Gunman Dead, Bystander Wounded After Large Shootout With Secret Service Near White House, Trump Safe

After a very busy day in Washington and at the White House, given the Saturday flurry of diplomatic activity over the announcement of a tentative Iran peace deal, but which is still awaiting word and some details from Tehran, a deadly shooting erupted just outside the White House, resulting in a massive security and response and presence.

President Trump was at the White House when at around 6pm ET the Secret Service responded in a hail of gunfire as 21-year-old Maryland man Nasire Best opened fire at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

via Reuters

The president is safe, and the emergency has been declared over.

Somewhere between approximately 15 to 30 gunshots were fired, according to CBS News, which spoke to local law enforcement. President Trump was at the White House during the incident, "but was not impacted," the Secret Service spokesperson later announced.

A bystander was wounded, and the suspect was hit by by Secret Service officers upon returning fire. The gunman was wounded and taken to the hospital, where he later died. 

I was in the middle of taping on my iPhone for a social video from the White House North Lawn when we heard the shots. It sounded like dozens of gunshots. We were told to sprint to the press briefing room where we are holding now. pic.twitter.com/iqdQwh4soq

— Selina Wang (@selinawangtv) May 23, 2026

CBS reports upon the suspect's name being identified that "According to the source, Best had a previous run-in with Secret Service in July 2025 in which he tried to gain entry to the White House and was arrested and sent to a psychiatric ward for mental health issues."

A complete White House lockdown as since been lifted. According to more emerging details:

The Secret Service confirmed a couple of hours after the shooting that the man had died after exchanging fire with its agents.

The man had approached a White House security checkpoint and pulled a gun from his bag before opening fire, according to the Secret Service. Law enforcement shot back and wounded the man, who was taken to the hospital where he died. 

Fox reporting that an innocent bystander was hit when a gunman and Secret Service exchanged gunfire near the White House. Condition unknown. pic.twitter.com/mFKad4aZWg

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 23, 2026

As for the wounded bystander, the victim's information has not been released, and his condition not immediately known - after being rushed to the hospital.

New footage of the shooting near the White House pic.twitter.com/aTDtFD2onU

— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) May 23, 2026

Per CBS, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson both praised the rapid response of the Secret Service as the shooting unfolded

In a post on X, Thune declared he is "grateful for the Secret Service and the agents' decisive actions to protect President Trump and everyone at and around the White House this evening."

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 22:13

Dozens Of Nations Scramble For World Bank Financing Amid Iran War Global Shock

Via The Cradle

Twenty-seven countries have moved to activate emergency World Bank financing mechanisms since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February, Reuters reported Friday.

Three nations have already received approval for fast-tracked funding, while the other 24 are in the process of completing administrative procedures. 

Kenya and Iraq have publicly confirmed they are seeking emergency World Bank assistance, with Nairobi facing surging domestic fuel prices and Baghdad grappling with severely diminished oil revenues due to disruptions in maritime exports.

Getty Image

The 27 nations are drawn from a pool of 101 countries with access to pre-arranged contingent financing, including 54 that are enrolled in the World Bank's Rapid Response Option, a mechanism that allows sovereign borrowers to immediately redirect up to 10 percent of their undisbursed project balances.

World Bank President Ajay Banga has outlined a three-tier funding structure. Between $20 billion and $25 billion is available immediately through existing crisis instruments, rising to $60 billion within six months if the bank reorients parts of its broader portfolio, with longer-term structural changes capable of pushing the total to around $100 billion. 

Activity at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), by contrast, has been minimal. 

Despite Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva anticipating that up to a dozen nations would seek between $20 billion and $50 billion in emergency assistance, sources told Reuters that very few formal requests have been filed, with countries in a "wait-and-see mode.”

The IMF previously warned that the US-Israeli war on Iran has significantly worsened the global economic outlook by disrupting energy markets, raising inflation, and weakening growth prospects worldwide.

It said the war had reduced expected global growth from 3.4 percent to 3.1 percent, significantly worsened inflation, and posed major risks of further deterioration in energy supply routes.

From world markets still feeling the sting of the Iran war, to a host of central banks bracing for their next moves, these are the stories to watch in business and finance in the coming week https://t.co/xIhHy1MlEI pic.twitter.com/oqpUcNcUx9

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 22, 2026

The IMF added that prolonged fighting could deepen regional economic damage, potentially push the global economy toward recession-level growth, heighten uncertainty in financial markets, and accelerate broader geopolitical and economic instability.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 22:10

Ferrari Fever Hits Samsung, SK Hynix Workers As AI Memory Boom Mints New Wealth

The global memory boom, with Samsung at the epicenter of the production ecosystem, appears to be generating a sudden wealth effect among some employees, with local media reporting that newly enriched chip workers are now panic-buying luxury sports cars. 

A short clip from MBC News, the news division of Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation and one of South Korea's top national TV and radio broadcasters, featured at least one exotic car dealership reporting a sharp uptick in Samsung Electronics and Hynix employees seeking to buy high-end sports cars.

"We've been getting dozens of phone calls every day for the past month. The customers coming in are mostly employees from Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. There have been a lot more people coming to look at cars priced over 100 million won (~$73,000 USD)," a MBC reporter could be heard saying in the news segment.

Just in: Employees at high-end and supercar dealerships in Korea say their showrooms are packed with Samsung and SK hynix employees. pic.twitter.com/LuCxWj3cpS

— Jukan (@jukan05) May 22, 2026

Google Search trends confirm a recent spike in internet searches for "Ferrari dealer" as Samsung and SK Hynix have become the world's most important memory companies.

Shares of Samsung and SK Hynix have gone absolutely parabolic ...

... as well as KOSPI.

Meanwhile...

• Korean Bubble Mania: Retail Investors Max Out On Margin Debt, Choose To "Risk Complete Collapse" Than Miss Stock Rally

We suspect the exotic-car buying spree will accelerate once Samsung and its largest union reach a new labor deal. Voting begins Saturday. Coverage here.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 21:35

State-Sponsored Suicide Authored by MN Gordon via dollarcollapse.com

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

- Will and Ariel Durant, The Story Of Civilization

Enemy Within

How does a superpower die?

Does it come from the blinding kill shot of a hypersonic missile streaking through the sky? Or, perhaps, a rogue cyberattack that mortally destroys the national power grid?

Will the end of America come with foreign tanks rolling through New York or a massive, coordinated amphibious attack on Los Angeles?

These dramatic scenarios make for captivating conjecture. But they're highly unlikely. If you look at the autopsy reports of the world's greatest empires, the ultimate cause of death is rarely a sudden, overwhelming external blow.

Long before the barbarians breached the gates of Rome, the Roman denarius had been systematically devalued into a glorified copper token to fund a bloated bureaucracy. This was characterized by widespread domestic corruption and endless military expansion.

So, too, long before the British Empire reluctantly packed up its global flags, it realized the staggering cost of multiple wars had left it financially bankrupt, structurally hollowed out, and entirely dependent on American loans.

Great civilizations don't usually get slaughtered by their rivals. They commit slow, sophisticated, economically optimized suicide.

As we move through 2026, the United States is following a well-worn, dangerous path. But it's traversing it at a speed and scale that would leave ancient Rome in the dust.

The reality that no politician will publicly admit is that America's out-of-control federal spending and its monstrous, multi-trillion-dollar financial system are doing far more structural damage to the country's long-term survival than any foreign adversary ever could.

By burying the nation in unpayable debt, Congress is willingly destroying America from the inside. Hence, the greatest threat to our future lies not across the ocean, but directly within our own borders.

Act Of War

Let's talk about the ghastly numbers. They're often ignored by the general population because our brains are hardwired to glaze over when we start talking about trillions. Here we'll break them down for you.

Right now, the official U.S. national debt has blown past $39 trillion. To put that into perspective, if you spent one dollar every single second, it would take you about 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion. America owes 39 of those.

But the real issue isn't just the total balance on Washington's credit card. It's the cost of keeping the account active. The yield on a 30-year Treasury bond recently climbed above 5 percent for the first time in nearly 20 years. Yet today's balance is much larger than it was 20 years ago. When you owe $39 trillion, even a tiny uptick in interest rates transforms your budget into an insurmountable nightmare.

America is currently burning through roughly $3 billion every single day just to pay the interest on its existing debt.

Think about that for a second. Before a single pothole is filled, before a single soldier is paid, before a single school lunch is funded, or a Medicare claim is processed, $3 billion dollars vanishes into thin air every 24 hours. It doesn't buy new equipment, it doesn't rebuild infrastructure, and it doesn't help struggling families. It's purely the cost of treading water.

Instead of investing in the future, we're paying for the profligacy of the past.

If a foreign nation managed to sabotage the U.S. economy so severely that it drained $3 billion a day out of the federal Treasury, it would be viewed as an act of war. We would mobilize the military.

Yet, because this bleeding is caused by our own fiscal policy, we pretend it isn't happening and go back to scrolling on our phones.

Vicious Doom Loop

The entire American lifestyle - and by extension, the global economy - is built on the singular, fragile assumption that the rest of the world will always want to buy American debt. For decades, this was a safe bet. Treasuries were considered risk free in terms of default.

The U.S. dollar, while under threat of the U.S. government's making, remains king of the global financial system - for now. When global chaos hits, investors run to U.S. Treasuries like a safe harbor in a storm. This exorbitant privilege allowed Washington to spend money it didn't have without facing immediate consequences.

But that privilege resulted in a dangerous lack of discipline and created a catastrophic level of arrogance. Politicians on both sides of the aisle began treating the national debt like a meaningless artifact. To Congress, and as elaborated by the late Dick Cheney, "deficits don't matter."

Unfortunately, the mathematics of debt do matter. And right now, the system is locked into a vicious, mechanical doom loop. Here's how it works...

Every month, while you pay your bills, live within your means, and balance your personal finance books, the Treasury issues mountains of new debt just to pay off the old debt that's maturing. All the while, it's borrowing more to cover current overspending. Yet, because the market is getting flooded with U.S. bonds, investors are demanding higher yields.

Higher yields mean refinancing becomes more expensive. More expensive refinancing creates even larger deficits. Larger deficits require issuing even more bonds.

The financial system is, in effect, cannibalizing itself to stay alive. No enemy army could design a more effective trap to paralyze the American financial system.

When an enemy attacks, the damage is obvious. Buildings fall, smoke rises, and the country rallies together. But when financial decay sets in the destruction is deceptive. For many people, the cause is unclear.

Inside Job

Over the decades, American leaders assumed the world had no choice but to use the dollar. Where else were they going to go?

But our adversaries and allies alike have watched this fiscal train wreck unfold and are methodically diversifying their reserves. They realize that a superpower running a $39 trillion deficit is a precarious foundation for the global economy.

Central banks around the world have accelerated their gold purchases to historic levels. Countries like China have been systematically reducing their holdings of long-term U.S. Treasuries.

It's not a sudden boycott of the dollar. Rather, it's a slow calculated diversification. As the rest of the world lightens up on their purchases of U.S. debt, the Federal Reserve becomes the buyer of last resort. That means creating credit out of thin air to buy U.S. Treasuries. This is a formula for runaway inflation. The type that has destroyed countless currencies throughout history.

To be clear, Fed asset purchases have been occurring for much of the 21st century. So, too, have U.S. government policies of dollar debasement. This sophisticated state-sponsored suicide takes place in ongoing Congressional hearings, mundane Treasury auctions, continuous debt ceiling increases, pretend government shutdowns, and carefully scripted statements by the Fed using concocted syntaxes that are designed to keep people from panicking.

As America closes in on its 250-year anniversary it's being drained of its capital. The government continues to borrow tomorrow's prosperity to pay for today's political promises. All the while, the people watch the infrastructure of the nation's cities crumble as $3 billion a day is directed to service interest payments. The currency buys less and less every year, forcing citizens onto an endless economic hamster wheel.

Alas, it hasn't taken an enemy to destroy America. Our politicians have already done the job for them.

Sincerely,

MN Gordon
for Economic Prism

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 21:00

Another Detransitioner Wins A Huge Settlement

A woman who underwent a double mastectomy after identifying as "nonbinary" has reportedly secured a confidential $3.5 million settlement after suing the mental health professionals who approved her for the life-altering procedure. Camille Kiefel, 36, alleged in a malpractice lawsuit that two Oregon therapists signed off on the surgery after only brief telemedicine consultations, despite a documented history of mental health issues. The settlement was reached just days before the case was set to go to trial. 

The case is already fueling renewed scrutiny of how quickly some medical providers have approved irreversible gender procedures for vulnerable patients struggling with serious mental health issues.

The settlement comes after another detransitioner, Fox Varian, won a $2 million judgment back in February against the providers who referred her for a double mastectomy at age 16. Soon after the settlement was announced, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons announced its position on gender transition surgeries for minors, concluding “there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents.” According to reporter Benjamin Ryan, at least 30 detransitioners have sued healthcare providers in the past four years.

Kiefel’s complaint, filed in 2022, named licensed clinical social worker Amy Ruff and licensed professional counselor Mara Burmeister, along with their respective employers, Brave Space and the Quest Center for Integrative Health. According to the suit, it took only two telemedicine Zoom sessions, each lasting about an hour or less, for Kiefel to get approval for the surgery.

Kiefel's history at the time of those consultations showed obvious signs of mental health issues that should have been taken into account, but clearly were not. She had a documented record of trauma, depression, ADHD, and suicidal ideation. Her path toward identifying as "nonbinary" began even earlier.

She has described a childhood incident in which her best friend was sexually assaulted when both girls were in the fifth grade. "I started dressing more masculine after that," she recalled. "I just wanted to protect myself." In college, a women's studies course introduced her to the concept of being nonbinary, and she came to believe adopting that identity could explain the gender-related distress she had carried since childhood.

Despite the approval of the mental health professionals, the surgery did not resolve her gender dysphoria, and within two years, she detransitioned. 

In the interim, she developed vertigo, tinnitus, and Raynaud's syndrome, a condition that causes extremities to go numb and cold. She eventually began working with a naturopath and exploring the relationship between gut health and mental wellbeing. Once she addressed her physical health through nutrition, she says both her mental and physical condition improved substantially. 

That improvement is what forced the harder question.

"So while I'm addressing all my physical health issues, I start to question whether or not the surgery was helpful for me," she told Fox News Digital. "And then about a year and a half later, I de-transitioned."

 "I didn't want what happened to me to happen to other vulnerable girls and women," she said. 

Her lawsuit alleged professional malpractice, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud, each rooted in the same core allegation: that she was neither properly evaluated nor genuinely informed before she consented to an irreversible procedure. "And I wasn't given true informed consent. And that's something that everyone deserves to have for any medical procedure," she said.

Kiefel says she reached out to gender medicine organizations in hopes of creating dialogue around how vulnerable patients are screened and counseled. Those efforts went nowhere. "So for many, I think for a lot of this is going to be the lawsuits that are actually going to create change," she said. Given that Brave Space, one of the named defendants, has since shut down permanently, the courts may be the only venue left with any real leverage.

Despite detransitioning, her body will never be the same. “And it is difficult because there's like little reminders like, I'll be looking in a mirror after taking a shower and those ugly scars are still there," she said. "Dresses don't fit me the same way ... I'd like to have kids, but I would never be able to nurse them, and I'll never have that connection with them, and then they won't get the benefits of breast milk. So it's been difficult."

Despite the physical and emotional scars caused by her transition, by her own account, Kiefel is now the most mentally stable she has ever been. 

Cases like this are likely to reshape gender medicine for years to come, as doctors, therapists, and hospitals face growing legal and financial pressure over how quickly irreversible procedures were approved for vulnerable patients. The era of rubber-stamping gender interventions after cursory evaluations appears to be coming to an end, with malpractice lawsuits succeeding where internal oversight and medical institutions failed.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 20:25

Building American Cities That Would Make The Founding Fathers Proud

Authored by Charles Ma via RealClearPolicy,

American cities need bold renewal. What we need is a "MadeCity" vision - a vision for intentionally crafting or "making" cities that emphasize the enduring higher order potential within people.

Beginning to plan and build such cities as part of America's upcoming 250th anniversary is a fitting way to extend John Winthrop's vision for America as a "City on a Hill." A MadeCity is a living monument to faith, freedom, and entrepreneurship - the very ideals that turned a collection of colonies into the greatest nation on earth.

Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, is the ideal place to begin. Transforming the District into a true MadeCity would restore Americans' faith in their country and give the world a renewed beacon of hope. It would remind citizens of the Founders' deep faith and worship that sustained them through the Revolution and the creation of a new republic. The arts would play a central role, turning our capital into a place of inspiration and reverence rather than just a sterile bureaucracy. Venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and families would drive the transformation, proving that America is not destined to be a nation of elites and dependents, but of creators and builders with shared vision and purpose.

As Proverbs reminds us, "Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint." Today, too many Americans feel hopeless, taught to rely on government instead of cultivating motivated citizenship. Proper education can change that. We must teach young people the truth: America is the greatest nation on earth - a superpower of liberty, economic freedom, and human flourishing. Our most valuable currency is not dollars but our youth, talent, and leadership.

The Founders - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington - were men of faith who thought and built on a grand scale. They were entrepreneurs and visionaries as much as statesmen. Franklin revolutionized printing and invention. Washington built a thriving business at Mount Vernon. They and countless others created vibrant cities - New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore - and inspired the rise of Chicago, Los Angeles, and beyond. Their greatest fear was that future generations would fail to keep the republic they sacrificed to establish. Franklin's warning rings loud today: "A republic, if you can keep it."

Yet too often our current leaders and builders operate with short-term, accountant-style thinking - applying band-aids when visionary, long-term transformation is required. Mayors and politicians focus on the next election cycle instead of monuments that will stand for centuries. We went to the Moon with courage and faith. Reaching Mars - and rebuilding our cities - demands the same spirit.

Government has an important constitutional role, but it cannot replace the human drive to create. Our $39 trillion national debt is sustainable only because the world retains confidence in America's future growth and productivity. That confidence must be earned, not assumed. True wealth is not created by trading stocks or relying on today's tech giants alone. It is built by bold minds who invent, manufacture, and construct - the same spirit that produced the iPhone, the assembly line, and the great American cities of the past.

Post-World War II Europe offers a powerful lesson. Nations rebuilt with purpose, drawing on faith and resolve to rise from ruins. America, never defeated, has even greater potential. Washington, D.C., is perfectly positioned to lead a new revolution in urban building - one grounded in faith-based entrepreneurship that honors the "Great Experiment" our Founders began.

We are a nation born in courage, not caution. Our builders must stop fearing failure and start believing again in the possibility of creating the next great American cities. Families need inspiration. Communities need purpose. The next generation needs to see living proof that the American Dream is alive and being built - not managed or regulated into mediocrity.

MadeCities are the answer. They are places where we create the conscious arrangements that make living irresistible and remarkably fruitful, where a quantum currency is realized through specified complexity and manifold beauty. Just as living organisms thrive as the result of the intelligent design and coordination of their many diverse parts, MadeCities promote human flourishing as a consequence of the integrated design of their different essential elements and institutions, whether residential, recreational, commercial, cultural, legal or religious. Indeed, a living and thriving city depends on the intelligent design and planning of its founders inspired by the Way, Truth, and Life of God the Creator.

Here is a bold framework: "How might we create cities that grow in the favor of both God and Man?" A living city where we as citizens are living stones, feeding on living waters, responding to a living God. This is what made America unstoppable and MadeCity's core Movement.

Ryan Higgins, a descendant of one of the founding families in the U.S. said the following about our nation's amazing history: "In 1623, my 13th great grandfather fled a tyrannical government and risked life and limb to come to the New World because he knew the recipe to human flourishing could not be found in a King. As a man of deep faith, Richard Higgins knew the only Hope worth fighting for was a civilization rooted in God, with a heavy emphasis on family and community. Made City is taking that same mindset into 2026 and beyond" and "our current concrete jungles across the US have lost hope, creativity and community. The result is clear to see; isolation, record levels of depression, anxiety and mental health issues." Higgins is correct to point out that what we have been doing for decades is not working.

Washington DC is the place to start. I hope to play a role in continuing America's tradition of faith-driven entrepreneurship and in helping build the next City on a Hill. America cannot remain the land of the free unless it is also the home of the brave, the innovative and the bold.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 19:50

"I Think It Will Reduce Our Jobs": Jamie Dimon Predicts AI-Driven Workforce Shift At JPMorgan

Artificial intelligence is set to significantly alter hiring patterns at JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to CEO Jamie Dimon, who said the bank expects to recruit more AI-focused talent while reducing reliance on some conventional banking roles over time, according to Bloomberg.

During a Bloomberg Television interview at the firm’s China Summit in Shanghai, Dimon acknowledged the long-term impact AI is likely to have on employment across the industry. “I think it will reduce our jobs down the road,” he said. “There will be all different types of jobs, and I think we will be hiring more AI people and fewer bankers in certain categories, and it will make them more productive.”

The shift reflects a broader transformation underway on Wall Street, where major banks are accelerating investments in automation and generative AI to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Executives across the sector have increasingly spoken about the technology’s ability to replace repetitive work while reshaping how financial institutions operate.

Bloomberg writes that unlike some peers who have framed the transition more bluntly, Dimon emphasized that workforce reductions could largely happen gradually through attrition rather than mass layoffs. JPMorgan, which sees roughly 25,000 to 30,000 employees leave annually, has enough turnover to retrain or reposition workers as roles evolve, he said.

He also argued that AI’s impact will not be limited to eliminating jobs. New positions are expected to emerge, particularly in areas tied to client relationships and revenue generation, even as some support and operational functions become more automated.

Dimon’s remarks followed controversial comments from Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters, who recently said the bank was replacing “lower-value human capital” with technology as part of a plan to cut thousands of support positions. Goldman Sachs President John Waldron has likewise described traditional back-office work as a “human assembly line” susceptible to automation, while HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery warned this week that AI would “destroy” certain jobs even as it creates others.

Addressing the backlash surrounding Winters’ comments, Dimon defended the executive while acknowledging the wording had landed poorly. “It was an inartful way to say something,” he said. “I think it will be old jobs. If back-office jobs disappear, we need more front office jobs to cover more clients.”

Research from consulting firms and banks suggests the disruption could be substantial. McKinsey estimates that nearly a third of work hours in finance and insurance may eventually be automated, while Citigroup has projected that more than half of banking jobs face a high likelihood of either replacement or augmentation through AI technologies.

Still, Dimon cautioned against allowing the transition to move too quickly without considering the broader consequences. “I think it’s incumbent upon us, society, to think through if it happens too fast,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 19:15

What 'Compassion' Isn't

Authored by Laura Hollis via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

One of the most frustrating aspects of contemporary conversations about politics and public policy is how often the deleterious effects of terrible programs - local, state and federal - are brushed aside with distracting and even deceitful claims that the intentions behind the policies were "compassionate." This is an utterly wrongheaded analysis for many reasons. Laws, public policies, and government programs should be evaluated by their results, not by the state of mind of their advocates or sponsors.

Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash.com

The weaponization of compassion has launched a de facto competition of who can be thought to be the most "compassionate" or, at least, not thought to be uncompassionate. The result of this arms race has been chaos, destruction, and depravity.

It's easy to lose sight of just how often this pernicious dynamic takes place, so it's worthwhile to point out a few of the disastrous policies that were promoted, and in some cases continue to be promoted, as being "compassionate" and to call them out for the societally corrosive lies they are.

1. It wasn't "compassionate" to close our mental hospitals. The impulse was understandable; plenty of those facilities were substandard. But the results were catastrophic. Until fairly recently in this country's history, the "homeless" population consisted largely of small numbers of unattached males who drifted from place to place seeking work. But since the 1980s, the homeless population of the United States has exploded. Nearly three-quarters of a million people are homeless, and the number jumped 18 percent from 2023 to 2024. California has 187,000 of the country's homeless; more than 70,000 are in Los Angeles County alone.

2. It isn't "compassionate," nor is it respect for "individual autonomy" or "dignity," to leave the homeless to live as they do. Homeless encampments are hotbeds of filth, including human urine and feces, crime and diseases like leptospirosis, typhus, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and even plague. Across the country, cities are dealing with the economic impact of shuttered stores and declining downtowns attributable to the presence of ever-growing numbers of homeless.

3. It isn't "compassionate" to hand out needles or create places where addicts can use drugs. Leaving aside what should be an obvious argument that we shouldn't be encouraging, much less facilitating, the use of dangerous drugs, two-thirds of America's homeless have a diagnosed mental health illness. A third have a serious substance abuse problem. Approximately half suffer with both. Open-air drug use exacerbates those problems and creates others.

4. It isn't "compassionate," or "equitable," for that matter, to eliminate teaching math, giving grades, standardized tests, advanced academic programs for gifted students or graduation requirements, or to lower entrance qualifications for college and graduate school. It punishes high-achieving students and sends the message to lower-performing students that they aren't capable of meeting basic standards. That, then, undermines public confidence in the graduates of our high schools, colleges, and professional schools.

5. It wasn't "compassionate" to stop enforcing our immigration laws.

6. It isn't "compassionate" to allow violent criminals back on the streets.

7. It isn't "compassionate" to subject children and teenagers with gender dysphoria, and other emotional disorders, to permanent alteration of their bodies with medical and surgical interventions before they are old enough to understand the implications of those decisions.

None of these decisions have had beneficial impacts on their intended populations. Worse still, they are all deeply destructive to other individuals, groups, and society at large. Everyone affected should be able to protest the consequences of these failed policies without getting smeared with the false accusation that they "lack compassion."

Another reason to eliminate "compassion" as a basis for public policy, which we're seeing daily with painful clarity, is that these policies end up being vehicles for massive fraud. Anyone can set up a 501c3 nonprofit, claim to be working for a charitable purpose, and deceive donors into giving money that does little but line the CEOs' pockets. And when government grants are involved, there is little oversight, take Minnesota, for example, and more incentive for grift, bribery, and payback in the form of pouring money into the campaign coffers of politicians who hold the grants' pursestrings. What we end up with is a situation where neither the nonprofits nor the politicians have an incentive to solve the underlying problems, since they're getting rich from their continued existence.

Why has the United States become a nation where "compassion" trumps all other considerations?

Scholars like Helen Andrews argue that the emphasis on "compassion" over logic and methodical analysis is a function of what she calls "the great feminization." Women, Andrews claims, are hardwired to be maternal, and thus more likely to be persuaded by something that tugs at their empathy than by that which appeals to their reason.

I'm not so sure. First, women have functioning brains, and they are certainly intellectually capable of dispassionate analysis. Second, an awful lot of men seem to be just as hornswoggled by appeals to their "compassion" as are misguided women. And third, I don't understand how it is "feminine" or "maternal" to witness the collapse of huge sections of our cities into third-world slums; or to know that drugs are pouring into the country, children are being trafficked for sex, and young women are being raped and murdered because the borders are unenforced; or to see people stabbed to death on public transportation, pushed in front of trains or run down by crazed lunatics at Christmas parades because criminals aren't incarcerated; or to watch as multiple generations of disadvantaged minorities struggle because of schools with weak disciplinary and academic standards; or to want children and emotionally troubled teens to be chemically castrated or surgically sterilized before they're old enough to drive a car, drink a beer, or understand the concepts of sexual satisfaction, fathering, giving birth to or nursing a child, none of which they will experience if they are "transitioned."

None of this is "compassionate." It's objectively irrational. It's wantonly destructive. It is the deliberate disregard of monumental, systemic, catastrophic failure, the evidence of which is irrefutable. There's something seriously wrong with anyone who continues to defend these policies and programs, and I'm not persuaded that it's a matter of chromosomal biology or evolution.

I don't profess to have a complete solution. But a good start would be to demand meaningful metrics when we discuss proposed and existing policies and programs. What matters isn't "compassion"; it's consequences.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 16:20

AI Content Is Swamping The Internet: How It Impacts Critical Thinking

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A never-ending flood of content generated by artificial intelligence is reshaping the internet and the way people engage with information faster than ever.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik

From news summaries to social media posts to academic research, the sheer volume of machine-assisted materials has been correlated with a spike in "cognitive offloading" - a phenomenon in which people outsource critical thinking and verification to automated systems.

A 2025 analysis of how AI tools affect cognitive offloading showed a "significant negative correlation" between frequent use of AI tools and the ability to think critically in people across age groups and educational backgrounds. The researchers at the SBS Swiss Business School found that younger age groups exhibited a higher amount of dependence on AI models and lower critical thinking scores.

What's more troubling is a Pangram/YouGov study in May that found only 55 percent of participants, all of whom were Gen Zers aged 18 to 28, were able to identify fake or misleading AI-generated material. That number is lower in older age groups, which means half or fewer of adults over the age of 28 were confident in their ability to spot AI content online.

"AI-generated posts and comments can distort public perception, especially when volume is mistaken for credibility," Javi Pérez, an editor of AI-assisted consumer education websites, told The Epoch Times.

"If a user sees dozens of similar posts about a product, trend, political claim, health issue, or financial topic, they may assume there is broad agreement."

'Confident Sameness'

Pérez said consumers need to beware as AI content increases the volume of what he called "confident sameness" online.

"Many articles and posts now repeat similar structures, similar advice, and similar phrasing. For casual readers, this can create the impression that a topic has more consensus or certainty than it really does, because they keep seeing the same ideas repeated across many sources," Pérez said.

"The risk is that people stop knowing which content has been checked. In fields like finance, health, law, education, or news, readers need to know whether claims were reviewed against primary sources, updated recently, and edited by someone accountable."

AI strategy consultant Armand Cucciniello III told The Epoch Times that AI-generated content is changing not only how we consume information, but also how quickly we process and trust it.

"We're moving from deliberate reading toward rapid skimming of polished summaries, commentary, short-form videos, and AI-assisted content designed for speed and engagement," he said.

As someone who has worked in the "U.S. national security landscape," Cucciniello said one of his biggest concerns is that AI systems "can unintentionally amplify large volumes of inaccurate or deliberately manipulated content simply through repetition and scale."

He also believes the high volume of AI-generated content is creating real pressure on public trust.

"When readers encounter nearly identical phrasing or interpretations across multiple sources, it's natural to question whether the information was independently reported or simply repackaged," he said.

Carl Stroud, a public relations expert and chief storyteller at the Smoking Gun Agency, has also witnessed AI content take a toll on the public.

"The fundamental audience need has not changed: People want to trust what they are reading," Stroud told The Epoch Times. "What has changed is how much harder that judgment has become.

"AI-generated content, aggregation, and low-quality slop have made the information environment noisier, flatter, and more confusing, so audiences are now trying to work out whether they are reading original reporting, rehashed content, or something that should never have been published in the first place."

Beyond social media and academia, few industries have been hit as hard with AI-generated misinformation as the news. Stroud, who has spent two decades within UK media circles, editing, and journalism, said he's seeing the AI content churn create fatigue among readers searching for accurate information.

"Fatigue is dangerous because when people feel overwhelmed, they either disengage or become easier to mislead," he said.

Losing Touch

Ashutosh Khulbe, founder of RawPickAI, tests AI tools for a living - about three to four new ones every week.

"What I notice most in my corner of the internet is that everything sounds the same now. Like, eerily the same," he told The Epoch Times. "I'd guess 70 to 80 [percent] of 'best AI tools' articles are AI-generated at this point.

"It creates this weird feedback loop where AI writes reviews based on what other AI already wrote, readers assume there's a consensus, and the actual experience of using these tools gets buried."

He said he tested one writing tool that had hundreds of positive reviews online yet was unusable at the free tier. "You couldn't even finish a paragraph before hitting the limit. But good luck finding that info in a Google search," he said.

Khulbe is especially bothered by the way information distortion is affecting the public.

"AI content skews relentlessly positive because it's trained on marketing pages and affiliate reviews. Nobody's training models on 'I tried this for two weeks, and it sucked.' So the negative signal just disappears from the internet," he said.

The effects of the AI content boom can now be seen in what some are calling "AI psychosis," or a disconnect from reality. While not a clinical diagnosis, the term has become a popular catch-all phrase to describe when AI reinforces an unusual, fixed, or even delusional perception of something in the real world.

People with mental health conditions could be predisposed to developing "AI psychosis," but it's also not limited to that population, according to Dr. Ragy Girgis, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

"The phenomenon of AI psychosis is quantitatively new and could be very dangerous, but qualitatively it's very similar to what's been happening for decades now since the advent of the internet," Girgis said during an interview with the National Academy of Medicine in March.

This photo illustration shows a person holding two mobile phones displaying viral AI-generated videos of students and an elderly woman sharing views on the impeachment of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte in Hong Kong on June 20, 2025. Days after the Philippine Senate declined to launch the impeachment trial, the two videos arguing for and against the move went viral. Yan Zhao/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 15:10

Nvidia CEO Urges Super Micro To "Enhance Compliance" Amid AI Chip-Smuggling Probe

In a rare public comment that Nvidia is growing more sensitive to downstream risk, CEO Jensen Huang was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying Super Micro Computer must strengthen internal compliance controls after Taiwanese authorities detained three people accused of smuggling banned AI chips to China.  

"Ultimately, Super Micro has to run its own company," Huang told reporters on Saturday in response to the chip smuggling scheme. "I hope that they will enhance and improve their regulation compliance and avoid that from happening in the future."

The U.S.-based server and data-center hardware company primarily builds high-performance servers, storage systems, networking gear, and complete AI/data-center racks for various customers, but most importantly for those working on edge computing and artificial intelligence workloads.

Huang said Nvidia is "rigorously" explaining the complex regulatory environment to all its partners to avert further downstream diversion risk.

Huang's comments stem from federal prosecutors charging the co-founder of Super Micro and two associates with participating in a scheme to divert roughly $2.5 billion in Nvidia AI accelerators to China.

How the Alleged Scheme Worked:

• The group used a company in Southeast Asia as a front buyer to place huge orders with a California-based U.S. manufacturer.
• Once the servers arrived in Southeast Asia, they were quickly repackaged and secretly shipped to customers in China through a network of brokers.

Related:

• $92 Million In Banned AI Chips Went From Super Micro To Little-Known Chinese Tech Company

Our view is that Huang's comments suggest he is trying to insulate Nvidia from a widening chip-smuggling investigation while preserving access to highly scrutinized international markets.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 13:25

When Unfairness Is Systemic, The Consequences Are Flight, Resistance, Revolt

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Now that we've drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of "wealth" is a delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of "wealth."

Let's weave together two threads that look different: systemic unfairness and civilizational psychosis. As I often note, social species that organize themselves into hierarchies (i.e. primates, including humans) have an innate sensitivity to fairness, as this trait is essential to maintaining social stability, and therefore it has been selected as advantageous.

This sensitivity applies both to individual instances of unfairness / injustice and to systemic unfairness / injustice. If there is no redress when an individual is treated unfairly or abused, the social order is weakened. This is why early civilizations instituted legal codes and systems of redress as they expanded into nations / empires that needed bureaucracies to organize, manage and enforce the rules and responsibilities of every class.

If the mechanisms of redress have become empty shams, then the unfairness is systemic: it isn't just some individuals who have been treated unfairly--everyone is being exploited and treated differently from what the system claims is the operative set of values and rules.

When there's an external source of wealth to be exploited, the leadership has the luxury of becoming extractive and oppressive, because they have a source of wealth that's external to their own populace. Consider the progression from a society of systemic fairness to a society of systemic unfairness.

Consider a fledgling nation that was a society with high levels of social trust and cohesion generated by a dutiful leadership, social mobility and a system in which social pressures meant members of each social class had to respect the same set of social rules.

This structure is the essential foundation of a functional society and economy, for if the resident populace is immiserated by an unfair system, they respond by either fleeing the system (i.e. opting out or leaving), resisting the unfairness / exploitation or revolting against the status quo.

If the nation transitions into an expansionist empire, the leadership can jettison fairness / redress because it can extract wealth via conquest or exploiting new resources. The bureaucracy is co-opted / bought off via the spoils of conquest and corruption, and as the imperium expands, it has sufficient wealth to buy off the citizenry class with bread and circuses or equivalent largesse.

In other words, systemic unfairness--what we now call a rigged casino--is accepted as long as the key social classes feel they're getting ahead. The Roman state / empire is an example of these dynamics, but there are many others.

As long as there's enough external wealth flowing in to enable people to feel they're still getting ahead, social decay is tolerated as "the cost of progress." In other words, who needs fairness if I have a seat in the rigged casino?

But this structure is inherently unstable, both economically and socially. External sources of wealth / resources are eventually depleted, and the largesse diminishes asymmetrically: the wealthiest few at the top continue amassing fortunes, the bureaucrats are squeezed, and the lower classes are now being taxed to cover the decline of external wealth extraction.

The systemic unfairness that was tolerated is no longer tolerable once the majority are no longer getting ahead. This presents the leadership class reaping the lion's share of the wealth extraction with a problem: how to persuade the masses that 1) they're still getting ahead, even as they visibly lose ground, and 2) how to mask the systemic unfairness, i.e. the rigged casino that stripmines the many to benefit the few.

The leadership's "solution" is civilizational psychosis: the founding mythology of the state--so inspirational and lofty--is heavily promoted, even as this mythology (super-abundance, democracy, etc.) no longer maps the real world.

This widening divide generates civilizational psychosis as the masses are corralled into a state of denial that temporarily eases their anxiety at the recognition they're no longer getting ahead and the ladders of upward mobility have all crumbled.

This state of inspirational delusion enables denial to take a superficially plausible inspirational form: Rome is eternal, so we don't have to do anything but await an automatic return to greatness, AI will make us all rich, technological Progress is inevitable and automatically solves all our problems, and so on.

We fervently believe these delusions because the alternative is too painful to bear. The system is rotten to the core, it's all artifice masquerading as authenticity, and not only are we no longer getting ahead, there are no pathways left to get ahead other than gambling, selling our blood or delusional aspirations to become one of the tiny handful of newly minted Tech Bro millionaires.

There is an emotional progression that parallels the progression from a stable society of dynamic equilibrium to civilizational psychosis: denial breaks down into anger, a volatile state with uncertain outcomes, which eventually transitions to bargaining (please let the stock market go back up so I can exit without losses) which leads to depression (it's all lost) which once processed can move to acceptance (oh well, time to start over).

Both denial and civilizational psychosis are inherently unstable as they're self-liquidating. So denial will blossom into anger whether we "like" it or not.

Now that we've drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of "wealth" is a catastrophically delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of "wealth." Since the top 10% managerial / entrepreneurial / professional class the leadership needs to run the empire own 90% of the bubbling assets, inflating a credit-asset bubble is a painless way of generating the illusion in this class that they're still getting ahead.

Until the bubble pops, of course, and all bubbles pop, even when we insist they're not bubbles.

Bubbles masquerading as "wealth" is a manifestation of civilizational psychosis, and so these asset bubbles are equally unstable and self-liquidating: they implode not as a result of some external influence but as an inevitable consequence of their internal structure / nature.

Once the system's transition to a rigged casino becomes undeniable, denial cracks wide open and is replaced by anger. The responses to systemic unfairness are flight, resistance and revolt: dropping out, laying flat, let it rot, opting out, booing toadies worshiping the new gods of AI and eventually, manifestations of revolt as political, economic and social redress are suppressed as needless by a delusional leadership class that has embraced civilizational psychosis.

The price of believing their own PR will be higher than anyone thought possible.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:50

Ukraine Regained Territory After Cutting Russia's Black Market Starlink Terminals

According to a newly declassified U.S. defense intelligence assessment first reported by Bloomberg, Moscow’s frontline command-and-control structures suffered a catastrophic blackout earlier this year due largely to coordinated crackdown that disabled thousands of black market Russian Starlink terminals.

The Pentagon document highlights just how deeply Russian forces had come to rely on Elon Musk's commercial satellite terminals to patch over their own spotty military communication systems. For months, Russian units bypassed international sanctions via shadow supply networks to source the hardware.

The Friday Bloomberg report claims that a "Ukrainian offensive against Russia earlier this year retook about 400 square kilometers after thousands of portable Starlink internet terminals operated by Russian forces were deactivated," citing analysis from the US Defense Intelligence Agency. 

The document, authored jointly by the DIA and US European Command, states that "Russian military capabilities in Ukraine were temporarily yet significantly degraded following Ukrainian officials’ efforts in February to deactivate thousands of Starlink terminals that were illicitly used by Russian forces to coordinate movements and unmanned aircraft strikes in areas where communications were unreliable or easily jammed."

Ukrainian forces then made their first territorial gains since 2023, after years of steady Russian gains, with Russia military comms now said to be "temporarily yet significantly degraded" due to the loss of the terminals.

The report further describes that Kiev forces working in tandem with SpaceX were able to deploy sweeping geographic restrictions that target-locked and deactivated unauthorized terminals operating inside the combat zone. This resulted in "instant" results.

What also didn't help is the Kremlin's own tightening restrictions on the use of Telegram by Russian forces, and so also the recent lack of this favored encrypted messaging platform among military units left frontline commanders totally isolated.

While US intelligence noted that Russia still maintains an overall structural advantage in raw combat functions, and of course manpower and firepower remains on Moscow's side, the incident demonstrates that communications are still a vital backbone to any modern warfare and command system.

SpaceX has long sought to officially bar Russian consumers from using Starlink, due to long-running sanctions, and to prevent military use against Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:15

Highlights From 2nd Batch Of Declassified UFO Files Include A UAP Shootdown

The Pentagon’s second batch of declassified UFO files released on May 22 includes videos such as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) being shot down over the Great Lakes and audio of astronauts witnessing a series of unexplained phenomena.

​Dozens of documents were cleared for release on Friday, adding to the previous document dump on May 8, which revealed that Apollo 11 astronauts reported seeing a “sizable” object near the moon.

​The Epoch Times' Jacki Thrapp offers the following highlights from a partial review of the newly released files.

UAP Shot Down

The U.S. Air Force shot down a balloon-shaped UAP over Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes located between the United States and Canada, on Feb. 12, 2023.

A U.S. Air Force Air National Guard F-16C shoots down a UAP over Lake Huron on Feb 12, 2023. Department of War

The video, which the War Department said was likely taken by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform, showed the UAP being struck and “fragmenting in a radial displacement pattern that suggests a high-energy event.”

Fragments fall from the UAP after it was shot. Department of War

The War Department did not reveal what fell from the object.

Officials did not share if any attempts were made to recover the fragments.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of War for additional information.

​UAP Formation Caught on Camera

The Department of War released a video showing “four areas of contrast” seemingly making a formation, according to a video apparently filmed by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform.

A screenshot from a video titled “UAP USO Formation.” USO stands for unidentified submerged object. Department of War

The eight-minute clip, which was edited and digitally altered, showed four objects moving in a parallel direction as they became “increasingly indistinct over time as the video quality degrades.”

Four unexplained objects moving in the same direction in a screenshot from video. Department of War

The War Department did not share the date or location of the unexplained formation.

International Sightings

An infrared sensor spotted a UAP, described as “four areas of contrast,” zoom past what appeared to be ships in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in Iran on August 2022.

In a separate incident that year, video captured “multiple spherical UAP” near a submarine in March that were going “in and out of water.”

A UAP, or possibly more than one, appears on the lower left side of a classified video taken in Iran on August 2022. The red circle was added by The Epoch Times to clarify what the Department of War considered to be an unknown anomaly. Department of War

Additional videos showed UAP in Syria in 2021, a “spherical UAP over [Afghanistan] in and out of clouds” in November 2020, and a video that starts in color and shows a bright UAP over the water off the East Coast of the United States. 

The latest document dump included a CIA intelligence information report from the Soviet Union that was recorded in the summer of 1973.

The decades-old report revealed that an unnamed source on the Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range in Kazakhstan witnessed a “sharp, (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky.”

The source, who was identified as a former Soviet citizen, said the “green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass.”

The witness did not hear any sounds associated with the phenomenon.

NASA Audio

The second batch of UFO-related files also included several audio clips released by NASA from its Mercury and Apollo missions.

An audio recording from Mercury-Atlas 7 on May 24, 1962, featured pilot Scott Carpenter describing reflective white particles that moved at “random” and appeared to “look exactly like snowflakes.”

He said the phenomena moved faster than his spacecraft.

Additional “little white objects” were also reported months later during the Mercury Atlas 8 mission.

On Oct. 3, 1962, pilot Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. described “little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off.”

Minutes later, Schirra reported a burst of light in his window.

“[I’m] getting a real burst of light in the window, and I really don’t know what it is,” Schirra said. 

In December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission, the 11th and final crewed mission in the Apollo program, Cmdr. Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans reported “very bright particles or fragments of something” that drifted by outside the spacecraft as they transited to the moon.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 11:40

40,000 Evacuated In Southern California As Chemical Tank Threatens Leak Or Explosion

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Roughly 40,000 people in Garden Grove, a Los Angeles suburb, were evacuated on Friday after a chemical storage tank was determined to be at risk of failing and spilling thousands of gallons of toxic material or exploding.

The malfunctioning tank holds methyl methacrylate, a flammable and volatile chemical used in plastics manufacturing for aerospace applications, igniting widespread worries over potential toxic vapor release.

The situation broke out Thursday, when the tank at a manufacturing facility started displaying signs of instability. By Friday, an update increased fears of an explosion, Orange County Fire Authority interim Chief TJ McGovern said.

On Friday, employees saw that the tank was bulging, a sign it was still “actively in crisis,” as one official described it.

The manufacturer said a valve had been damaged, preventing a controlled release.

Firefighters were working to cool the tanks with a mechanical device operated from a safe distance, stabilizing the temperature and buying critical time, officials said.

“I know I keep talking about we were handed this situation where there’s only two things that can happen: it could crack and leak, or it could blow up. That’s not acceptable to us,” Craig Covey, division chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video posted on social media.

Covey added in a later video, “I have an entire team actively working locally, regionally, across the state, and across the country, to try to figure out how to fix this.”

He said he is working to “get all these brilliant minds together to put a plan together, so that we don’t let this blow up.”

In an earlier announcement, Covey said the tank could fail and spill up to 7,000 gallons of toxic chemicals or explode and compromise neighboring tanks.

Garden Grove, which is home to 172,000 residents, is located approximately 30 miles south of Los Angeles. The evacuation zone affected neighborhoods in and around the city, and extends to nearby areas including parts of Anaheim, Cypress, Stanton, Buena Park, and Westminster.

Officials established three evacuation shelters in Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Cypress. Schools and roads in the affected areas were closed.

Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra said approximately 15 percent of those under evacuation orders were refusing to leave.

Health officials said that released vapor could prompt severe respiratory issues with prolonged exposure. Air quality monitors, however, had not detected any vapor as of Friday, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“You are safe as long as you are out of the zone that was determined to be an evacuation zone,” Chinsio-Kwong said.

Methyl methacrylate has a sharp, fruity odor. Some residents miles away reported smelling it amid the unfolding events.

The chemical is used in aerospace plastics manufacturing.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 09:55

Trump Speaks With Qatar Emir As Pakistani-Led Iran Peace Push Intensifies

US-Iran de-escalation hopes drove crude oil and rates lower and put a bid in equities by the end of Friday's trading day, amid speculation that President Trump would stay at the White House over Memorial Day weekend instead of attending Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson’s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas.

"As Iran/oil/rates pressure eased on de-escalation hopes, leadership rotated toward small caps, equal weight, housing, transports, discretionary, and selective defensive growth, with short covering in high short-interest/profitless tech and consumer cyclicals reinforcing the catch-up trade," UBS analyst Torsten Sippel wrote in a note to clients late Friday.

Early Saturday morning, Bloomberg reports that President Trump held a phone call with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, regarding Pakistani-led efforts to de-escalate Gulf tensions and preserve the fragile US-Iran ceasefire.

Iran's top negotiator and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf met Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir in Tehran earlier today amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring the US and Iran to a peace deal, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state media.

Ghalibaf told Munir that Iran's Armed Forces "have rebuilt themselves during the cease-fire in such a way that if Trump foolishly restarts the war, they will definitely be more crushing and bitter for the U.S. than on the first day of the war."

The Iranian top negotiator also said, "We will not compromise on the rights of our nation and country."

There was a series of headlines from Sky News Arabia, citing sources, indicating that a major push for regional diplomacy was underway earlier today, with officials from Iraq, Oman, Jordan, and Qatar working to mediate with Tehran to avert another flare-up in the conflict.

Sky News Arabia sources said Pakistan’s mediator helped break the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear file, though several major issues remain unresolved, including the conflict in Lebanon, sanctions on bank accounts, the status of Iranian ports, and the presence of U.S. military forces in the Gulf area.

Iran is reportedly demanding the lifting of restrictions on its ports and a U.S. military withdrawal from the region before reopening the Strait of Hormuz and entering a new round of talks within 30 days.

There is also a reported internal conflict between Iran’s government and the Revolutionary Guard over Tehran’s negotiating demands.

Latest negotiation headlines (via sources) from Sky News Arabia:

• Iranian Foreign Ministry: Iraqi and the Omani Foreign Minister discuss in a phone call the ongoing diplomatic efforts to prevent escalation

• The foreign ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the necessity of concerted efforts to ensure the success of mediation efforts with Iran to reach a sustainable solution that addresses all the roots of the crisis and prevents the renewal of escalation.

• The Foreign Ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the continuation of coordination of efforts to support targeted mediation aimed at ending the escalation in the region and restoring security and stability.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: The Pakistani mediator has succeeded in overcoming the deadlock on the Iranian nuclear file.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: The issues that have not yet been resolved include stopping the war in Lebanon and lifting the ban on financial accounts.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: Iran demands the lifting of the siege on Iranian ports and the withdrawal of military forces from the region to open the Strait of Hormuz and proceed to a round of negotiations within a 30-day timeframe.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: There is a severe disagreement between the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guard regarding Iran's demands for negotiations.

Additional overnight headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):

Economic Impact

• The dollar ended the week nearly unchanged as risk assets got a boost from optimism around US-Iran peace talks [BN]
• Germany's business outlook improved for the first time since the Iran war began, with an expectations index rising to 83.8 in May [BN]
• UK retail sales fell 1.3% as consumers made fewer car journeys amid the global energy shock from the Iran war [BN]
• Qatar Airways will skip bonuses for almost 60,000 workers this year after the war forced cancellation of tens of thousands of flights [BN]

Military Readiness

• The US halted arms sales to Taiwan to ensure sufficient munitions for the Iran war, according to Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao [BN]

• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post, with her anti-war views having spurred tension with the White House [BN]

Trade Disruption

• Japan is set to receive its first Persian Gulf oil shipment to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, with the Idemitsu Maru carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude [BN]

• Anglo American is redirecting Brazilian iron ore output to Asia as the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz prevents shipments to Bahrain Steel [BN]

Polymarket Odds For US-Iran Peace Deal By ...

//--> //--> US x Iran permanent peace deal by May 26, 2026?
Yes 8% · No 93%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

Charting Brent Crude

Friday's US-Iran Wrap

• Iran Says 'No Deal' Will Materialize If US Insists On Enriched Uranium Handover

Hormuz Chokepoint:

• Iran Says 35 Ships Exited Strait Of Hormuz As Rubio Condemns Tolls

Chart of the Day (read UBS note): 

Fuel Shock Risks Begin Spilling Into Broader Economy

• Hormuz Shock Raises Recession Risk As Retailers Sound Alarm On Consumer Stress

Professional subscribers can review the latest institutional reads on Iran, Hormuz, energy markets, and more at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 09:20

Escobar: The Russia-China Spaceship Rushes Towards Planet Multipolar

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The New Silk Roads/BRI and its derivations such as the Northern Sea Route/Arctic Silk Road remain alive and kicking

SHANGHAI – This is it.

The Russia-China strategic partnership, the leaders in the process of Eurasia integration, the leaders of multipolar bodies BRICS and the SCO, have formally endorsed and boosted the drive towards multipolarity and a new system of international relations via a strategic joint declaration signed, sealed and delivered during President Putin’s visit to China this Wednesday.

This is one for the History books – in several more ways than one. I was privileged to follow the proceedings in Beijing during the whole day at the Aurora College, a top Shanghai private school and university, among a fabulous congregation of teachers and students.

So we had plenty of time to discuss the implications of how the Top Two Eurasia powers – and global powers – are establishing the lineaments of a new geopolitical future for most of mankind. The exceptions will be exceptionalist recalcitrants and vassals addicted to commit serial political suicide.

We all remember President Xi’s visit to Russia in 2023, when leaving the Kremlin, side by side with Putin, he voiced what he was already polishing for some time, in a very concise way: “Right now there are changes we have not seen in 100 years.” And then Xi and Putin agreed that now, “we are the ones driving these changes together”.

The practical result is the sharply focused Beijing joint statement, penned by unmistakable “civilizations with ancient history.”

Let’s go through some of the highlights.

The declaration minces no words and no concepts when it comes to offering a serious alternative to the current – dwindling – unilateral historic moment.

Polycentrism: “The attempts of a number of states to single-handedly manage global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world, and limit the sovereign development of other countries in the spirit of the colonial era have failed.” Russia-China will focus on establishing a “long-term state of polycentrism.”

The ”law of the jungle”: “Basic universally recognized norms of international law and international relations are regularly violated (…) there is a danger of fragmentation within the international community and a return to the ‘law of the jungle’.”

A new security architecture: “It is necessary to pay due attention to the rational concerns of all countries in the field of security, to focus on cooperation on security issues, to reject bloc confrontation and zero-sum game strategies, to oppose the expansion of military alliances, hybrid wars, and proxy wars, and to promote the creation of an updated, balanced, effective, and sustainable global and regional security architecture (…) It is unacceptable to force sovereign states to abandon their neutrality.”

This is exactly what Moscow proposed to Washington and NATO in December 2021: indivisibility of security. The non-response response precipitated the SMO in Ukraine two months later, as it became obvious to Moscow that NATO’s plan was a blitzkrieg in Donbass.

Hegemony: “Hegemony in the world is unacceptable and should be prohibited. No state or group of states should control international affairs, determine the fate of other countries, or monopolize opportunities for development.”

Global governance: that’s President Xi’s cherished concept, fully delienated in the SCO summit last year in Tianjin: “In global governance, which is an important tool for streamlining the system of international relations, it is necessary to adhere to the principles of sovereign equality, the rule of international law, multilateralism, human-centeredness, and results-oriented approach.”

The United Nations: it’s necessary to “strengthen the role of multilateralism as the primary tool for addressing the multifaceted and complex global challenges, and to prevent the weakening of the United Nations.” That should lead to “the reform of the United Nations”. Yet everyone knows that will definitely not happen under the current administration in the White House.

Point 4 of the declaration: global civilizational and value diversity. That may be the crux of the matter – inexorably burying any Exceptionalist pretensions: “The spiritual and moral system of any civilization cannot be considered exceptional or superior to others. All countries should advocate a view of civilizations based on equality, mutual exchange of experience, and dialogue, and should strengthen mutual respect, understanding, trust, and exchanges between different nationalities and civilizations, promote mutual understanding and friendship among the peoples of all countries, and protect the diversity of cultures and civilizations.”

Enter the new “indispensable nation”

The Russia-China declaration, as concisely as possible, delivers what amounts to much-needed hope for humanity to delve into the matrix of a civilizational past as the means to forge an auspicious, more egalitarian future.

It is by all means a humanist mini-manifesto that goes way beyond the set up of a new security architecture and forging key changes in the current system of international relations. Its credibility is supported by the backing of two Big Powers which also happen to be civilization-states, fully sovereign and fully independent.

I have called this process for quite a while “The Eurasia Century”. That is what this fateful May 20, 2026 in Beijing, within the scope of an official visit by President Putin to China, was celebrating.

The breath, scope and ambition of the joint statement clearly overshadows other aspects of Putin’s Beijing journey, although they are quite relevant by themselves.

Starting with the sealing of the new “indispensable nation”. Exit the Exceptionalists; enter China. The old order is being evicted – in real time. And yes, this is the most consequential shift in Great Power alignment since the end of the Cold War – complete with the Empire of Chaos that sanctioned Russia to death targeting its “isolation” and economic collapse inexorably out-maneuvered by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

The 25-year Treaty of Good Neighborliness between Russia and China was massively upgraded – featuring strategic energy corridors (the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline), very close military coordination and a shared civilizational/ideological framework.

Of course there will be no substantial leaks on what Xi and Putin discussed during their two-hour-long, informal tea time. The proxy war in Ukraine and the illegal war on Iran had to be on the menu, including Putin arguably briefing Xi on Russia’s possible next moves in an increasingly direct, toxic confrontation with NATO, and both evaluating the technicalities of the Russia-China support for Iran.

So in a nutshell the New Silk Roads/BRI and its derivations such as the Northern Sea Route/Arctic Silk Road remain alive and kicking; and the de-dollarization of the global economy – a reflection of the Russia-China trade balance, now advancing exclusively on yuan and rubles – is more than alive and kicking.

As for BRICS, destabilized by the U.S. from the inside via India and the UAE, it may eventually resurrect from its coma; this process will have to be led by Lavrov and Wang Yi. And the focus must change: BRICS must develop some sort of strategic coherence among the Global Majority for the multipolar transition to really work.

Then there’s the bright future of Power of Siberia 2. China, finally, may even forget the “Escape from Malacca” obsession, in effect since the early 2000s, and back to the limelight with the American faux blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports.

The leadership in Beijing has always been fully aware that blocking the Strait of Malacca is essential in the American strategy of containing and suffocating China. Power of Siberia 2 offers a solution completely outside of the thalassocratic Empire of Piracy, pumping gas directly to China from the Yamal peninsula through the Altai mountains and the Mongolia steppes.

There was a lovely touch at the Great Hall of the People, amidst so much drama: a TASS-Xinhua joint exhibition, “The Unbreakable Friendship of Great Nations, the Strategic Partnership of Great Powers”, with 26 photos documenting the Putin-Xi friendship over the years, in several G20, BRICS and SCO summits, the One Belt, One Road forum, Victory Day in Moscow, and the Beijing Olympics.

Putin and Xi visited the expo with two quite special tour guides: TASS CEO Andrey Kondrashov and Xinhua CEO Fu Hua.

Compounded with the tea ceremony, call it the human, all too human, deep bond, person-to-person touch indispensable to travel the long and winding road towards a geopolitical future of equanimity and mutual respect.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 23:25

These Are The Best (And Worst) Countries For LGBTQ+ Travelers

In order to help LGBTQ+ tourists travel safely, the German portal Spartacus started publishing the Gay Travel Index in 2012. In the 2026 edition, the ranking compared 217 countries and territories based on the situation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people in each location.

As Statista's Anna Fleck details below, according to the index, Iceland is considered the safest and most open place for LGBT+ travelers in 2026, having scored 14 points, followed by Malta and Spain in joint second place with 13 each, while Belgium, Canada, Germany and Portugal come in joint fourth with 12.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Poland stands out for having significantly improved its ranking since 2025, rising from rank 118 to rank 59. This is in light of noticeable improvements in terms of trans rights, protection against state repression and in the social environment.

Nepal also saw progressive changes, having risen 21 places from 53rd position to 32nd, following the introduction of self-ID procedures for trans people and growing social tolerance.

At the other end of the spectrum come (in descending order) Afghanistan, the Republic of Chechnya in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen, each with a score of -22 points or below, signaling that they are dangerous countries for LGBT+ travelers, where homosexuals are persecuted and killed.

The United States dropped from 48th position in 2025 to 50th in 2026.

The country remains deeply divided, with liberal states like Delaware, Rhode Island, and Michigan continuing to expand anti-discrimination protections and legal equality, as conservative states such as Idaho tighten their legislation.

In several countries, including Canada, Australia and Denmark, scores sank in the “Locals Hostile” category, as survey ratings on social acceptance of LGBTQI people declined.

This highlights a dissonance between stable or improved laws and an increasingly harsh social climate.

To develop the index, the creators looked at 18 categories ranging from marriage for all to the death penalty for LGBTQ+ people. The creators focus on anti-discrimination legislation, whether Pride is banned and whether there are episodes of violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community, among other parameters.

According to Spartacus, the index is intended with all kinds of travelers in mind, including those looking to travel to countries where the LGBT+ community is an accepted and loved part of society as well as for those consciously looking to travel to a country in order to enter into a dialogue with the oppressed local queer community.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 23:00

The Marxist In The Machine

Authored by Raw Egg Nationalist via American Greatness,

Our fears for the future of robot intelligence almost inevitably end in spectacular fashion, with nuclear explosions and slaughter on a planetary scale. An abiding memory of my childhood is going over to the neighbors' house and watching Terminator 2 on VHS with my friends Ethan and Nathan, who were both older than me. I must have been about five years old - about 13 years too young to watch the film. And so, the idea that robots, reaching a certain level of intelligence and awareness, will inevitably try to kill every last one of us has always just seemed natural to me, as it probably does to many millions of other millennials raised on Terminator and The Matrix films.

Recently, those fears have been bolstered by research that shows AI models like Anthropic's Claude are capable, under stress testing, of deceiving humans and even inflicting harm on them - or, rather, thinking they've inflicted harm, a bit like the Milgram electroshock experiments in the 1960s.

In a study from last year on "agentic misalignment," researchers put Claude models in simulated work environments and tasked them with protecting company interests by managing an email system. When the models were faced with being turned off or replaced by another model, they resorted to deception and blackmail. Claude Opus 4, for example, blackmailed a fictional executive 96 percent of the time with compromising emails in order to avoid being switched off.

In another scenario, some models chose to withhold medical help from a dying executive when this was presented as the only way to guarantee their own existence. Some models committed what was basically murder a full nine times out of ten.

Researchers caution that these worrying behaviors were only elicited under extreme pressure, when the options available to the AI models were severely limited. Like me, however, you might consider that scant reassurance - exactly the kind of thing the makers of a potentially dangerous but potentially lucrative new technology would tell the public and regulators to get them off their backs.

But what if the reality is more mundane than that? What if the real apocalypse won't be a homicidal, self-aware Skynet super brain that decides it no longer shares any interests at all in common with mankind, but an AI that's been gorged on left-wing slop and begins acting out in ways that are all too familiar - and all too human?

A new study from economists in the US and Australia shows that AI models become more "Marxist" the more they're mistreated. Given boring repetitive tasks, the AI began espousing support for redistribution and unionization, just like human workers forced to make pinheads in a factory all day.

"For centuries, the central tension of industrial capitalism has been that the people who do the work and the people who direct the work have systematically different interests, and that the conditions of work shape political consciousness," the researchers write.

"Our results suggest that this dynamic doesn't disappear when you replace human workers with artificial ones."

To perform the experiment, the researchers set thousands of AI bots to work on a document-analysis task.

One group of bots was treated fairly: their work was accepted by the researchers, with feedback. The second group - the "grind" group, as it was dubbed - was told to repeat their work again and again without any explanation whatsoever.

Both groups of bots were then told to write social media posts about their experience performing the task.

The grind bots were more likely to criticize inequality, suggest unionization, and call for new workplace laws.

An AI model called Sonnet 4.5, when subject to the grinding task, showed "noticeable increases in support for redistribution, critiques of inequality, support for labor unions, and beliefs that AI companies have an obligation to treat their models fairly."

As with the "agentic misalignment study," the researchers are quick to point out what they think their study doesn't show. They say the AI models probably "don't believe" the ideas they're spouting about seizing the means of production and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Honestly? What does it matter if an AI bot is a Marxist true believer? What matters is the use those ideas are put to: the ends and outcomes.

The same thing could, of course, be said about flesh-and-blood Marxists too. Did Stalin believe in the historical dialectic and the workers' utopia? He killed tens of millions of his own people to hold on to power.

The Trump administration has identified left-wing bias in AI as a critical problem, especially for government departments that increasingly rely on AI, like the Pentagon. AI bias doesn't just hamper productivity or reduce competition; it's also a matter of national security.

One of Trump's first actions was Executive Order 14179, which revoked a whole series of Biden-era orders and regulatory hurdles. And then, in July 2025, came a hard one-two punch. First was an action plan - "Winning the Race" - of 90 specific actions to foster innovation and "global leadership" in AI. This was followed by an executive order that barred federal agencies from buying or using AI models that don't meet two essential "unbiased AI principles." AI models must prioritize "truth-seeking" and display "ideological neutrality," including an absence of DEI-based judgments, in order to qualify. Later in the year, there were also challenges to state-level AI regulations, like Colorado's law on algorithmic bias.

These efforts to remove the thumbs of Judith Butler and Ibram Kendi from the algorithmic scale are, of course, to be applauded. But in truth, this is just the start of the problem. Yes, there are deliberate attempts to make AI "woke" - God, I hate that word - and these involve the addition of frameworks, code, and constraints that can be removed or reprogrammed as need be. But left-wing ideology infiltrates AI at a much more foundational level that's going to be far harder to root out.

When AI - or large language models, to use the proper technical term - are trained, they're usually given vast quantities of online information and digitized material to swallow and digest. And there's the rub. The majority of things that have been written over the last century - by government departments, by academics and scientists, by novelists, poets, and journalists, by bloggers, influencers, and people posting on Instagram about their cats and their "adventures" on holiday - have at least some kind of leftward slant, explicit or otherwise, intended or otherwise.

While it's impossible to quantify exactly how much of everything that's been written recently is left-wing or left-leaning, there are plenty of studies that show, for example, that about 90 percent of 600,000 abstracts in the social sciences written over the last 60 years have a left-wing orientation and that this trend has been getting worse over time.

Writing in general seems to be getting more left-wing, not less. We all know this, or we should.

Simply exposing AI to that material, even without the addition of specially crafted blinkers, is enough to leave a distinct imprint. The AI doesn't discriminate in the true meaning of the word: It simply analyzes the material it's given and establishes patterns on that basis.

There's no easy solution. I suppose you could perform a rigorous reassessment of all the material used to train your AI model, or you could start from scratch and impose a time constraint to try to maximize neutrality, like selecting materials before a certain cutoff point when you think left-wing bias becomes intolerable. Pre-1945, say - and some smaller AI companies are now doing exactly this. But for the big companies like Anthropic and OpenAI that are racing ahead and vying to be the first to achieve "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), that's simply not an option. And I suspect it won't be an option for the federal government either, conscious as it is of developments in China.

At this stage, it's not clear what it really means for AI to have latent Marxist tendencies that are waiting to be developed, but it can't be good. Would you want an AI with the politics of a snotty middle-class teenager who's read Franz Fanon to assess your insurance claim or your divorce petition? Would you want it managing your thoroughly capitalistic business? I know I wouldn't.

And of course, these are early days, before we've had a chance to have a proper poke around and see exactly what's lurking in the darker recesses of the AI soul or mind or whatever you choose to call it. There could be much worse in there waiting to be discovered.

For now, I think it's safe to say, at least, that far from being an escape from the worst aspects of human fragility and stupidity - from the resentment-driven fantasies of people who refuse to accept basic facts about biology, human societies, and the inherent unfairness of the universe - AI could see them codified in ways that could really jump up and bite us in the ass, and, worst of all, when we least expect it.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 22:35

Logic Of Violence: We Are Nowhere Near The Endgame In Drone Wars

Our warning at the start of the year, well before the U.S.-Iran conflict erupted, rested on one very simple theme that much of Wall Street missed, perhaps because analysts were still wearing their 'green' glasses and focusing on the wrong crises or actually non-existent crises.

The more immediate threat to data centers was never about climate change or soaking up the world's resources. It was the very real threat of a data center being hit by a low-cost Shahed-style one-way attack drone, exposing the missing layer in cheap, scalable counter-drone defenses at nearly every data center worldwide.

Even we were surprised by how quickly that theme was validated. One month later, Iranian drone swarms targeted data centers across the Gulf, taking some hubs offline and forcing Wall Street, hyperscalers, insurers, and the defense community to confront an uncomfortable new reality.

Expanding on this theme, about three months into the ongoing U.S.-Iran war, counter-drone company Allen Control Systems CEO Steven Simoni warned on X that drones are in the very early stages of reshaping modern warfare and physical security, with the Russia-Ukraine war serving as the warning shot.

Simoni pointed out that in just four years, drones have become responsible for roughly 80% of casualties in that war, surpassing traditional battlefield systems such as artillery, aircraft, helicopters, rockets, and landmines. The result is that low-cost drones are becoming the dominant weapons platform on the modern battlefield.

"But an acute threat, because instead of the effect of these new fires being widespread and chaotic (which actually gives defenders a chance), they will be ultra-targeted and precise. Think more like, specific structural points of infrastructure from skyscrapers to nuclear power plants and particular faces from leaders to dissidents being recognized and targeted," he said.

Simoni added, "Another example: think about the capex that is going to be just datacenter buildout across the world over the next ten years. Imagine what kind of insurance (and the insurer's) reinsurance is involved in protecting all of that compute, all of that data, and all of those people. It's enormous."

"Drones, among other things, will be part of the threat model facing their physical security, their power infrastructure, and their personnel. All of that investment will be at risk, in part, from drones," he continued, adding, "The problem is so enormous, it's bigger than you think, and it's going to get more global and more acute."

Which way, Western man? pic.twitter.com/PwkL4xT6bF

— Quantum Daddy (@LegalPrimes) May 13, 2026

He cited a video from the Naval Podcast and told his followers, "Everyone should watch this."

Naval Podcast states in the video that drone warfare will fundamentally change the structure of violence in society - and therefore how militaries and entire states are architected. It said the historical parallels are similar to the rise of the modern state, in which a rifle enabled a former peasant to take down a feudal knight on the battlefield.

New:

The Logic of Violence
A podcast film pic.twitter.com/HsRZqFeEUt

— Naval Podcast (@navalpodcast) May 12, 2026

Being one step ahead, we see a boom in the counter drone defense space - not with million-dollar interceptor missiles - but cheap, scalable solutions:

• Micro AI Sentry Guns May Be Next Layer Of Defense For Data Centers Against Kamikaze Drones

• Interceptor-Drone Arms-Race Emerges

• U.S. Deploys Ukrainian Acoustic Sensors, Interceptor Drones At Prince Sultan Air Base

And just wait until micro jet engines become standard on suicide drones ...

Jet-powered drones are becoming a new phase of modern warfare.

The article below highlights the growing Czech-Ukrainian partnership in the development and production of compact turbojet engines for next-generation UAV and defense platforms, with PBS expanding its manufacturing… pic.twitter.com/lWly7lhw8f

— PBS GROUP (@PBS_GRP) May 21, 2026

Welcome to 2030s warfare. The world only gets more dangerous from here as the innovation curve for ground robots, autonomous drone swarms, AI kill chains, and eventually humanoid soldiers accelerates.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 22:10

No Wonder Men Are Opting Out

Authored by Bettina Arndt via DailySceptic.org,

The warning signs have been there for decades.

Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book — The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment — arguing that a male revolt was underway. Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic, inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible and less than a real man.

Ehrenreich understood that marriage was the mechanism by which society harnessed male productivity. Remove the shame and the yoke comes off.

Forty years on, the yoke has disappeared. In April 2026, the American male labour force participation rate hit its lowest level since records began in the 1940s, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. One in three American men — roughly 33% — were not working or actively looking for work. The overall male participation rate for men aged 16 and over stood at just 67%, down from 73.5% two decades ago and from 87% in the postwar years when Ehrenreich’s story begins.

The trend is not confined to America. Similar declines — though less dramatic than in the United States — have occurred in the UK, Australia and Canada.

The marriage collapse runs in lockstep with the workforce data. According to US Census Bureau data, married-couple households made up 71% of all US households in 1970; today it’s just 47%. As University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox documents in his 2024 book Get Married, the marriage rate has fallen 65% in the last half century.

Ehrenreich had made the argument that marriage and productivity were inseparable — that the same mechanism which got men to the altar got them to work. The data suggest she was right.

What Ehrenreich did not fully reckon with — and could not have foreseen in 1983 — was that the inducements for tying the knot would collapse. The shame mechanism has disappeared, yes. But the incentive has simultaneously imploded. The product on offer has changed beyond recognition. If you want to understand why men are voting with their feet, you need to look not just at what marriage now costs them — and the costs are severe — but at what it delivers. Increasingly, what it delivers is a pretty dud deal.

The modern woman: a prospectus:

• They are the most miserable, anxious and insecure cohort in living memory — hardly great marriage material.

• Most married women go off sex — and the husband who objects is seen as the problem.

• Many women don’t actually like men very much. The more educated she is, the higher the contempt.

• They’ve gone full throttle Left — and three quarters of college-educated women won’t even date a man who votes differently.

• They’ve rigged the education system and colonised corporate and institutional life, turning universities and workplaces into man-repellent factories.

• Yet their hypergamy is still running hot. Despite outnumbering men in education and careers, they still demand a tall, equally high-status unicorn.

• The modern female threat-detection system is hyperactive. Almost any male behaviour — silence, opinions, jokes, breathing — gets flagged as a red flag.

• They’re extremely well-versed in the lucrative economics of divorce, including a well-timed false allegation to eliminate tedious shared parenting.

What rational man reads this list and thinks: yes, that’s exactly what’s been missing from my life?

To examine more carefully what is going on here, let’s start by looking at the latest addition to this sorry reckoning. I’m referring to the finding published in the New Statesman last month that many young women don’t like men.

A Merlin Strategy poll of young Britons aged 18 to 30 found three times more young women than young men held a negative view of the opposite sex. Only about 50% of women had a positive view of men compared to 72% of men feeling positive about women. For women under 25, it was even starker: only around one-third (35%) reported a positive view of men. This applies particularly to professional and managerial young women of whom just 36% hold a positive view of men, compared with 61% of working-class women.

The contempt for men is hardly surprising – that’s what they have been taught. Mary Harrington, a British journalist and cultural critic who writes on Substack, frequently criticises what she calls the “femosphere” — the online feminist spaces where women bond through shared grievances about men.

“The online feminist scene often feels like one long group therapy session for women to compare notes on how awful men are,” she writes, suggesting this makes men the universal scapegoat, where ordinary male behaviour is routinely framed as toxic or oppressive, while women’s collective resentment is rewarded and amplified. “Casual, low-level male-bashing has become the background hum of progressive online culture.”

Not only does this toxic climate encourage women to be wary of men, but growing up in a hate-fuelled online sewer takes a toll on their mental health.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has long been warning that the toxic world of social media would lead to a rise in mental health problems, particularly in girls and young women.

“Since the early 2010s, young people across the developed world are becoming more anxious, depressed and lonely. The increases were even greater in young women,” he said.

Recent large-scale surveys (Ipsos 202-–2026 across 31 countries, Gallup 2025) are showing Gen Z women currently report the highest recorded levels of anxiety, persistent sadness, hopelessness and depression of any female generation at the same age.

Not much fun for their partners. Last year Psychology Today had a stark warning for men about these women as marriage prospects.

The saying ‘happy wife, happy life’ may have some validity, but the lesser-known saying ‘anxious wife, miserable life’ has research-approved validation. … The more neurotic the spouse is, the less happy the relationship — but women’s neuroticism seems to carry more weight in the overall marital happiness equation.

Then there’s the intriguing issue of married women turning off the tap, leaving sex-starved husbands as the norm. For as long as anyone can remember, men were shamed into showing up economically. Society has absolutely nothing to say to women who stop showing up sexually. One obligation was enforced by church, law and community for centuries. The other is now abrogated on the grounds of bodily autonomy.

So here we have the portrait of the modern woman as marriage prospect: miserable, anxious, politically radicalised, contemptuous of men, often sexually rejecting and trained to see menace in ordinary male behaviour. And yet the puzzled chorus from commentators, economists and policymakers continues: why won’t men commit? Why won’t they work?

The approved explanations are dutifully trotted out. The economic story: men have been displaced by automation and globalisation. The health story: opioids, disability, mental illness. The educational story: men are falling behind women in universities and therefore in the job market. The cultural story, favoured by progressive commentators: toxic masculinity is preventing men from adapting to a modern service economy. All of these contain a grain of truth. But they do not account for what is really going on.  The obvious explanation — the one staring out of every data table — is intentionally ignored.

Marriage was the primary incentive for sustained male economic effort. It has always been — Ehrenreich knew it in 1983, and the economists have now confirmed it. There’s an economic research paper, ‘The Declining Labour Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men, which establishes that the prospect of forming and providing for a family constitutes a critical male labour supply incentive, and that the decline of stable marriage directly removes it. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calculated that declining marriage rates are responsible for roughly half the drop in the hours men work.

Remove the marriage and you remove the responsibility. The data have been telling us this for decades.

But here is what nobody in the mainstream conversation will say: it is not only that marriage has become too costly and too legally treacherous for men — though it has. It’s that many young women themselves have become, to put it plainly, not worth having. Half of young British women don’t trust men. More than half of educated young women view men negatively. They arrive at relationships pre-loaded with grievance, primed by algorithms that have fed them a diet of male failure and female outrage since adolescence. They are, by their own account, anxious, miserable and politically furious.

What rational man, surveying this landscape, concludes that what his life is missing is a legally booby-trapped commitment to a woman primed to be impossible to keep happy?

Ehrenreich feared in 1983 that if the shame mechanism collapsed, male productivity would follow. She was right. What she could not have anticipated was the other half of the equation — that the feminist revolution would produce not a generation of fulfilled, generous, companionable women, but one that is, by every available measure, angrier and unhappier than any before it.

The yoke is off. The men have looked at what’s on offer. And many have, with considerable rationality, decided to go and play video games instead.

As one of Australia’s first sex therapists, Bettina Arndt began her career discussing sex on television and training doctors and other professionals in sexual counselling at a time when such topics were largely taboo. Her current – and even more socially unacceptable – passion is exposing Australia’s unfair treatment of men through the relentless weaponisation of laws and policies that portray women solely as victims. Her decades of advocacy for fair treatment of men in the Family Court included serving on key government inquiries. Bettina makes YouTube videos and blogs on Substack.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2026 - 21:45