Fayetteville, Ga. — A major data center campus in Fayette County, Georgia, drew nearly 30 million gallons of water through unmetered connections before the issue surfaced due to complaints of low water pressure from nearby homeowners, county officials said.
The discovery, first reported by Politico, centers on the sprawling 615-acre QTS data center development located about 20 miles south of Atlanta. Quality Technology Services (QTS), owned by Blackstone, operates the site, which is one of the largest data center projects in the United States.
Fayette County investigators found that the campus had been pulling water through two connections the county was unaware of and had not properly billed. As a result, QTS was issued retroactive charges totaling $147,474. County officials estimated the unmetered usage covered roughly four months, while the company maintained the period was between nine and 15 months.
Vanessa Tigert, director of the Fayette County Water System, attributed the oversight to an administrative error that occurred during the county’s transition to smart meters.
“Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” Tigert said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.”
A QTS spokesperson confirmed the company paid the retroactive charges immediately upon notification and said the unmetered usage stemmed from the county’s meter system upgrade.
No fines were issued. County officials emphasized they are maintaining a cooperative relationship with the developer.
The Fayetteville campus currently includes 13 buildings encompassing approximately 6.2 million square feet. It is part of a larger planned development that could eventually include up to 16 buildings.
The incident highlights growing tensions nationwide over the resource demands of data centers. Communities across the U.S. have become increasingly vocal about the strain these facilities place on local water supplies and electrical grids, leading to heightened opposition to new projects.
In a separate but related development, an Indianapolis City-County Council member’s home was shot at in April shortly after he supported rezoning for a data center project. The attack on Ron Gibson came days after a 6–2 vote approving the nearly 14-acre facility in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood.
Nearly every vaccine recipient becomes producer and emitter of the very virus the vaccine is said to target.
A newly published, U.S. government-funded, peer-reviewed study has confirmed that a live attenuated influenza vaccine caused detectable post-vaccination viral shedding in more than 91% of adult recipients, raising major questions about whether vaccinated individuals function as carriers and spreaders of vaccine-derived influenza pathogens after immunization.
The findings, published Thursday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, claim that the purported virus inside the vaccine actively replicated inside recipients after administration and was subsequently shed from the nose in the overwhelming majority of participants.
Researchers from George Washington University evaluated 283 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who received the intranasal live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), FluMist, during the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 flu seasons.
Vaccine Virus Replicated Inside Recipients
According to the FDA insert, FluMist is said to contain live influenza viruses designed to reproduce inside the upper respiratory tract after administration.
The new paper explicitly states:
“LAIV replication begins within 24 hours and declines over the first week…”
Researchers further explained that the virus in the vaccine:
“replicates in the upper respiratory tract, mimicking a natural infection…”
In plain English, the vaccine virus reproduces inside recipients and is expelled back out through the nose afterward.
Researchers collected nasal swabs on day 1, days 2–4, and days 5–7 after vaccination and measured influenza A and B RNA using RT-PCR testing.
91.2% of Participants Shed Detectable Influenza Material
The study found:
“overall, 258 (91.2%) participants had either influenza A or B detected within the first week”
Researchers also reported:
“Influenza A or B RNA was detected in 86.9% of participants on day 1…”
The probability of detection remained measurable for days afterward:
92% on day 1
23% on day 5
9% on day 7
Study Only Looked for 7 Days
Importantly, the researchers stopped monitoring participants after approximately seven days.
That means the study cannot determine:
how many participants continued shedding beyond day 7,
how long shedding ultimately persisted,
or when the slow-clearance group fully stopped shedding vaccine-derived influenza material.
Study Acknowledged Possible Transmission Window
The paper directly acknowledged the possibility of secondary transmission from recently vaccinated individuals.
Researchers wrote:
“…even if secondary transmission were possible, opportunities would be largely restricted to the earliest days following vaccination.”
The authors attempted to limit conclusions about contagiousness by emphasizing that PCR detection alone cannot prove every detected viral particle was infectious.
The study states:
“PCR-based methods cannot specifically discriminate between infectious virions and non-infectious viral nucleic acids.”
However, the study still confirms that recipients of the live-virus flu vaccine were producing and shedding vaccine-derived influenza material after vaccination.
That means recently vaccinated individuals temporarily became emitters of the same influenza material the vaccine is marketed to protect against.
Findings Raise Major Informed Consent Questions for Both Recipients & Their Close Contacts
The findings raise two separate informed consent issues.
First, recipients themselves may not fully understand that a live-virus influenza vaccine can cause active viral replication, respiratory symptoms, and post-vaccination shedding after administration.
Second, people around recently vaccinated individuals are generally not informed that they may be exposed to someone actively shedding vaccine-derived influenza material during the days following vaccination.
FDA Insert Confirms FluMist Uses Lab-Created Chimeric Influenza Viruses That Can Shed for Up to 28 Days
The FDA prescribing insert for FluMist Quadrivalent confirms that the vaccine contains live laboratory-created reassortant (chimeric) influenza viruses capable of infecting recipients, replicating inside the respiratory tract, and shedding afterward for up to 28 days in clinical studies.
The insert explains that the vaccine viruses are not purpordedly naturally occurring influenza strains.
They are genetically assembled reassortant viruses created by combining genetic material from multiple influenza viruses.
According to the FDA insert:
“For each of the four reassortant strains in FluMist Quadrivalent, the six internal gene segments responsible for ca, ts, and att phenotypes are derived from a master donor virus (MDV), and the two segments that encode the two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), are derived from the corresponding antigenically relevant wild-type influenza viruses.”
In other words, the vaccine viruses are hybridized influenza constructs containing:
internal genes from a laboratory master donor virus,
combined with surface genes from circulating wild-type influenza strains.
The insert also directly confirms these reassortant vaccine viruses are live and capable of replication inside recipients.
The FDA states:
“FluMist and FluMist Quadrivalent contain live attenuated influenza viruses that must infect and replicate in cells lining the nasopharynx of the recipient to induce immunity.”
The insert further confirms shedding:
“Vaccine viruses capable of infection and replication can be cultured from nasal secretions obtained from vaccine recipients (shedding)”
Unlike PCR-only detection, the FDA shedding studies involved culturing live vaccine virus from recipients after vaccination.
The insert states:
“Shedding of vaccine viruses within 28 days of vaccination with FluMist was evaluated…”
According to the FDA’s own data, the latest positive viral cultures observed in different age groups occurred on:
Day 23
Day 25
Day 28
For individuals ages 18–49, the last positive culture occurred on day 17.
The insert additionally confirms documented transmission of a vaccine-derived influenza strain to an unvaccinated placebo recipient during a daycare transmission study.
According to the FDA:
“One placebo subject had mild symptomatic Type B virus infection confirmed as a transmitted vaccine virus…”
The FDA insert therefore confirms that FluMist contains live reassortant influenza viruses engineered from multiple viral sources, that these vaccine viruses can infect and replicate inside recipients, and that shedding of culturable live vaccine virus was documented for as long as 28 days after vaccination in clinical studies.
Bottom Line
This U.S. government-funded peer-reviewed study, combined with the FDA’s own prescribing insert, confirms that FluMist recipients are being inoculated with live laboratory-created reassortant influenza viruses that actively infect the respiratory tract, replicate inside the body, and are subsequently shed back out into the environment after vaccination.
The findings establish that, even under the mainstream virological model, vaccinated individuals can temporarily become producers, carriers, and emitters of vaccine-derived influenza pathogens after immunization—with FDA documents confirming shedding of culturable live vaccine virus for as long as 28 days and even documenting transmission of a vaccine-derived strain to an unvaccinated placebo recipient in a clinical study.
The revelations also raise major informed consent questions, not only for vaccine recipients themselves, but for family members, coworkers, immunocompromised individuals, infants, the elderly, and others who are generally never informed they may be exposed to recently vaccinated individuals actively shedding live vaccine-derived influenza virus afterward.
The US is now investigating the same Ukrainian biolabs it once wrote off as a conspiracy theory
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has confirmed that her team is investigating more than 40 US-funded pathogen laboratories in Ukraine. Here’s what you need to know about the story that was written off as “Kremlin propaganda” in 2022.
In a statement to the New York Post on Tuesday, Gabbard said that her department had identified more than 120 biological laboratories in 30 countries that had been funded by the US taxpayer for decades. More than a third of these labs are located in Ukraine.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is going “to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world,” Gabbard said.
Gain of function research refers to the modification of animal viruses to increase their transmissibility in order to study their effect on humans. The ODNI is currently investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus, which Gabbard and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. maintain was created in a US-funded biolab in Wuhan, China.
Gabbard’s confirmation of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine vindicates claims made by the Russian military in the early days of the Ukraine conflict – claims that were dismissed by then-President Joe Biden’s administration as “outright lies.”
What did Russia say about biolabs in Ukraine?
As Russian troops entered Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Zelensky’s government in Kiev ordered the “emergency destruction” of dangerous pathogens at multiple US-funded laboratories in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on March 6 of that year.
The ministry claimed that Kiev ordered the destruction of the samples in order to hide its role in an American biological warfare program. Documents released by the ministry included an order from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health to destroy the pathogens, which included “plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.”
Many of these laboratories were set up following the US-orchestrated ‘Maidan’ coup in 2014, and were run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) – the largest biomedical research facility administered by the US military, according to the ministry.
After reviewing thousands of pages of documents seized from labs in Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces concluded in 2023 that “the US, under the guise of ensuring global biosecurity, conducted dual-use research, including the creation of biological weapons components, in close proximity to Russian borders.” Kirillov led Russia’s investigation into the labs until he was assassinated in 2024, allegedly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
How did the US respond?
Former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a notorious Russia hawk, admitted under oath on March 8 that “Ukraine has biological research facilities,” which the US was helping to secure. Nuland, a driving force behind the Maidan coup, did not mention that the labs were American-run and funded.
“The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere”
Washington went into full biolab denial mode the following day. “This is preposterous,” then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki wrote on social media on March 9 (she hosts one of MSNow’s most popular shows). “It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine.”
In a statement that same day, the US State Department said that “the Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine.”
However, another partial admission came from then-Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on March 10. Whereas Nuland claimed that the US was not involved in running any Ukrainian biolabs, Haines told lawmakers that “the US government provides assistance, or at least has in the past provided assistance, really in the context of biosafety, which is something that we’ve done globally with a variety of different countries.”
Nevertheless, the official policy from the White House remained one of denial. “There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States,” Biden’s ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council on March 11.
In a press conference on March 21, Biden claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “back is against the wall,” and Moscow’s claims that “we, in America, have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe” are “simply not true.”
The US media largely toed this line. In the weeks following these statements, the New York Times described Russia’s story as a “baseless theory,” NPR referred to it as “a lurid and difficult to believe claim,” and The Guardian, CBS News, Bloomberg, and others all called it a “conspiracy theory.” Even on March 14, days after Nuland and Haines confirmed the labs’ existence, MSNBC ran a story on how “Ukraine’s non-existent biolabs” were a creation of “Russian propaganda.”
Were the labs making bioweapons?
Nuland and Haines admitted that the labs existed, but insisted that they carried out legitimate research. However, the line between legitimate gain-of-function research and the creation of bioweapons is blurred. Enhancing the transmissibility and lethality of viruses allows vaccines to be created, but also leaves scientists with potent pathogens that can easily be weaponized.
The Pentagon said in late 2022 that its biological research in Ukraine “focused on improving public health and agricultural safety.”
One year later, Kennedy Jr. told US journalist Tucker Carlson that this was merely a cover story, and that “we have biolabs in Ukraine because we’re developing bioweapons.”
Kennedy claimed that these facilities were creating “frightening stuff,” including genetically-engineered pathogens created with CRISPR DNA sequencing technology. This research used to be carried out in the US, but was moved abroad after some “bugs” escaped from American labs in 2014. “A lot of them went to Ukraine,” he added.
The DTRA’s biological research in Ukraine was paused in 2022, but resumed in 2023, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The program, which was previously known as ‘Joint Biological Research’, was rebranded as ‘Biological Control Research’ for the relaunch, according to documents released by the ministry.
Where are the rest of the US’ biolabs located?
After the collapse of the USSR, the US moved to install biolabs in former Soviet states including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Set up under the auspices of preventing bioterrorism and the proliferation of biological and chemical weapon technologies, little is known about this network of laboratories surrounding Russia.
As RT reported, whistleblowers in Georgia have alleged that the laboratories in that country worked on plague, tularemia, brucellosis, and various hemorrhagic fevers, and people living near one lab in Tbilisi have claimed that some of these bugs have escaped and infected locals.
In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, the US has transferred much of its biological research to Africa, the Russian Defense Ministry has alleged. According to documents published by the ministry in 2024, laboratories have been set up in 18 countries, with some Pentagon-funded facilities studying deadly pathogens such as Ebola, and carrying out pharmaceutical trials on locals.
Russia has long raised concerns about Pentagon-backed biological laboratories in Ukraine and elsewhere, suggesting they are involved in military research
The US has launched a probe into more than 120 American-funded biological labs abroad, including in Ukraine, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the New York Post on Monday.
Russia has consistently raised concerns about Pentagon-backed biological labs worldwide, particularly near its borders and in Ukraine, alleging that they are involved in bioweapons research.
Gabbard said that the move aims to halt risky virus experiments and follows President Donald Trump’s order restricting federal funding for “gain-of-function” research – studies that examine how viruses replicate and interact with human cells to increase their transmissibility.
“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard said. “Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the [former President Joe] Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of these US-funded and supported biolabs and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”
She was referring to former White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci, whom critics accuse of downplaying the theory that COVID-19 originated from a leak in a Chinese lab that had received US funding.
Gabbard said that her team will “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted” to end “dangerous gain-of-function research.” Officials from her office confirmed that the labs are in over 30 countries, including Ukraine, which allegedly hosts in excess of 40, with several funded through Pentagon programs.
The Pentagon, and other US agencies, previously backed labs worldwide via the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). While the Biden administration denied running “chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine,” then-Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland acknowledged in 2022 that “biological research facilities” exist there. Washington has since confirmed supporting biological research facilities in Ukraine and elsewhere, but maintained that the work was aimed at preventing disease outbreaks and developing vaccines, not for military purposes. Russia and China, however, have repeatedly warned that the work may have a military dimension.
Moscow has long accused Ukraine of hosting Western-backed biolabs tied to weapons research, citing documents it alleges were obtained from Kiev. Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Russia’s late top WMD official, stated in 2023 that the US was conducting dual-use research “including the creation of biological weapons components” near Russian borders. He was killed in 2024, in an attack believed to have been ordered by Kiev. In March 2025, Vladimir Tarabrin, who is Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said that the US still operated biolabs in Ukraine.
Gabbard had raised concerns about biolabs in Ukraine even before becoming intelligence chief. In 2022, she was accused of spreading “treasonous lies” and being a Russian asset after warning that dozens of US-funded labs in Ukraine could release dangerous pathogens if they were compromised.
File photo shows a hearing session at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands. (Photo from PCA website)
Press TV
Iran has filed a complaint against the United States at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), demanding compensation for damage inflicted on the country during the June 2025 war of aggression.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said in a Tuesday report that the Iranian complaint at the Hague-based PCA was filed in February.
The report said the complaint accuses the US of violating the 1981 Algiers Accords, in which Washington committed to refraining from interfering in Iran’s internal affairs, whether directly or indirectly, politically or militarily.
It said Iran has demanded reparation from the United States over its imposition of sanctions, its attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and its use of threats.
The complaint also calls on the PCA to force the US to immediately cease its direct and indirect interventions in Iran, provide guarantees that it will not repeat those actions, and pay full compensation for the damage caused to the country by its military and non-military actions, Tasnim said.
It said the complaint only demands compensation for the damage caused to Iran during the 12-day Israeli war of aggression in June 2025, in which the US participated.
The United States contributed to the Israeli attacks on Iran by providing intelligence and military support to the regime.
Washington also carried out a midnight attack on Iran’s nuclear installations on June 22, 2025, causing considerable damage to underground facilities in central parts of the country.
The report did not mention whether Iran may take a separate legal action against the US for the damage inflicted during the recent war of aggression that began in late February and was halted as part of a ceasefire on April 8.
The story of this substance is like ivermectin all over again… except the war against it never stopped.
The following information is based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details have been streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.
A medical substance most people have never heard of is quietly treating autoimmune disease, nerve injury, and even conditions doctors say are “untreatable.”
But those conditions are not untreatable — and DMSO is proving it.
Dr. James Miller says DMSO works so well for so many things that it “seems unbelievable.”
Here’s what it’s helping patients recover from:
• Autoimmune disorders
• Chronic nerve inflammation
• Diabetic neuropathy
• Stroke-related disability
• Debilitating arthritis
• Vaccine injuries
• Chronic pain
• Even cancer
Best of all, it is “extremely safe.”
“It’s like salt—you can hurt someone with too much salt, but it’s really hard. And DMSO is in that category. It’s just very, very safe,” Dr. Miller says.
If you’re wondering, “Why have I never heard of DMSO?” — there’s a reason for that.
The story of DMSO is like ivermectin all over again… except the war against it never stopped.
DMSO occupies a strange and uncomfortable position.
It’s been widely studied, used internationally, and even incorporated into FDA-approved therapies.
Yet in the U.S., it’s largely absent from mainstream medicine—meaning countless patients never even hear about an affordable and potentially effective option that should have been considered.
And that absence isn’t neutral.
When something effective is missing from the system, there’s often a big reason.
Patients aren’t just “missing out” on it.
Instead, they’re funneled into more expensive, more aggressive, and sometimes riskier and less effective treatments—without ever knowing there was another path.
The obvious explanation for withholding a treatment would be safety concerns or lack of evidence.
But when you actually look into it, that explanation doesn’t hold. Not even close.
The DMSO literature exists—not in small amounts, but in overwhelming volume.
And the real issue starts to look less like science and more like incentive structures you find in the business world.
Unfortunately, a simple online search for DMSO doesn’t give you clarity. It gives you fragmentation.
Different spellings.
Different indexing systems.
Different databases with partial visibility.
And no single place where it all comes together.
Which means, in practice, most clinicians never see the full picture. And that means patients never get the option.
To actually understand all that the literature has to offer, you’d have to run every variation of the term across multiple databases, extract each relevant study manually, compile them into a master document, and then sort them by condition—often after reviewing tens of thousands of results per database.
That’s a lot.
And even if you do all that work, there’s still a problem.
Because even after reviewing tens of thousands of results, key studies are still missed—either buried in obscure databases, indexed under unexpected terms, or filtered out by imperfect search systems.
Not as a replacement for research, but as a way to process on a scale that we humans simply can’t handle on our own.
AI can summarize long papers, extract key findings, and help navigate massive datasets—in minutes.
Without that capability, reviewing millions of pages of research wouldn’t just be difficult—it would be practically impossible.
It’s a productivity boost, but the limitations show up just as quickly.
AI struggles with filtering large datasets accurately, often swinging between two failure modes: missing relevant studies entirely or flagging an overwhelming number of irrelevant ones, with sensitivity and specificity varying significantly depending on the model used.
It also breaks down when asked to handle multi-step reasoning tasks.
If you give it a sequence of steps instead of a clearly defined task, errors start creeping in—and those errors aren’t always obvious.
Which creates a paradox.
AI can dramatically accelerate research, but only if the person using it already understands the process well enough to catch its mistakes.
Otherwise, you’re just scaling confusion faster.
And this is where this conversation shifts beyond just medicine.
The real impact of AI isn’t just what it can do. It’s what it allows systems of power to do at scale.
For most of history, control had a natural limitation.
Manpower.
You could enforce compliance on a small group, maybe even a large one—but scaling that control across an entire population was extremely difficult. So it didn’t really happen.
And there’s a reason for that.
Only a small percentage of a population—typically estimated around 5–10%—can realistically function as enforcement before the system collapses under its own economic and logistical weight.
AI just so happens to remove that constraint.
Instead of requiring large numbers of people, a relatively small group can now oversee systems that continuously monitor behavior, filter information flows, flag non-compliance, and algorithmically influence decisions across entire populations in real time.
Yikes.
That’s a structural shift humanity has never dealt with before.
Because the limiting factor isn’t human capacity anymore.
It’s computational infrastructure.
And we’re already seeing early versions of this.
Algorithmic systems shaping what people see, what they believe, and how they behave—often without them realizing it’s happening.
At the same time, AI is changing warfare—fast.
Reducing the need for soldiers, enabling remote operations through drones and automated systems, and allowing decisions that affect life and death to be executed at a distance—with minimal direct human involvement in the consequences.
That distance matters.
Because historically, the worst atrocities tend to happen when decision-makers are disconnected from the act itself.
AI has the potential to amplify that dynamic significantly.
Meanwhile, something concerning is happening in the background.
Information itself is becoming harder to access—not because it’s gone, but because it’s no longer easy to find.
The full breakdown from A Midwestern Doctor walks through exactly how to get around this.
Specific databases, search techniques, and sources that still contain material you won’t see on standard platforms.
That’s where a lot of the missing pieces still exist.
And as access to information becomes more complex, something else is changing as well.
Human cognition.
How people think, learn, and process information in the first place is actually changing. Right now.
Studies are clearly showing that individuals who rely heavily on AI tools exhibit significantly reduced activation in key brain regions tied to memory, creativity, and executive function—sometimes by more than 50%, with declines worsening over time as reliance increases.
Even if you don’t use AI yourself, that’s something to be concerned about.
What’s more concerning is what happens over time.
As reliance increases, creativity declines, recall weakens, and individuals become less capable of producing original thought—often struggling to remember or even explain work they previously generated with AI assistance.
If it hasn’t already, that’s going to create a huge divide.
Those who use AI as a tool—while maintaining their cognitive independence—gain massive leverage.
And those who rely on it to think for them gradually lose the very skills that protect them from manipulation.
Where do you fall?
The full report from A Midwestern Doctor goes even deeper into what’s happening and where it may lead.
How AI systems subtly shape user behavior over time—and why most people won’t recognize it until the effects are already baked in.
So the real transformation isn’t just technological.
It’s cognitive.
It’s reshaping how people process information, solve problems, and even form independent conclusions in ways that are difficult to detect and even harder to reverse.
Which leads us to a much bigger question.
It’s not what AI can do for us.
It’s what happens when we stop doing those things ourselves.
Thanks for reading! This information was based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details were streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.
While you’re at it, give A Midwestern Doctor a follow. No one brings more research, clinical insight, or historical context when it comes to exposing the health myths we’ve all been fed. This is easily one of the most valuable accounts you’ll ever follow.
A New York Times op-ed argues voters are turned off by climate messaging after decades of failed predictions
For almost the entirety of the half century I have lived on Earth, I have had experts, teachers, politicians and activists hectoring me about how climate change is going to destroy the planet. But this week, in The New York Times, of all places, is evidence that climate alarmism is finally cooling down.
“Democrats Do Not Have To Campaign On Climate Change Anymore,” blared the headline, this week, as author Matt Huber argues that voters are rather turned off by the subject. I would like to suggest that this is because it is the single most expensive lie in human history.
In elementary school, I endured warnings of a coming ice age, then by high school it was global warming that was minutes away from ending humanity. By the time I was an adult, the warming having failed, surprisingly, to occur, we settled on “climate change,” as the vague name for the inevitable apocalypse.
In 2018, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was coming into prominence, she told us that we had a mere 12 years to fix the climate problem or we would all die. In that time, untold trillions of dollars have been spent by the government, along with basically every business in the country, to hold the weather at bay, even though every prediction the alarmists have made has fallen flat.
It’s not just the expense of climate alarmism, it’s what it has kept us from doing, as well. How much would a gallon of gas cost today had we been drilling for oil instead of pretending the “emergency” meant we all had to switch to electric cars by next Tuesday?
With precious few exceptions, every single thing in our lives has been made much more expensive by the cult of climate and its constant lamentations about the end of days. Entire generations of our youth have been terrorized, just as their parents were by nuclear bomb drills, into thinking they may be the last human beings to ever live.
We have all seen the reports of young adults who say they don’t want to have kids because they expect the world to end. It’s ridiculous. Travel sports might be a plausible reason to avoid having children, but climate change is not.
Now, finally, after 50 years of hysteria, The New York Times, the very Grey Lady with her hair on fire over climate change this whole time, tells us it’s not such a big deal after all?
Even Greta Thunberg, whose entire existence, it seemed, was predicated upon berating us for destroying the planet, has moved on to radical Islam, and traded in her Birkenstocks for a keffeyah.
Say what you will, but as an apocalyptic hoax, climate alarmism has had an absolutely historic run. Overpopulation nonsense had a few years in the 60s, but nothing compared to the decades of pure insanity that we have lived through thanks to Al Gore’s unhinged predictions.
Everyone wants to be a good steward of Mother Nature. Littering is bad and all that, but performative nonsense like paper straws that melt in your cocktail or cars that shut themselves off every 10 seconds are meaningless gestures.
Expensive meaningless gestures.
The climate debate has always hinged to some degree on whether our greatest love should be for nature writ large, or for humanity, because we know that cheap energy is the doorway out of poverty, but also poison to the climate alarmists.
This battle became religious for the secular Left, with taxes instead of tithing and environmentalist slogans instead of prayers. It wasn’t just a scientific issue, but a moral one. If you failed to join in the hysteria, then you were a bad person.
Nothing about American climate policy or attitudes towards it have ever made any sense. We tighten our belts and pay through the nose to keep our emissions low while the rest of the world basically fires huge carbon dioxide cannons up into the sky.
For once, I agree with The New York Times. It is time for this madness to end. We do not need to saddle our children with the emotional and economic damage of make-believe climate disasters.
In the wake of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran and the subsequent maritime banditry and piracy, the Islamic Republic is reportedly moving to assert its long-dormant sovereign rights over the submarine internet cables that traverse the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.
This strategic reorientation – as confirmed by some reports – promises to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue while fundamentally reshaping the legal and economic architecture of global data transmission.
The unprovoked military aggression against Iran, which halted with a ceasefire on April 8, 2026, has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus of the Persian Gulf.
During the 40 days of aggression against Iran, a previously overlooked dimension of the country’s sovereign territory emerged as a critical vulnerability for the global digital economy.
Beneath the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s territorial sea extends 12 nautical miles and overlaps completely with Omani jurisdiction, leaving no high seas whatsoever, lie at least five major submarine fibre-optic cable systems.
These cables carry approximately 99 percent of all intercontinental internet traffic and an estimated 10 trillion US dollars in daily financial transactions.
Now, in the aftermath of the aggression, which came in the middle of nuclear talks, Iran is moving to exercise its full and legal sovereign authority over this hidden infrastructure.
The plan is increasingly centered on a comprehensive governance model that would include permit requirements, transit fees, Iranian legal jurisdiction over foreign technology companies, and exclusive Iranian control over cable maintenance and repair operations.
Forgotten dimension of the Strait of Hormuz
For decades, international discourse surrounding the Strait of Hormuz focused almost exclusively on traditional dimensions: freedom of navigation for oil tankers, security of energy flows, and the legal regime governing the passage of commercial and military vessels.
This narrow framing, however, systematically ignored one of the most vital emerging dimensions of this strategic corridor: the fibre-optic communication infrastructure and submarine data transmission cables that lie on the seabed of Iran’s territorial waters.
These cables, which include major systems such as FALCON (owned by Tata Communications of India), the Gulf Bridge International (GBI) system, and the TGN-Gulf system, form the backbone of the digital economy, not just for the Persian Gulf region but the entire world.
They carry international internet traffic, cloud data centre synchronization, enterprise virtual private networks, voice-over-IP communications, and – most critically – international banking and financial transactions, including SWIFT messages.
Any disruption to these communication highways, whether from natural disasters, ship anchoring, or military action, could cause irreparable damage to the tune of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars daily.
What makes this issue particularly significant for Iran is the undisputed legal reality that the Strait of Hormuz is not, and has never been, international waters.
The careful repetition of the phrase “international waters” by Western media and think tanks is part of a cognitive and legal battle designed to diminish the legitimate sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran over one of the world’s most vital waterways.
Map of the northern Indian Ocean with submarine cables
Why is the Strait Iranian territory
The legal status of the Strait of Hormuz must be understood through the precise geometry of international maritime law.
According to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, each coastal state has the right to determine the width of its territorial sea up to a maximum distance of 12 nautical miles from its baselines.
Iran has never ratified this convention, but it serves as a reference point for international practice. Within these 12 miles, the coastal state exercises absolute sovereignty over the water column, the seabed, the subsoil, and even the airspace above.
This is exactly the same sovereignty it exercises over the territory of its capital city.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has determined the width of its territorial sea in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to be 12 nautical miles. The Kingdom of Oman has adopted exactly the same procedure.
The Strait of Hormuz, at its narrowest point between Iranian islands and the Omani coast, measures approximately 21 nautical miles in width.
When Iran extends its territorial sea 12 nautical miles southward from its northern coast, and Oman extends its territorial sea 12 nautical miles northward from the Musandam Peninsula, the combined territorial waters of the two countries total 24 nautical miles.
This exceeds the total width of the strait at that point by three nautical miles.
The result is geometrically inevitable: the territorial seas of Iran and Oman collide and overlap in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz.
There is not a single drop of water in the narrowest points of the strait and its main shipping channels that can be legally classified as high seas or even as an exclusive economic zone.
Any vessel, submarine, or cable that passes through this point is legally passing within the sovereign borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
To this geometric reality must be added the clarifying force of Article 34 of the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
That article states definitively that the regime of passage through straits used for international navigation does not in any way affect the legal status of the waters forming these straits.
Nor does it affect the exercise of sovereignty and jurisdiction by the bordering states over those waters, their airspace, their bed, and their subsoil.
The international community possesses only the right of passage through these waters under the rules set by Iran. This right of passage is limited to the rapid and continuous movement of ships and aircraft.
It does not extend to the laying of fixed infrastructure such as internet cables or energy pipelines on the seabed.
Sovereignty over the seabed, for laying communication cables, energy pipelines, and conducting research, remains entirely the exclusive preserve of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Value of what passes through Iranian waters
The economic significance of the cables transiting the Strait of Hormuz is staggering.
According to data from the TeleGeography database updated to January 2026, the main cable systems crossing the strait form a complex network connecting the Persian Gulf countries to the global network spanning Europe, India, and East Asia.
These systems carry not only public internet traffic but also the most sensitive and valuable data streams in the global economy.
Global content providers known as hyperscalers, companies including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, use these fibre-optic cables to connect their local nodes to the core of their global networks.
The traffic these companies carry consists primarily of cloud data centre synchronization, including real-time copies of distributed databases, virtual machine migrations, internal application programming interface traffic, and user-generated content.
In cloud computing architecture, maintaining stability and reliability at the level of 99.999 percent uptime, known as the “five nines” standard, is a mandatory requirement in service level agreements.
Rather than purchasing small amounts of bandwidth, these companies lease long-term dark capacity or purchase irrevocable rights to use submarine cables for periods of 15 to 25 years, keeping network latency in the millisecond range.
Level 1 and Level 2 telecommunications operators, including Etisalat of the UAE, Ooredoo of Qatar and Oman, the Telecommunications Infrastructure Company of Iran, and STC of Saudi Arabia, are responsible for transporting international internet traffic.
This traffic includes Border Gateway Protocol routing information, enterprise virtual private networks, international mobile roaming traffic, and network-based voice packets.
These operators are the gateway to the internet for the countries of the region, receiving terabits per second of capacity from the submarine cables in the Strait of Hormuz and then distributing it to smaller operators and end users.
These cables form the backbone of the digital economy of the Persian Gulf countries, creating a near-total dependence on connectivity to the global network.
Most critically, global financial institutions and content distribution networks, including Akamai, Cloudflare, and the SWIFT financial messaging network, depend on these cables.
Bank settlement messages and high-frequency transactions require dedicated, encrypted, low-latency paths with minimal signal variability.
In global stock market trading, a delay of even one millisecond can result in millions of dollars in losses. Submarine cables are the safest, fastest, and most reliable physical medium for transporting these sensitive intercontinental financial transactions.
According to analytical reports from British think tanks and transaction data from international payment networks, including SWIFT and the Central Interbank Dollar Payments System CHIPS, submarine cables carry more than 10 trillion US dollars in financial transactions every single day.
This colossal figure represents bank settlements, stock market transactions, foreign exchange operations, and all financial activities that form the lifeblood of the global economy.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development confirms in its annual Digital Economy Reports that more than 99 percent of all international data traffic is transmitted through this cable network.
At the regional level, the West Asia international broadband market, for which the Strait of Hormuz serves as the main thoroughfare, is worth several billion dollars annually.
This value derives from the bulk sale of capacity by cable owners such as FALCON, GBI, and TGN-Gulf to national telecommunications operators.
The damage caused by a disruption or complete outage at this strategic bottleneck, however, is far larger than the direct revenues of this market.
Modelling based on studies of transatlantic cable outages estimates that a five-day disruption of cables through the Strait of Hormuz could inflict tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in damage daily to the combined economies of the Persian Gulf countries.
Map of the Persian Gulf and nearby seas with submarine cables
Failure of alternatives
In response to Iran’s assertion of its sovereign rights, some Western analysts have suggested that alternative routes or technologies could bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
The technical reality, however, offers no fast and reliable alternative.
Next-generation low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations such as Starlink offer lower latency than fibre-optic cables for very long distances, because lasers in space travel at actual light speed while light in glass fibres travels at roughly two-thirds of that speed.
However, while a single submarine cable can carry terabits of data per second, an entire satellite constellation offers bandwidth measured in gigabits.
Satellites cannot yet handle the massive bandwidth demands of artificial intelligence training, high-definition streaming for millions of users, or cloud backups. They are, in the assessment of industry experts, a boutique solution not scalable to millions of users.
Terrestrial overland corridors represent the most practical alternative, with massive land cables running through Iraq to Turkey or through Syria to the Mediterranean.
Ambitious projects such as Saudi Arabia’s SilkLink and Qatar’s FiG are underway. However, these routes must cross war-torn regions, including Syria and Iraq, where West-backed wars have previously destroyed similar infrastructure and where local militias and unstable governments remain capable of seizure, taxation, or sabotage.
These are not peaceful alternatives; they merely exchange one set of vulnerabilities for another. Free-space optical systems using lasers transmitted through air or vacuum are not a solution for the Strait of Hormuz at all.
Such systems are extremely susceptible to weather interference, including the fog and sandstorms common to the Persian Gulf, and have a limited range of less than 50 kilometres.
The verdict is clear: there exists no single alternative that is simultaneously fast, high-capacity, and secure. The Strait of Hormuz remains an irreplaceable chokepoint for global digital communications.
Repairing submarine communication cables
Repair regime and Iran’s essential role
The maintenance and repair of submarine cables in the Strait of Hormuz present another dimension of Iran’s sovereign authority.
According to International Cable Protection Committee technical documents and performance reports, the repair process for a complete cable cut follows a well-established sequence: fault location using optical time-domain reflectometer tools, application for navigation permits under international law, and dispatch of a cable repair ship.
The process of dispatching a ship, retrieving the two ends of the cable from the seabed, performing the reconnection, and returning the cable to the seabed typically requires between 7 and 30 days, depending on weather conditions and the availability of repair vessels.
In the Strait of Hormuz specifically, the exceptionally high volume of maritime traffic requires intensive traffic coordination during cable laying and repair operations.
Under normal conditions with full cooperation from the countries exercising sovereignty over the strait, the repair process would be expected to take up to 45 days.
During the recent joint US-Israeli aggression, however, major cable installation contractors, including Alcatel Submarine Networks, declared force majeure on Persian Gulf operations, halting both new installations and maintenance of existing systems.
Billions of dollars’ worth of cable projects were suspended or abandoned, with some reportedly 90 percent complete before work stopped.
Given that the Strait of Hormuz lies entirely within Iranian territorial waters, the logical conclusion is inescapable: the user companies whose cables transit Iranian sovereign territory must conclude contracts for cable repair and maintenance exclusively with Iranian companies, specifically companies owned more than 50 percent by Iranian entities and operating entirely under the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This is not a matter of political choice but of legal necessity arising from the undisputed fact that foreign vessels, including cable repair ships, cannot operate in Iranian territorial waters without Iranian permission.
Sketch of a submarine communication cable
Global recognition of the new reality
The world media has taken notice of Iran’s digital sovereignty initiative. Indian media outlets, including ABP Live and the Economic Times, have warned that a significant portion of India’s internet passes through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and that any disruption to these routes could disrupt online services, digital banking, and communications, pressuring the digital economy of countries, including India.
Russian media outlet AIA Daily reported that Iran has effectively conveyed the message that it possesses physical access to vital routes of the global internet, emphasizing that at least seven major internet cables pass through the Strait of Hormuz and serve as the backbone of e-commerce, cloud services, and international communications.
Asian media, including Korea’s Asia Business Daily and the English-language Asia Times, have described the Strait of Hormuz as one of the world’s most important internet bottlenecks.
Asia Times wrote that data infrastructure and fibre-optic cables have become part of the deterrence equation in the region, warning that an attack on cables could disrupt the global economy without firing a missile, and that future wars may take place on the seabed and over data cables rather than traditional battlefields.
Western media have also acknowledged the vulnerability. Reuters reported in a piece that Iran’s warning about the vulnerability of undersea cables has raised concerns, emphasizing that several important fibre-optic cables lie in the Strait of Hormuz connecting countries in Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Europe, and that any damage in this area would disrupt cloud services, online communications, and the digital economy.
The Washington Post warned that submarine cables have become one of the most vulnerable parts of the world’s digital economy, with Western governments concerned that undersea cables could be used as a tool of strategic pressure.
The French newspaper Le Monde wrote that the joint US-Israeli aggression against Iran has placed infrastructure, including submarine cables, data centres, and cloud computing networks under the simultaneous pressure of geopolitical and security crises.
Three practical steps
Based on the legal, technical, and economic factors, the Islamic Republic of Iran can implement three practical steps to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue from the Strait of Hormuz internet cables while exercising its full sovereign rights.
First, all companies wishing to use this infrastructure must obtain an initial license from Iranian authorities, and because this license must be renewed annually, these companies must pay all outstanding amounts on a recurring basis.
The fee model can draw from international precedents, including the Egyptian model based on providing exclusive services, the Singaporean model based on policy-making and administrative licensing, the Indonesian bureaucratic model based on permits and corridors, and the Russian model based on strategic control and state participation.
Egypt, for example, earns between 250 million and 400 million US dollars annually from submarine cable infrastructure alone, representing 15 to 20 percent of the Egyptian Telecommunications Company’s total operating revenues.
Second, all cross-border communications and information technology companies operating in the region, including US companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft that transfer Iranian user data abroad through these cables, must be subject to the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran and supervised and regulated by the Iranian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
With the official activities of these companies and their cooperation with the Iranian side, there would no longer be any need for filtering or blocking of their platforms.
Third, because the Strait of Hormuz is entirely part of Iranian territory, the user companies must conclude contracts for cable repair and maintenance exclusively with an Iranian company, meaning a company owned more than 50 percent by the Iranian side and operating fully under the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The proceeds from this entire framework will flow to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, specifically to the Fibre-Optic Development Fund, and will be used to create and improve the country’s information technology infrastructure.
This file picture shows passenger planes parked at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, the Israeli-occupied territories.
Press TV
The chief of Israel’s civil aviation has warned that Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv has effectively turned into a “US military base,” disrupting civilian flights and threatening Israeli airlines.
According to the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth daily newspaper, Shmuel Zakay told Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev and ministry Director General Moshe Ben Zaken on Monday that military activity at Israel’s main international airport is delaying the return of foreign carriers, and increasing ticket prices ahead of the summer tourism season.
“Turning Ben Gurion International Airport into a military base harms the return of foreign airlines and threatens the financial stability of Israeli airlines,” Zakay said.
He added that Iranian retaliatory operations to the US-Israeli airstrikes against the Islamic Republic significantly affected civilian air traffic in the occupied territories, with Israeli airlines relocating many aircraft abroad, some of which have not yet returned.
Zakay said the Israeli military apparatus does not fully understand the damage caused to civilian aviation or the impact on ticket prices and the public.
“Ben Gurion Airport has become a military base with limited civilian activity,” he said.
Zakay also warned that the situation poses “a real threat” to smaller Israeli carriers, including Israir, Arkia, and Air Haifa, because of rising operating and fuel costs and growing demands for flights.
He called for moving US aircraft from Ben Gurion Airport to military bases, saying the current situation harms not only airlines but also all Israeli settlers.
The Yedioth Ahronoth also quoted Israir CEO Uri Sirkis as saying during a meeting of the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee that the airline, which usually parks 17 aircraft at Ben Gurion Airport, is now permitted to keep only four there overnight.
He said the restrictions are pushing up airfare prices and limiting the number of flights Israeli airlines can operate.
In recent weeks, Israeli media outlets published images showing dozens of US military aircraft, including refueling planes, stationed at the airport amid continued US military support for Israel.
Israel’s Channel 24 reported on Thursday that hundreds of settlers received notices of canceled hotel reservations in the southern resort city of Eilat to accommodate US troops.
The channel said hotels informed guests that reservations from this month through November, including the summer vacation season, had been canceled.
Israeli media have also reported recently that Israel raised its military alert level in preparation for a possible resumption of war with Iran in case indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington fail.
US President Donald Trump has grown “increasingly frustrated” with Cuba and its ability to withstand months of US pressure, and is considering waging an act of aggression against the Caribbean country, according to a report.
NBC News reported on Monday that American officials have told Trump that the government of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel “could still fall by the end of the year” without military action, but the US president is not willing to wait that long.
Trump’s impatience, the report added, has prompted the Pentagon to ramp up planning for a possible attack against the island country.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Cuban government had rejected $100 million in humanitarian aid offered by Washington.
He also called it “an unacceptable status quo” that the US has, “90 miles from our shores, a failed state that also happens to be friendly territory for some of our adversaries.”
For more than six decades, Cuba has been subject to increased inhumane US sanctions in flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.
The Trump administration has intensified the campaign of pressure against Cuba since January, when the US kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro following an illegal military assault.
In February, the US president imposed an oil blockade on Cuba, while also repeatedly hinting at a possible “regime change” operation against the Latin American state.
Last month, the Cuban president told NBC News that he is willing to sacrifice his life for his homeland.
“If the time comes, I don’t think there would be any justification for the United States to launch a military aggression against Cuba, or for the US to undertake a surgical operation, like the kidnapping of a president,” Díaz-Canel said, referring to the abduction of Maduro.
“If that happens, there will be fighting and there will be a struggle. And we’ll defend ourselves. And if we need to die, we’ll die, because as our national anthem says, ‘Dying for the homeland is to live.’”
The Trump administration is looking for a face-saving way to escape the Iran war quagmire it has become trapped in.
Earlier, Trump said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” in reference to the illegal US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, which began on February 28 and stopped under a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire on April 8.
The Most Revolutionary Act 