CENTCOM area of operations, which covers Israel and the broader Middle East.

    She said Austin also ordered another fighter squadron to the Middle East to bolster regional air defense capabilities and was readying to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense systems.

    What remains a mystery is the timing of the potential Iranian retaliation – and really it’s impossible to know the scale of the attack. But what’s very likely is a direct assault on Israel by Iran or proxy forces that could very well drag in Western nations, such as the US. 

    In markets, an exploding regional conflict could have major implications on the oil market.

    So far, energy traders have shrugged off geopolitical concerns and instead focused on the demand woes of slowing economies in China and the US. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/06/2024 – 16:40

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