Ian Welsh

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 18, 2026
by Tony Wikrent

 

Coup-Proofing: Inside the Pentagon’s MAGA-to-Military-to-ICE Pipeline

Christopher Armitage, Oct 11, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

On May 28, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo ordering every branch of the military to “prioritize and broadly advertise” Department of Homeland Security jobs to troops leaving the service. The memo told commanders to approve requests from departing troops to spend their final months interning with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection “to the maximum extent possible.” Michael Miller, who directs the Pentagon’s office for troops transitioning to civilian life, said the department typically does not recommend any specific career to separating service members. This time the department picked one.

That memo is the last step in a process called “coup proofing.” The first step is who the military is trying to recruit….

James Quinlivan, a RAND Corporation analyst, described militaries built for loyalty in a 1999 study in the journal International Security. He called the practice “coup-proofing.” The regimes he studied chose their commanders by family, tribe, sect and ethnicity before competence. They also built a second armed force outside the regular military, recruited it for loyalty, funded it separately, and gave it the missions the army might refuse. Saddam Hussein built the Republican Guard. Hafez al-Assad gave his brother a private army. In the United States the regular military is bound by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars it from civilian policing. ICE sits outside that law.

The regular army is being emptied of the officers who would refuse an unlawful order, and the removals have landed hardest on Black and female officers. On the night of Feb. 21, 2025, Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, the same night, along with the judge advocates general of three services, the uniformed lawyers who tell commanders whether an order is legal. Days later he called such lawyers “roadblocks to orders that are given” by a commander in chief. In August 2025 Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, two months after Kruse’s analysts drafted an assessment that contradicted Trump’s claim that U.S. strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites.

In April 2026 Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, after George and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll refused to strike four names from a list of 33 officers recommended for promotion to one-star general. Two of the four are Black men and the other two are women. By September 2026, The New York Times counted more than 80 generals and admirals fired or blocked from promotion, more than half of them Black or female, and military officials told the Times that the purge “does not appear to be driven by job performance.”….

The budget law Trump signed on July 4, 2025, funded the second facet of the coup-proofing process. It gave ICE roughly $75 billion over four years. By January 2026 the agency had hired 12,000 new officers and agents, more than doubling its officer corps to 22,000.

ICE’s minimum hiring age dropped to 18, and training was cut from 22 weeks to as little as 42 days. For 2026 the agency budgeted $100 million for what its own planning document calls “wartime recruitment,” with ads aimed at people who have attended UFC fights or listened to “patriotic podcasts,” The Washington Post reported….

Do they want to control what the troops hear? In October 2025, nearly every outlet in the Pentagon press corps, Fox News included, surrendered its credentials over new rules against gathering unapproved information. The Pentagon replaced them with more than 60 “new media” reporters, including Turning Point USA’s own outlet and far right activist Laura Loomer.

Do they want veterans with the extremism screen off? Maryland researchers found that about 85 percent of extremist offenders with military ties are veterans. Trump pardoned the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted for Jan. 6. ICE’s 2026 plan pushes its ads to phones that pass through military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses and gun shows.

Do they want a force the courts cannot constrain? On Sept. 2, 2025, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco ruled that the Los Angeles troop deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act and warned of a “national police force.” In December, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Illinois that the administration had no authority to deploy the Guard in Chicago. Neither ruling touches ICE. A soldier who joins ICE keeps the training and leaves the legal limit behind.

So the process as outlined looks like this: recruit political zealots, remove the officers and lawyers who object to unlawful conduct, turn off the extremism screens, and send the graduates to a rapidly growing ICE that the law has not effectively constrained….

 

 

War on voting

Exclusive: How the Military Will Hack the Election

Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

DOJ gives California 48 hours to act on alleged noncitizen voter list or face legal action

[Drop Site Daily, October 14, 2026]

In a Tuesday letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, reviewed by Reuters, acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter demanded the state take a series of actions related to a list of voters until their citizenship is confirmed, including segregating any returned ballots, or face legal action.

The letter escalates the administration’s pressure on states and suggests DOJ may challenge ballots before the Nov. 3 election. DOJ has repeatedly claimed noncitizen voting is widespread despite studies showing it is rare. DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has sued 30 states that refused to hand over voter data and has lost 26 cases without a win.

 

War

Ukraine is Successfully Bombing the Heart of Russia’s Online Disinformation Machine. Yandex answers 70% of Russian searches, and Ukraine hit three of its five data centers in four days.

Christopher Armitage, Oct 11, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

… Yandex is the Kremlin’s information machine. It answers about 70% of search queries in Russia, according to the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, which titled its 2024 report on the company “From Independent Tech Startup to Kremlin Propaganda Tool.” …. Cloudflare, the internet security company that fronts a large share of the world’s websites, measured automated requests from Yandex’s network at 0.4% of their two-week peak after the Vladimir strike. That count covers every automated program on Yandex’s servers that sends requests to websites, its search crawler among them, and nobody outside Yandex can see which of them went dark….

On September 18 The New York Times reported that United States intelligence found the Kremlin had authorized a covert online campaign for the midterm, and that every example researchers had attributed to Russia attacked a Democratic Senate candidate…. The United States government dismantled its own defenses against that campaign in 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolved the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in February 2025. Congress let the State Department’s Global Engagement Center expire in December 2024, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio closed its successor office in April 2025. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard shrank the Foreign Malign Influence Center, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency pushed out more than a dozen officials who had monitored foreign election influence. I laid this out in my August Watchdog Report on the midterms….

 

Iran war costing average U.S. household $2K, economist estimates

[Seeking Alpha, via Naked Capitalism 10-13-2026]

 

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [Mediaite]

 

How the Trump Admin. Is Expanding the Definition of ‘Terrorism’ — and What It Means (w/ Dan Boguslaw)

Chris Hedges, Oct 14, 2026

Investigative journalist Daniel Boguslaw uncovers collusion between law enforcement, Corporate America and academics to create new targets for the expanding US security state….

Hedges and Boguslaw begin by discussing the newest threat category, ‘anti-technology extremism,’ “a direct response to widespread protests over the building of these massive data centers and the increasing intrusion into our lives as well as their destructive power of artificial intelligence.” Then Boguslaw speaks about the long rise of fusion centers where Corporate America has partnered with local and federal law enforcement to use the “cloak of the state to give them more powers to persecute dissent.” ….

 

Trump’s Corruption Is Different In Kind – He isn’t just more corrupt than most politicians; corruption is his raison d’être. This isn’t just “government corruption” to be reformed away. It’s a GOP crime spree, and voters need to know it.

Brian Beutler, Oct 16, 2026 [Off Message]

… one of the most infuriating facts about the Trump era is that, for much of the past decade, he’s managed to neutralize corruption as a political liability. There’s truth and there’s what you can prove in the court of public opinion. While as a factual matter, Trump is far and away the most corrupt political figure in the history of the country—the people who believe Trump is dangerously corrupt have been well grounded in their belief—the general public has been split on the question of which of the country’s major political parties is more corrupt.

Indeed, voters frequently identify the Democratic Party as the more corrupt of the two. Trump loyalists won’t admit Trump is corrupt, or any more corrupt than a typical politician; Republican lifers won’t accept their party’s complicity. But they are all happy to believe or claim that the Democratic Party and its leadership are shot through with fraud.

This is simultaneously a triumph of propaganda and an artifact of institutional failure. Republicans built echo chambers designed to deliver received wisdom to a huge swath of the country, and they know corruption is a political liability. They’ve thus spent the entire decade assassinating the character of prominent Democrats, leveling false or exaggerated accusations of fraud and criminality against all factions of liberal society, while ignoring or denying Trump’s relentless crime spree.

This effort was easier than it should have been, though, because most Democratic leaders and the leaders of liberal institutions convinced themselves most citizens did not care about political corruption ….

 

Trump’s Sick Plan for Ilhan Omar Exposed

Hafiz Rashid, October 15, 2026 [The New Republic]

… The investigation ostensibly centers on whether Omar’s father put her age as 17 rather than 18 on her citizenship application to allow her to qualify immediately for citizenship alongside his own application. Omar became a citizen in 2000.

“They cheat on everything,” Trump said to an Ohio audience at a rally Monday about Somali Americans. “We’re not going to stand for it.”

 

Trump DHS Is Building Deranged Case Against Ilhan Omar

Edith Olmsted, October 16, 2026 [The New Republic]

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin revealed Friday that the Trump administration is hoping to bring a criminal conspiracy case against Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar….

“If someone comes in and claims—that fills out their paperwork illegally, and they claim that they are this person, and this is their background, and then underneath that individual, a lot of other people come in … then that can be considered a RICO case,” Mullin said.

“There was a conspiracy to deceive the American government, and therefore everything else that came in with it could then for be looked at as the same case,” the secretary said.

“Good thing about something like a case like that, is when it is a RICO case, that the statue of limitations on things, they don’t, they don’t apply. A few cases they do, but in most cases they don’t,” he added….

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act 

[Wikipedia]

… Under RICO, a person who has committed “at least two acts of racketeering activity” drawn from a list of 35 crimes (27 federal crimes and eight state crimes) within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering if such acts are related in one of four specified ways to an enterprise.^[6]

Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count.^[7]

In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of racketeering activity.^[8]

A US Attorney who indicts someone under RICO has the option of seeking a pre-trial restraining order or an injunction to temporarily seize a defendant’s assets and prevent the transfer of potentially forfeitable property as well as to require the defendant to put up a performance bond. An injunction or performance bond ensures that there is something to seize in the event of a guilty verdict.

This provision prevented the owners of Mafia-related shell corporations from absconding with assets. In many cases, the threat of a RICO indictment can force defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges, in part because the seizure of assets would make it difficult to pay a defense attorney.

Despite its harsh provisions, a RICO-related charge is considered easy to prove in court because it focuses on patterns of behavior as opposed to criminal acts….

There must be one of four specified relationships between the defendants and the enterprise. Either the defendants:

• invested the proceeds of the pattern of racketeering activity into the enterprise (18 U.S.C. § 1962(a)); or
• acquired or maintained an interest in, or control of, the enterprise through the pattern of racketeering activity (subsection (b)); or
• conducted or participated in the affairs of the enterprise “through” the pattern of racketeering activity (subsection (c)); or
• conspired to do one of the above (subsection (d))….

[TW: Looks like Trump and Mullin are going to stretch RICO beyond its original legislative intent. On the other hand, Trump and the (anti)Republicans have repeatedly claimed that the Somali community in Minnesota engages in widespread fraud. Which suggests premeditation — which in turn suggests something like the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. ]

 

Judge orders cancellation of Trump’s government-funded ads

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-2026]

 

Jared Kushner’s Middle East Financial Ties Draw Scrutiny as US Funds Gaza Force

[Military.com, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-2026]

 

Officials Flagged a $580 Million Oil Bet Made Minutes Before Trump’s Iran Reversal, Then Were Told to Back Off

[International Business Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

ICE Planning $100 Million ‘Nightmare’ Domestic Spy Program

by Whitney Curry Wimbish, October 14, 2026 [The American Prospect]

Under ERO ONE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire 142 intelligence contractors with top secret clearances and deploy them in cities across the country.

 

The Dawn Of The Self-Funding Pentagon – It’s not like the military is cash-starved from Congress. But it looks a lot like it’s going to make money off Venezuelan oil

Spencer Ackerman,  13 Oct 2026 [FOREVER WARS]

 

DOGE

Michael Lewis on the Lone Security Guard Who Resisted DOGE

[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture, October 13, 2026]

In an exclusive excerpt from ‘Blockers,’ the inside story of the high-stakes D.C. standoff where security chief Colin O’Brien fought off DOGE operatives.

 

Supreme Court takes on public access to DOGE records

[Courthouse News Service, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to review how much information the Trump administration can be forced to reveal about the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency under public records requests.

Earlier this year, an appeals court ordered discovery into the structure and work of the U.S. DOGE Service under a Freedom of Information Act request from an ethics watchdog. The Trump administration pushed the justices to review the decision, arguing it intruded on the autonomy and confidentiality of presidential advisers….

 

Strategic Political Economy

The Grain Is There. The World’s Hungry Can’t Reach It. And El Niño Won’t Wait.

Mark Roberts [4Hunger.org, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

The world is not running out of grain this year. It is running out of grain that poor countries can reach at a price they can pay. Wheat is trapped behind closed ports by war, the world’s spare rice sits largely in one country, India, which may need it for its own people, and the world is eating into its maize reserves. Whether this becomes hunger and famine in 2027 now turns on two things: 1) whether this super El Niño spares India, Australia and South Africa, which hold much of the world’s spare grain and which previous strong El Niños pushed into drought; and 2) whether world leaders get humanitarian aid to the countries with no grain reserves before their harvests fail. The second is a choice, and the time to make it is now….

 

Africa: 800 Million Young People Face a Future Without Jobs

[allAfrica, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

Global power shift

Trump Is Gutting America’s Core Geopolitical Advantage

[Foreign Affairs, via The Big Picture, October 11, 2026]

Robert B. Zoellick, former US Trade Representative, deputy secretary of state and World Bank president, on the strategic cost of antagonizing Canada and Mexico.

 

America Didn’t Lose Its Rare Earth Industry. It Sold It.

[Lawfare, via The Big Picture, October 17, 2026]

Markets price for cost. China prices for control. The risk of a rare earths cutoff is asymmetric, and the financing to rebuild American supply should be too. Kirsten Asdal: Beijing’s rare-earth export controls have been suspended one short reprieve at a time since October 2025, the latest until Nov. 10. How the US ended up this dependent.

 

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Israel’s New – and Terrifying – Security Doctrine

Trita Parsi [via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

In a stunning piece published by the head of one of Israel’s most prominent think tanks, Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman describes the reality of Israel’s new security doctrine:

A few crucial principles he describes:

1. The United States is a “declining power” and, given its ongoing social and political shifts, will soon abandon Israel in any event. This is compelling Israel to move toward greater self-reliance in order to avoid “excessive dependence” on the US since it “exposes Israel to the influence of a progressive American value system that is incompatible with Israel’s Jewish character.”

Then he concludes: “Severing ties with the United States is therefore not only inevitable, but essential to Israel’s independence and the resilience of its Jewish national identity.”

2. Primacy of Jewish Identity over Democracy: The state’s Jewish identity takes precedence over its democratic system of government.

3. Peace as a Means Rather Than an End….

4. “Rejection of the Independent Existence of Arab States….

5. “War as a Foundational State: War is essential to national security and cannot be replaced by a state of peace, which, as noted, is merely a means rather than an end…. War is necessary, and preventive war is preferable because it secures a significant achievement at the outset.” ….

 

Oligarchy

The $430 Million War Against Taxing The Rich – Ultrawealthy donors have spent nearly half a billion dollars trying to convince voters to keep their taxes low via the ballot this November.

Veronica Riccobene, Oct 15, 2026 [The Lever]

 

The Requisite Variety of Power For Neoliberal Feudalism: Cybernetics, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Money, and the Limits of Total Control

[Hermes of the Threshold, via Naked Capitalism 10-13-2026]

GRAPH – The Global Public-Private Partnership

 

Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans

[New York Times, Oct 13, 2026]

 

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Sales of Existing Single-Family Homes Scrape along Bottom of 4-Year Dumpster, Supply at 11-Year High. Condo Sales at Record Low, Supply at Record High

[Wolf Street, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

Car payments just hit a record $787 a month—and 1 in 4 new-car buyers is now signing a 7-year loan

[Fortune, via Naked Capitalism 10-16-2026]

 

How Expedia Rigs Travel Markets and Raises Your Hotel Prices

Lee Hepner, Oct 14, 2026 [BIG]

 

Health care crisis

We Exposed the New AI Scheme to Deny Your Healthcare – It’s the latest oligarch attack on healthcare.

[More Perfect Union, Oct 13, 2026]

The Trump administration is using AI to analyze Medicare prior authorizations, and companies get 25 percent of the “savings” the system generates.

We found two private equity firms, Carlyle Group and Patient Square Capital, backing this process….

 

Q3 2026: UnitedHealth’s Profits Soar as it Covers Fewer People, Pays Less for Care

[HEALTH CARE un-covered, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

Predatory finance

Frenzied Stock-Options Trading Shows Individual Investors Are Still Hungry for Risk

[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture, October 15, 2026]

Daily single-stock options volume is running near $700 billion, close to 2021 meme-mania levels, as retail traders look past rising rates, $100 oil and war. Trading in single-stock options contracts is near levels reached in 2021, when a new generation of amateur investors shook up Wall Street

[TW: US GDP in 2026 is estimated at $32.38 trillion, or $89.0 billion a day. In 1980, options trading was $45.8 billion for the entire year, compared to US annual GDP of $17.8 trillion.

[According to CBOE, the average daily value of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange is $176,990,302,863 and on NASDAQ $167,576,703,483. But these two exchanges now account for only 40 percent of daily stock trading. A slightly larger share of daily trading are off-exchange equity trades which are now reported through a Trade Reporting Facility (TRF) operated by one of three FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc.) systems.]

 

How the Fed Is Quietly Inflating the AI Bubble While Hiking Your Electric Bill

Matt Stoller, Oct 17, 2026 [BIG]

When the Fed raises the price of money, it hikes electric bills, property taxes, mortgage and auto costs, and the price of working capital. It’s time to drop our illusions about the central bank.

 

They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

Our economy is literally criminal

Robin McAlpine, 14 Oct 2026 [Common Weal, via Naked Capitalism 10-17-2026]

 

The Many Ways Trump Is Kneecapping White-Collar Crime Enforcement

Hannah Levintova, October 16, 2026 [Mother Jones]

 

Burying the Horrors of Epstein Island

[The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-2026]

 

Ken Paxton Partied in Dubai With Fugitives Ahead of High-Stakes Texas Senate Race

[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

Scammers Are Stealing Millions From Food Stamp Recipients. Congress Could Fix It — but Won’t.

[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 10-14-2026]

 

 

Bank of America fined $1.2 billion over customer money laundering

[Drop Site Daily, October 14, 2026]

Bank of America has been fined a near-record $1.2 billion over its failures to monitor and report billions of dollars of suspicious transactions, the Treasury Department and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced on Tuesday.

The OCC’s civil penalty of $750 million, a significant portion of the $1.2 billion total, is the largest it has imposed. The Treasury Department separately announced an $11.6 million sanctions settlement. The Bank of America admitted that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act, failing to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering program, conduct due diligence on foreign-correspondent accounts, and file suspicious-activity reports.

 

Restoring balance to the economy

North Dakota’s Bank Earned the State $231.8 Million Last Year. Here Is What the Same Bank Would Have Earned Yours.

Christopher Armitage, Oct 13, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

One formula, 49 states, each figure built from the state’s own treasury records. The profit a state bank would’ve earned in 2025: California $2.26 billion, Texas $1.78 billion, New York $1.04 billion

 

Disrupting mainstream economics

Of Mathematics, mathiness, mythematics, and mathemagics

Steve Keen

 

Information age dystopia / surveillance state

Character.ai’s Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don’t Work 

[404 Media, via thejackpot.blog/node/TodaysWaterCooler20261014]

“Character.ai’s bankruptcy is the one of the first dominos to fall in the long-foreseen AI bubble. The circumstances of its bankruptcy are exactly what critics of AI have been saying would happen: Character.ai lit a huge amount of money on fire running its product, did not bring in a lot of revenue, and faced enormous legal fees after causing harm to its users. Enshittifying its product to try to make its expenses cheaper did not work, according to a narrative filed in bankruptcy court Tuesday.” And: “Disney has reportedly offered Character.ai $20 million to license some of its intellectual property; Last year, Disney sent Character.ai a cease and desist letter demanding it stop using its copyrighted characters without permission. In 2023, it was valued at $1 billion after raising $150 million in a round led by a16z. ”

[Lambert Strether added:]

Whoopsie. Commentary:

The junk AI firms are crashing. Last week it was Firmus, then CharacterAI, now CoreWeave.

Firmus and CoreWeave are backed by Nvidia. These are the stocks that would be the first ones to crater in an AI bubble pop. https://t.co/WVwVSGURzX

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) October 14, 2026

“Anthropic admits Houthis used Claude AI instead of weapons engineers to make rockets and ballistic missiles that correct themselves after missing targets” [Daily Mail]. • “Admits,” forsooth. Given that AI executives have no ethics or conscience, this is a sales pitch to the Pentagon.

 

Monopoly Round-Up: AI Cockroaches Scurry Out from Under Nvidia, the Most Valuable Company in the World

Matt Stoller, Oct 11, 2026 [BIG]

A failed initial public offering from an Nvidia-backed “neocloud” called Firmus, run by a man with a criminal record, suggests the AI bubble is getting ready to burst.

 

Fears of Big Tech Censorship Grow After Meta Suspends No Kings Instagram Account

How Meta Muse Profiles People Who Never Used It

Ken Macon, October 14, 2026 [reclaimthenet.org]

… Meta’s new personal agent, Muse, was built to learn the people in its users’ lives. That includes friends, exes, colleagues and siblings who have never opened it….

 

Israeli ad-tech company was a delivery system for “mercenary spyware”

Cory Doctorow, October 17, 2026 [Pluralistic]

… This allowed an Israeli spyware company called Discover-Tech (which masquerades as an ad-tech company) to sell totalitarian governments and sleazy corporate mercenaries the ability to pluck individual internet users out of the billions who log in every day and then serve “malicious ads” (that is, blobs of arbitrary code) to those targeted users. These malicious ads contained “no-click, zero-day” attacks, which meant that they exploited previously unknown vulnerabilities to take over devices without any user interaction. The mere act of loading a web-page or opening an app that relied on one of these gigantic ad-tech companies to serve ads was enough to compromise your device. No clicks needed, and no warning.

Among the targets of this attack campaign were the computers of workers at Al Jazeera. They were attacked with malware from the mercenary spyware company Candiru (which now calls itself “Integrity Labs” because irony is not dead). Beyond Candiru, Discover-Tech also facilitates attacks by numerous criminal mercenary spyware companies, serving ads on hundreds of thousands of sites and apps….

 

AI’s Supercharging a Scam Economy Bigger Than the Cocaine Trade

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 10-12-2026]

 

Google-CNN Deal to Integrate Generative AI Into News Platforms

[TeleSur, via Naked Capitalism 10-16-2026]

 

Congress Is Cashing In on the AI Boom – Roughly one in five members of Congress has household investments in the industry.

David Moore and Donald Shaw, Oct 15, 2026 [The Nation]

 

Climate and environmental crises

Solar Panels That Plug Into Your Wall Are About to Be Everywhere

(National Geographic, via The Big Picture, October 12, 2026]

California is the latest state to pass a law making it easier to install balcony-friendly solar panels. Renewable energy experts think the new technology is about to take off.

 

Driving Plug-in Solar Legislation State by State

[Brightsaver, via The Big Picture, October 12, 2026]

Plug-in solar, small panels that plug into the wall let renters and homeowners generate their own electricity, is being legalized state by state. The map below tracks legislation across all 50 U.S. states: Where bills have passed, where they’re advancing, and what’s next.

 

Water has emerged as a key issue for Arizona voters ahead of US midterms – governments should take note

[Chatham House, via Naked Capitalism 10-17-2026]

 

Democrats’ political malpractice

Newsom Endorses Ballot Measure That Would Cancel Out Billionaire Tax—and Ban Future Wealth Taxes

Jake Johnson, Oct 11, 2026 [CommonDreams]

 

J Street Is Trying To Rescue Zionism In The Battle Over Israel’s Future In The Democratic Party

[Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-2026]

 

Resistance

Democrats: Embrace Incivility! – Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff is leading the rise of the rude Democrat. More should follow his lead.

Jason Linkins, October 18, 2026 [The New Republic]

… as TNR contributor Nacona Nix explained at length, the liberal commitment to civility theater does a lot of real-world harm: It’s currently one of the primary vectors by which antisocial and undemocratic ideas get laundered into respectability….

 

When Democrats win the House, they must investigate Elon Musk and bar future government contracts!

Dean Obeidallah, Oct 17, 2026

First, we learned earlier this week from The NY Times that Musk is the GOP’s top donor by far this midterm. He has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July. By doing so, Musk has been building below the radar “a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.”

But it’s worse than that! On Friday, we learned from The Washington Post that Musk has poured in even more as documented in new campaign finance filings on Thursday. How much? Musk has donated as of now $369 million of his own money into this year’s midterm elections! (Below is image from Washington Post article on GOP megadonors in 2026.)….

But it’s not just money. The Washington Post reported this week that Musk is using his X/Twitter platform to help Republicans—and especially to help defeat Talarico. Musk elevated a false conspiracy theory about Talarico over the past weekend claiming he didn’t take a break from the campaign trail because he had the flu but because of Talarico’s mental health.

Musk began is his campaign of lies Sunday afternoon when he replied to a post alleging that Talarico had been checked into the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility in suburban Cincinnati. That is when Musk wrote, “The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about.” Given Musk’s massive following and that he controls the algorithm for the platform, his reply went wildly viral….

Musk’s top priority is ensuring he is not investigated by Democrats if they win the House. That is why he is spending $400 million plus. And given Musk’s desperation, there are valid questions if he would use his technology to impact/steal the elections?!

When Democrats win the House, for starters there must be oversight over the billions Musk receives in US tax dollars for various contracts. SpaceX alone holds around $22 billion in government contracts. And Musk currently has at least 52 active contracts across seven federal agencies were on track to pay Musk’s companies an additional $11.8 billion.

Musk must publicly answer questions under oath before Congress if there has been waste, fraud or abuse?! Plus did Musk directly use any of the government money to fund campaigns—which would be illegal. Did Musk engage in an illegal campaign contribution by using X to spread lies to help candidates?

And while we are at it, we should investigate how exactly Musk became a citizen—which is relevant since he receives billions in US tax dollars by way of contracts. As The Washington Post reported back in 2024, Musk came to the US in 1995 on a student visa for a graduate degree program at Stanford University. But he never enrolled in courses. Per The Post, “that left Musk without a legal basis to remain in the United States.” Yet he remained and started a business in apparent violation of US immigration law….

 

Exposure Is Not Accountability – When bad actors are shameless, exposure accomplishes little. They need to face tangible consequences.

Brian Beutler, Oct 14, 2026 [Off Message]

… Hold at least one prominent Republican truly accountable for dirty tricks or election crimes before date X. Do something to change the incentive structure that encourages Republicans to lie and cheat all the time, even if it’s at the margin….

Too often, Democrats conflate the concepts of exposure and accountability.

Exposure is an element of accountability. And in some cases it can be the lone ingredient that leads to accountability. Where shame still prevails, people exposed as liars, frauds, cheats, perverts, and abusers sometimes choose to make themselves scarce forever.

That’s accountability of a sort, mostly self-imposed.

But where shame is absent, exposure is only step one. Enforceable consequences must follow.

Democrats made this mistake most fatefully when they concluded that the January 6 insurrection had discredited Trump for all time. He’d been “exposed” and exposure would do most or all of their civic and political work for them. It’s why the Biden administration slow-walked its investigations of Trump’s attempted coup and the classified documents he stole, which in turn allowed Trump to escape justice, mount a political comeback, and pardon everyone….

And it’s why they choose, repeatedly, to look forward, not backward: The bad guys were exposed, we won the election—that’s incentive enough for them to change their ways.

No it’s not….

… exposure is insufficient as a goal. Today, various conservatives and GOP operatives will pretend to be embarrassed by Nick Sortor—the degenerate who published the Talarico libels. But this is just part of the larger act, an attempt to run this story out of the news now that the lies have done their damage. They publicly feign contempt for people like Sortor and James O’Keefe and Benny Johnson whenever they’re caught lying or promoting slander—then, when people have moved on, they’ll fete those very same people at private black tie events and funnel money their way. They see liars and cheaters as valued members of their movement. We’ll know we’ve imposed enough accountability when shame is restored and that calculation changes.

 

Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

The MAGA Cult: Why “Feelings” Trump Facts

[Lucas Bean Daily, via The Big Picture, October 13, 2026]

There is a question that haunts every person who has ever tried to have an evidence-based conversation with a MAGA supporter. How can they believe something with zero evidence behind it?

 

How Does the Run Towards Fascism Occur?

[Why Weak Americans Run Towards Fascism, via The Big Picture, October 11, 2026]

Why did people let Hitler take power? Not the inner circle. Not the military leaders or the party functionaries or the industrialists who funded the operation. The ordinary people. The shopkeepers and teachers and factory workers and farmers who watched a democratic republic dismantle itself and did not just allow it to happen but cheered while it did.

 

(anti)Republican clown car

An Ad Targeting Susan Collins’s Opponent Airs in the Wrong Portland
An executive with the Republican super PAC that paid for the ad attacking Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, blamed its vendor for running the ad in Oregon.

By John Yoon [New York Times]

 

Why Conservative Men Can’t Spell

[Lucas Bean Daily, via The Big Picture, October 11, 2026]

Lucas Bean takes Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 definition of anti-intellectualism, resentment of the life of the mind rather than ignorance, and applies it to MAGA.

 

Civic republicanism

What’s at Stake in the Omar Case

John Ganz, Oct 15, 2026 [Unpopular Front]

Yesterday evening, The Wall Street Journal reported “Ilhan Omar Investigation Aims to Build Case for Stripping Her Citizenship.” The repeated failure of this regime to prosecute its enemies—its manifest incompetence in all of its endeavors, really—has perhaps muted the alarm with which the news about Omar’s denaturalization case ought to be greeted.

Consider the gravity of all this: the executive is attempting to cast an opponent out of the political community entirely; this attempted expulsion is undoubtedly driven by racial and religious animus—vicious hostility to Somali-Americans is a central part of MAGA politics. She is not merely a private citizen or even an outspoken critic of the administration: She is an elected representative of the American people. The executive is attempting to deprive a member of an equal branch of government of the status that entitles her to participate in the constitutional order: They are attacking not just her rights, but her very right to have rights.

One’s personal opinion of Omar’s character or her politics is immaterial. This is a serious assault on the constitutional order being carried out through the executive branch’s legal and bureaucratic machinery. Perhaps the reason that the public response is so tepid is that we have so long taken for granted—or simply no longer understand—just how fundamental the questions involved really are. This move strikes at some of the most elementary assumptions of a free and republican government, principles so basic that we scarcely imagined they would need defending: that political opposition is legitimate, that the executive cannot determine the composition of the legislature, and that citizenship is not a privilege held at the pleasure of those in power.

We often hear that we face creeping authoritarianism in this country, but it would be more precise to call this a case of creeping totalitarianism. Authoritarian governments suppress political opposition and deprive their subjects of particular rights. Totalitarian movements aspire to something much more radical: the destruction of independent political and juridical personhood. They attack not merely the liberties of particular citizens they seek to repress, but the concept of citizenship itself—and then, ultimately, the concept of shared humanity….

Since the beginning, it’s been my contention that the attack on citizenship itself is both the very essence of the Trump movement and its most dangerous feature. From birtherism to the stolen-election myth, Trumpism can be understood as the notion that some Americans are not really Americans, that their political rights are illegitimate, and that the nation must be purged of these interlopers….

 

Henry Giroux: America’s Descent Into Fascism—and the Struggle to Build a Different Future

Sharon Kyle, Dick Price and Henry A. Giroux, Oct 9, 2026 [LA Progressive]

What happens when cruelty becomes a governing philosophy? When political leaders celebrate violence, billionaires wield extraordinary influence over government, and institutions supposedly designed to defend democracy become instruments of repression?

These questions were at the center of our recent conversation with political theorist Henry Giroux, whose latest LA Progressive essay, “The Politics of the Abyss: MAGA, Moral Rot, and the Struggle for the Future,” examines what he considers the accelerating collapse of America’s democratic and moral foundations….

Giroux argued that decades of neoliberalism have encouraged Americans to understand themselves primarily as isolated individuals competing for personal advantage.

Under this ideology, self-interest becomes the organizing principle of society, empathy becomes a liability, and solidarity is displaced by competition.

“We live in a country that should be appropriately called gangster capitalism,” he declared.

And, in his formulation, gangster capitalism produces a population increasingly accustomed to its values.

The Powell Memo and the Counterrevolution Against the 1960s

One of the most revealing exchanges occurred when Sharon raised the 1971 Powell Memo, written by corporate attorney Lewis Powell shortly before his appointment to the Supreme Court.

 

Impeaching a Judge for Federalist Society Membership – Unitary Executive Theory, the Good Behavior Standard and the Role of the Senate

Christopher Armitage, Oct 17, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

 

 

 

What I Wrote This Week

• West Asian War: Ansar Allah Hits Enemy HQ in Aden — Naked Capitalism, 16 Oct.
• Saudi National Arrested for Spying at OpenAI — Naked Capitalism, 15 Oct.
• West Asia War: Riyadh Ravaged, Battles in Yemen, Iranian Mines Sink Ship — Naked Capitalism, 15 Oct.
• Coffee Break: CoreWeave the Canary in the AI Credit Coal Mine? — Naked Capitalism, 14 Oct.
• Aramco Burns, Oil Execs Avoid Saudi Confab, MbS in the Bunker — Naked Capitalism, 14 Oct.
• Texas Senate Race Features Fictions About Talarico vs. Plentiful Paxton Scandals — Ian Welsh, 14 Oct. (Crossposted at NWT.)
• Banks Struggle to Digest the Mounting Debt Driving the AI Boom — Naked Capitalism, 12 Oct.
• Iran War: Saudi Airports and Oil Facilities Blasted Again and Again — Naked Capitalism, 11 Oct.
• Iran War: IRGC and Ansar Allah Fire Away At Tankers, Oil Facilities, Airports — Naked Capitalism, 10 Oct.

From me as Nate Wilcox at the Let It Roll Podcast

• The Songs Jazz is Built On: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.3 — Let It Roll, 12 Oct.
• Rhythm & Blues from Bessie Smith to Louis Jordan: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.4 — Let It Roll, 14 Oct.
• Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, Josh White & Jean Ritchie and the first Folk Revival: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.5 Let It Roll 16 Oct

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw & the Mad Squabbles Show

• Double Trouble for TKO money men Turki Alalshikh & Khaldoon Al Mubarak — The MMA Draw, 12 Oct.
• Cheap Shots: UFC Action at the Apex, Strickland on Strike, Saudi Events Endangered? — The MMA Draw, 11 Oct.

Dana White: Eddie Hearn is WEAK — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), 15 Oct.

Saudis play a big game of CHICKEN with Canelo Alvarez as Houthis drone Riyadh — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), 12 Oct.

What I’ve Been Reading and Watching

Trump 2.0 Regime

• Inside Bessent’s Treasury: Tension, Turnover and Unmet Economic Goals — Wall Street Journal. “…his temper has flared. He has shouted at staff for not moving fast enough to implement his ideas and for failing to combat unfavorable media coverage, some of the officials said. Last year, Bessent got so angry about the way his daily briefing book was organized that he picked up the binder full of papers and threw it at a wall, people familiar with the matter said.
  …
  “Bessent’s reputation as a challenging boss has complicated efforts to fill key vacancies at the department, according to people familiar with the matter. Several potential recruits said they decided not to pursue job opportunities at Treasury because they had heard about Bessent’s behavior.
  …
  “Some aides said they ask colleagues about the secretary’s mood before coming into contact with him, and trade advice on how to avoid him when he is angry. Several officials described feeling relieved when Bessent was away from the office.”
• Trump’s ice maiden is under fire — Politico Playbook.
• Trump ‘blew up’ after Natalie Harp printed out Susie Wiles ouster reports sparking White House ‘freakout’: report — The Independent. “A bombshell report indicating President Donald Trump was soliciting opinions on whether to sack his longest-serving chief of staff led to a full-blown ‘freakout’ after Trump’s ‘human printer’ showed him paper copies of the news items.
  “Politico’s ‘Playbook’ newsletter revealed the angry eruption took place in the White House on Thursday in the wake of their initial report that Trump had been calling around to a roster of informal outside advisers about bringing an end to Wiles’ tenure and floating several names for a successor to the veteran Florida political operative, who is the first woman to serve in the chief of staff position.
  “Trump’s anger had been stoked by Natalie Harp, the longtime aide and near-constant companion who often brings him paper copies of news stories and helps with his Truth Social posts. One source said he ‘blew up’ after seeing the newsletter’s reporting and began placing even more phone calls about potential replacements for Wiles.”
• Kimberly Who? — The New Yorker. In this Administration, former Ambassador Guilfoyle is the rare Trump associate to face consequences for misdeeds.
• ‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account — Wall Street Journal.
• Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Champagne-fueled Greek party life now under investigation by the State Department… after 4am requests and unseemly messages are leaked — Daily Mail.
• Kimberly Guilfoyle flaunted her nudes album to me… with each man’s Amex card next to his compromising photo — Daily Mail.
• Kimberly Guilfoyle Left Fox News After Investigation Into Misconduct Allegations, Sources Say — HuffPost.
• Yashar Ali on Kimberly Guilfoyle at Fox News — @yashar. “In 2018, I was the first to report that Kimberly Guilfoyle was pushed out at Fox News due to misconduct allegations, which included sexual harassment.
  “One of the things I reported on — and there’s a lot I didn’t include in my report — was that Guilfoyle had a penchant for showing photos of male genitalia in the Fox News makeup room, sort of like someone showing off photos of a new car to their colleagues.
  “When Guilfoyle was told nearly a year in advance that her contract would not be renewed, she panicked over money and, obviously, the loss of influence.
  “It was all she could talk about: money, money, money, and another favorite topic of hers…
  “And I’ll never forget what a colleague of hers told me at the time: ‘All she talks about is dick and money.’”
• The new White House press secretary failed the bar exam. She shared posts calling her an attorney anyway — CNN.
• Katie Zacharia: I Worked for a Pyramid Scheme!!! — TMZ.

I have a feeling Donald Trump called Sean Hannity and told him to assassinate her.

And he did.

This is the entire interview with the soon to be fired Katie Zacharia. It’s worth it. https://t.co/lBBkGcM7vO

— Evan (@daviddunn177) October 16, 2026

• Trump’s furious phone call over missing $5.6m: Alina Habba accuses MAGA loyalist Richard Grenell in feud over her billionaire husband’s money — Daily Mail.
• Nasty email fight between 2 top Trump appointees spills into the open — Politico. Zampolli is the Epstein associate who brought Melania Trump to the US. “2 top Trump officials, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau and special envoy Paolo Zampolli, have been embroiled in a monthslong fight that include leak accusations and ‘bizarre’ defamation threats — in emails that include many other colleagues.
  “The emails, which I obtained, show Zampolli and Landau disagreeing over chains of command as Landau admonishes Zampolli to stick to his remit on cultural issues — but devolve into bitter arguments and unproven allegations.
  “I am hereby ordering you–once again–to immediately stop all work on ANY issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy, including every one of the issues you mentioned in your recent emails,’ Landau wrote to Zampolli, a personal friend of Trump’s, in one email from Nov. 2025.
  “In one email to Zampolli, he said that working on issues outside the scope of his authority ‘and in contravention of my express directives, may expose you to disciplinary action, dismissal, and legal liability.’ Landau wrote that he was ‘committed to a path of insubordination.
  “In two in-depth telephone interviews with me, one of which lasted more than 45 minutes, Zampolli continued his criticism of Landau, saying that he ‘has been attacking me from Day 1’ and ‘everything I did, he tried to destroy it. … Definitely, he has a problem with me.”
• Trump ally removed from role after report of State Department feud — CNN.
• He Crafted a Crypto Law for Trump—as His Company Got Millions From a Crypto Giant — Wall Street Journal. “Money from Tether flowed to Nxum while Bo Hines worked in the White House on landmark stablecoin legislation. Once the law passed, Tether hired him as its U.S. chief.”

AI Bubble

• AI Cockroaches Scurry Out from Under Nvidia, the Most Valuable Company in the World — Big by Matt Stoller. “…the best way to understand where the scammers are isn’t to look at a particular industry sector, but to follow the scammers from industry to industry. As a contact put it, ‘This is like the SPAC craze of 2021. Whatever the hot thing of the day is, that is what the grifters will gravitate to. Shell companies did reverse takeovers with Chinese firms, the biotech bubble, shale, and others. Stock promoters will promote.’ In other words, the same people just move from scam to scam, since unethical stock promotion itself is their business.”
• Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back — The Guardian. “Employers are navigating a flood of errors and low-quality work that are sapping employee time, raising privacy and security risks and pushing up costs. Now, some businesses that started off fast and furious on AI are pumping the brakes, implementing restrictions where experimentation was once encouraged, bringing back experienced workers and upping training efforts.
  “C-suite leaders say when it comes to AI, there’s a sense that ‘we’re driving the truck and building it at the same time, and that’s a problem,’ said Johnny C Taylor Jr, president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management. ‘If we could all rewind … we would have introduced [this] in a more thoughtful, slow way.
  “Despite billions of dollars that firms around the globe have invested in AI over the past few years, major returns remain to be seen: 90% of executives say AI efforts have yet to translate to productivity gains at their companies, according to an Atlanta Federal Reserve working paper. And an Ernst & Young survey published last month found that 36% of senior AI executives at companies with at least $1bn in annual revenue reported an AI incident that led to issues including data loss, financial damage, brand damage or operational disruptions.”

Silicon Valley Crazies

• A Billionaire Has A Psychotic Religious Break With Reality — Ian Welsh. “Now it’s possible that Thiel is just running an op–that he doesn’t believe any of this and is simply trying to whip up religious folks, especially Evangelicals (a religion that is reversal of much of what Jesus preached) against policies he hates. Being kind, perhaps he genuinely thinks that the world is in danger of world government and it will be achieved thru fear.
  “But I think it’s more likely he’s had a religious psychotic break, confusing his own desires and prejudices with religious teachings.”

Dystopia

• The Endgame of Surveillance And Autonomous Robots Approaches — Ian Welsh. “…governments and any big corp that cares enough will know exactly where you go, and where you’ve been. They can alter footage to embarrass you or frame you for a crime. They can fairly easily listen in to what you say, even when you’re not using the phone.
  “Then we have autonomous armed robots. The armed robot dogs are already here, same with armed flying drones. The great problem for elites is always the issue of enforcer reliability. This is why Saudi Arabia is getting its ass kicked on the ground, because they deliberately crippled their troops to reduce the possibility of a coup.
  “Now, add in AI, which elites hope will allow them to replace technical workers: the problem with using all this tech is that you still have the enforcer issue: but if the autonomous robots can be maintained and built by AI, well, that problem is lessened. (Some people will still be necessary, but far less.)
  “This enables a full panopticon on daily life, especially for people who use ‘smart’ home devices, which are notorious for the data they send home. They’ll know who you are, what you’re doing, who you associate with, how much money you have, what you spend it on, etc, etc… Then they’ve got their robots to take you out, or they can frame you by altering the video that they have of you to show you committing a crime.”
• Who Gets Paid: ClipIt and Israel’s $55.5 Million American Campaign — @leahfiles. “So many of you asked me to look into ClipIt, the company paying people by the view to post political clips. I did, and it connects to Israel’s $55.5 million American campaign, Trump’s former campaign manager, Turning Point and the operatives working for the Speaker of the House.
  “A few highlights are below, and the full article with receipts is up on Substack now (link in bio, and it’s free).
  “(1) The man who runs ClipIt goes by ‘Matt Servius’ online and has never been publicly named. Wyoming and Latvian records point to Matīss Tabūns, a 23-year-old in Talsi, Latvia, who formed ClipIt’s American company on May 28, 2025, with a one-dollar stake.
  “(2) Fourteen days later, on June 11, Brad Parscale formed Clock Tower X. It went on to register as Israel’s foreign agent.
  “(3) ClipIt’s own records label a campaign ‘Political’ for December 14 to 21, the week of AmericaFest. In those same days, Clock Tower X took in $6 million from Israel.
  “(4) ClipIt’s campaigns kept Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson out of their clips. Israel’s campaign websites attacked both of them by name.
  “(5) Israel’s campaign made its own clip titled ‘Charlie Kirk,’ and its contract appears written to collect repost rights to content made by outside influencers.
  “(6) Everyone keeps asking who paid. ClipIt paid its clippers from a $20 million crypto wallet that traces back to Stripe’s stablecoin system, and one clipper thanked the boss for his ‘Political Payout of December.’ That means an American company has the name of whoever ordered the political payouts, and that record can be subpoenaed.
  “(7) ClipIt rewrote its terms the day before The Atlantic’s story ran. Then it changed its founding year and blocked visitors from the United States.
  “(8) Israel’s campaign sent $4.4 million for ‘media placement’ to a firm run by Mike Shields. His other firm has been paid $2.98 million by Speaker Mike Johnson’s campaign.
  “(9) Parscale’s Israel firm uses the same Ohio office suite as his company’s White House contract.
  “(10) Turning Point denies working with ClipIt. But, it has paid Jake Hoffman’s firms millions a year, and Hoffman ran Turning Point’s 2020 teen troll farm. The attack operation on X reeks of Jake Hoffman’s troll famrs”

Oil Prices

• Why did China just save the world economy? — Arnaud Bertrand. “This is one of the biggest geopolitical mysteries of the year: why did China just save the world economy?
  “Because, make no mistake, it absolutely did. Analysts are pretty much unanimous on this: had China not dramatically – and I mean dramatically – reduced its imports of oil this year, the price of crude oil would have gone through the roof and dragged the global economy down with it.”

Gulf Money

• Evaluating the PIF’s Financial Performance and New Strategic Direction — Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “In its new strategy, the Saudi Public Investment Fund seems to focus more on investment returns and less on asset growth. How this will work in practice is less clear, including what it means for the future of existing projects, such as Neom.
  “After more than doubling between 2021 and 2024, the PIF’s assets under management declined by 1% in 2025, from $916 billion to $906 billion. Further, the rate of return on assets under management was -4.4% (author estimate), largely due to the poor performance of the Saudi equity market. The negative return was not fully offset by new investments or incoming asset transfers. Most of the growth in assets under management in recent years has come from the government’s transfer of 16% of Aramco’s equity (valued at around $320 billion) to the PIF.
  “The rate of return on the PIF’s assets under management has been negative in three of the past five years. The average return over this period is estimated at 4.7% per year and was mostly accounted for by a 25% return in 2021. Over the same five-year period, global equity markets have risen by over 10% per year on average, and Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global and Alaska’s Permanent Fund Corporation, which both manage diversified global portfolios, have returned around 9% per year. To put this difference in returns in perspective, if the PIF’s rate of return had been the same as the Norway fund over the past five years, its assets under management could have been $110 billion higher by the end of 2025.”

Latin America

• Whistleblower Exposes Meta, Bolsonaro, and Cerimedo Election Meddling Partnership — Pan American Dispatch. “On August 18, Fernando Cerimedo was arrested in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for hiring hitmen to assassinate his ex-partner, Nadia Beller, who was pregnant at the time, after she threatened to go public about his large-scale illegal bot farm operations to throw elections for far-right candidates across Latin America. Still recovering from the multiple gunshot wounds she miraculously survived, she gave an interview this week on the Ventana al Mundo program on Mexico’s public television network, Channel 14. During the interview, she explained how Cerimedo and a member of the Bolsonaro family, who is assumed to be Flavio’s brother Eduardo, met with Meta officials to plot interference in Brazil’s presidential elections. She also said Cerimedo’s largest bot farms are still operating, and that his group is planning to interfere in the Claudia Sheinbaum administration in Mexico.”

What I Watched

Ori Goldberg Tribute Part 2 w/ a Special Introduction by J.G. Michael — Parallax Views (YouTube). Outspoken Anti-Zionist Israelis Are a Rare Breed, RIP to a Real One

Follow and Support My Work at NatWilsonTurner.com

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.