All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars: Iran and the Bankers’ Endgame

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Image: Lloyd’s building (CC BY 2.5)

Ellen Brown

Oct 14, 2026

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”  —Prof. Caroll Quigley, Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope (1966)

[…]

The thesis that “All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars” was popularized by Michael Rivero in a 2013 documentary by that name. His accompanying article begins with a quote from Aristotle (384-322 BCE):

The most hated sort [of moneymaking], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural use of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.

Rivero then traces how private banking interests have financed and profited from conflicts on both sides for centuries — from the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 to fund William III’s wars to modern regime-change wars.

 

Full-Spectrum Financial Dominance

Other commentators point to the report of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (September 2000), which called for “full-spectrum” U.S. military forces to achieve global preeminence. It postulated the need for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor” to accelerate the military transformation the authors envisioned.

This was followed by a 2007 Democracy Now interview in which Gen. Wesley Clark revealed that weeks after 9/11, he had been shown a classified Pentagon memo outlining plans to “take out seven countries in five years”: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran. The first six have since been destabilized or regime-changed. Iran, considered the ultimate prize for Middle East dominance and oil control, remains the last one standing.

Why those seven, and why was Iran the ultimate prize? Greg Palast’s 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-Game’ Memo” supplied the missing financial logic. In 1999, the world was opened to unregulated derivatives trading, so that sovereign bonds, oil flows, shipping routes, and war-risk policies could all be collateralized, rehypothecated (pledged multiple times over), and gambled upon. The lynchpin was the 1997 WTO Financial Services Agreement (the Fifth Protocol to GATS), which became operational in 1999.

None of the seven targeted countries joined the WTO, and they were also not members of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. Other countries that were later identified as “rogue states” were also not members of the BIS, including North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

As for Iran, it is not only the largest and strongest of the Islamic countries but operates the world’s only fully interest-free (riba-free) banking regime. This stands in direct contrast to the conventional Western model, which relies on interest as its primary revenue mechanism. “Money making money out of itself” underpins the global derivatives complex, which is built on rehypothecated, collateralized debt-at-interest.

The last piece in the financial control grid was detailed in David Rogers Webb’s 2024 book The Great Taking. The Everything Bubble, including what some commentators estimate to be more than a quadrillion dollars in derivative bets, is just waiting for a pin. When it bursts, it will trigger large institutional bankruptcies; and under the legal machinery Webb documents, the derivative players will take all.

The 2026 Hormuz insurance crisis triggered by Lloyd’s of London could be that pin.

[…]

The City of London and Lloyd’s Weaponize Chaos

For more than three centuries, the City of London – the “Square Mile” that is London’s financial center — has financed both sides of wars and sold insurance against the destruction that would follow. Lloyd’s of London is the insurance pillar of the City’s financial control grid. It is not actually an insurance company but is a corporate body that “operates as a partially-mutualized marketplace within which multiple financial backers, grouped in syndicates, come together to pool and spread risk.”

Lloyd’s has built its reputation on always performing, but it performs at a cost. In 1898, it formalized long-standing practice by introducing the “Free of Capture and Seizure” clause, stripping war risks from standard policies so it could charge extortionate premiums when conflict erupted. It exercised that clause in both world wars and is exercising it in 2026.

After the strikes on Iran, Lloyd’s Joint War Committee expanded its “high-risk” zone in the Middle East. Several of its underwriters issued 72-hour cancellation notices effective March 5, and war-risk premiums for Hormuz transits jumped from 0.25% to 1–5% of hull value. Lloyd’s has stressed that coverage remains available — at the right price. But for a $100 million oil tanker, that means an extra $1–5 million per voyage, a premium the owners are understandably reluctant to pay.

The Private Credit Spark

Meanwhile, other dark clouds are hovering over the market. Financial analyst Stephanie Pomboy warns that the $1.5-3 trillion private credit market is in lockdown, forcing fire sales of liquid assets; and the much larger $5 trillion BBB-rated corporate bond market is teetering. Downgrades will force mass selling, and pensions face a $4 trillion shortfall.

The Hormuz crisis supplies the perfect accelerant to this collateral crisis: higher oil prices create inflation, which raises bond yields (interest), collapsing the value of collateral and triggering margin calls across the derivatives game board. Margin calls then force private credit funds into fire sales.

This is one reason some commentators point to the City of London as the real architect of the Middle East chaos. The old war-insurance machine and the new derivatives machine operate together. One creates the chaos premium; the other harvests it through rehypothecation and legal seizure.

Palast and the End Game Memo: Making the World Safe for Derivatives 

Guaranteeing against shipping loss is one type of insurance, but a much bigger insurance trap is the derivatives market. Sold as a form of insurance against market risk, derivatives are a speculative betting game that extracts rents from all major economic flows.

In his 2013 article, Greg Palast presented evidence of a secret 1997 memo to Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers from Timothy Geithner (then U.S. Ambassador to the WTO acting for Summers) describing the “End-Game” of the WTO Financial Services negotiations. Geithner wrote to Summers,

“As we enter the end-game… I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs ….”

The memo then listed the private phone numbers of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan, numbers which Palast confirmed were real.

What was the end-game? Palast wrote:

US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: “derivatives trading.” … Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning U.S. banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move.… The bankers’ and Summers’ game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization.

… The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.”

[…]

The WTO Financial Services Agreement became the battering ram for opening global markets to this derivative play. Every member nation was forced to open its banking system or face sanctions. In 1999, the portion of Glass-Steagall separating investment banking from depository banking in the U.S. was repealed, leaving depositors’ money vulnerable to speculative risk. Derivatives then exploded. Sovereign bonds, oil contracts, shipping insurance policies, and war-risk premiums were all sliced into credit-default swaps, hedges, and other derivative products.

Derivatives trading has since become one of the most concentrated and profitable businesses on the planet, and it is almost entirely controlled by a handful of megabanks. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the top five U.S. banks alone hold roughly 90% of all U.S. bank derivatives, with JPMorgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley dominating the global over-the-counter market. These institutions capture the lion’s share of derivative profits, especially during periods of volatility when the “chaos premium” spikes.

“The Great Taking” — the Legal Trap Granting Derivatives Super-Priority in Bankruptcy 

In The Great Taking, David Rogers Webb lays bare the final piece in this financial control grid: virtually every security today is dematerialized (digitized) and pooled in central depositories. Quiet changes to the Uniform Commercial Code and equivalent E.U. rules have turned ordinary investors into mere “entitlement holders” holding only a legal claim against their brokerages.

As for bank depositors, they have for centuries been categorized as mere “creditors” of their banks. Once the money is deposited, legal title passes to the bank. The depositor holds only a contractual claim (a demand liability) that ranks as an unsecured creditor position in the event of insolvency.

In any insolvency, stocks, bonds, and deposits are legally collateral for the derivatives complex — collateral that has been rehypothecated multiple times over. And when the derivative collateral fails, the rehypothecated house of cards that has been built on it collapses. Margin calls cascade, super-priority is triggered, and the Great Taking begins. (For more on this quite complicated subject, see Webb’s book and my earlier article here.)

Iran’s Interest-Free Islamic Banking: The Structural Obstacle

So what did it matter if Iran and a handful of other countries declined to join in this lucrative bankers’ game? The risk was that when depositors and shareholders realized that they did not actually own their funds, they would move their assets to those safe zones. The holdout countries were also safe from the sort of sanctions imposed by Western governments (and enforced by Western banks and clearing houses) on Russian central bank assets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Leading this band of holdouts was Iran, which since its 1983 Law for Usury-Free Banking Operations has run the world’s only fully interest-free (riba-free) banking regime. Its banks use Sharia-compliant contracts — profit-sharing (musharakah), cost-plus financing (murabaha), and leasing (ijara) — instead of charging or paying interest.

[…]

Iran’s system was designed to eliminate usury and align finance with real economic activity and risk-sharing rather than speculative debt.

[…]

By rejecting interest at the national level, Iran has thus insulated itself and its financial partners from the control grid that has made the global “Great Taking” possible.

The Insurance Chaos Has Softened but the “Black Swan” Still Hovers 

The Strait of Hormuz is not fully closed, but traffic remains severely reduced under Iran’s selective, permission-based transit regime. Only vessels from “friendly” or non-hostile nations are being cleared after prior coordination with Iranian authorities. Significant backlogs persist, with more than 1,000 vessels reported waiting or diverted and over 34,000 shipping routes rerouted in the first four weeks of disruption.

President Trump’s $20 billion reinsurance facility announced on March 6 is now operational and has been doubled to $40 billion. Additional major U.S. insurers have joined, while Lloyd’s of London has engaged in related discussions. The facility remains centered on American carriers with U.S. government backing. But analysts doubt it will restart widespread commercial traffic without broader liability protection and safer conditions.

[…]

Conclusions and Resolutions

The 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is now widely regarded as having been triggered by the unchecked explosion of unregulated derivatives — especially credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations — which turned subprime mortgages into a systemic time bomb. The damage was not confined to the United States: developing countries suffered heavily as well.

Today the risk of a crash is even greater than during the GFC. The global OTC derivatives market has officially ballooned to a notional value of $846 trillion, more than seven times the size of the entire world economy.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/all-wars-bankers-wars-iran/5922072

The Congo as a Site of Capital Accumulation: Erik Prince and the Privatization of War

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Erik PrinceErik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). © Zach D Roberts / NurPhoto via AFP
Kribsoo Diallo
14 Oct 2026

Erik Prince’s mercenary operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo serve U.S. imperial and corporate interests in critical minerals and violate the Congolese peoples’ sovereignty.

A lot of news has circulated across various global media platforms following reports that militias affiliated with Erik Prince—the U.S. billionaire and founder of the infamous military contractor Blackwater, which has a track record of abuses and killings in several Global South countries—suffered significant field losses in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. This followed an ambush that resulted in the death and injury of at least 20 people, including Tim Kennedy, a famous UFC athlete and former US Army Special Forces soldier.

Erik Prince is a U.S. businessman and former US Navy SEAL who founded Blackwater in 1997, transforming it into one of the world’s most notorious military mercenary companies. He capitalized on the U.S. military’s growing reliance on private military and security firms to provide paid combat and security services. Educated at Hillsdale College, a conservative religious institution, he later served in the US Navy SEALs. His career illustrates the intersection of private capitalist interests and U.S. military expansion, where wars and military interventions become profit-making ventures. After selling Blackwater in 2010, Prince continued his operations through other companies and networks, including Frontier Services Group, which expanded into providing logistical and security services for commercial and mining projects in Africa. In recent years, he branched out through Vectus Global, whose activities in the DRC expanded from collecting mineral resource revenues to providing operational support to the Congolese army.

Under President Felix Tshisekedi, a documented attempt to enlist foreign military contractors (mercenaries) dates back to 2023. At the time, the Rwanda-backed M23 militia was making field advances in North Kivu province, and the government was looking for ways to bolster its military capabilities and secure mining areas in the east. In this context, a plan was revived to bring in about 2,500 military contractors from Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina to halt the rebel advance and secure mineral-rich regions. Preparations included establishing barracks in Mubambiro, near Sake and adjacent to a Congo Protection training camp, to host the first batch in late July 2023. Containers of equipment arrived at the site that same month. Erik Prince spearheaded the negotiations to deploy these foreign contractors, part of a plan heavily promoted by Kahumbu Bula Mandungu, known as “Kao,” an advisor to President Tshisekedi, amid reports linking the scheme to arrangements between Kinshasa and Abu Dhabi. Ultimately, the project stalled, and the Latin American contractors never arrived in the DRC.

Prince returned to the Congolese scene through a seemingly different avenue in late 2024, striking an agreement with the Congolese government to improve public revenue collection from the mining sector and combat mineral smuggling in copper- and cobalt-rich areas. The government signed a five-year deal with Prince through a network of commercial shell entities. In June 2025, Quantum Global Consulting, a UAE-based firm linked to Prince, registered a subsidiary in the DRC, Quantum Global Consulting Africa, to act as its legal representative. This subsidiary then registered Vectus Global as a local legal entity. The contract with the Congolese Ministry of Finance included a financial mandate to increase government revenues from extractive industries while curbing smuggling, corruption, and tax evasion. However, it also contained a secret military component: advising the Congolese Armed Forces, providing aerial capabilities, and recruiting foreign military personnel. The contract was valued at approximately $700 million over five years.

The initial plan involved dispatching about 100 advisors and technical experts to monitor mining operations and revenues, starting with major mines before gradually expanding. The goal was to improve the oversight of production and exports and ensure compliance with the Congolese mining code. The priority was the Katanga region, particularly around the city of Kolwezi, the hub of the copper and cobalt industry. This area was far from the main combat zones where the M23 militia operated in North Kivu.

A major turning point occurred in late 2025 and early 2026 as the war in eastern Congo escalated, spreading to strategic areas in South Kivu. This was especially pronounced after the M23 militia seized Uvira, a key city on the Burundian border along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. This posed a severe threat to the Kinshasa government. In response, Erik Prince, through Vectus Global, deployed a team to support the Congolese army in the region. The mission involved operating drones and providing operational support to government forces, marking the first known participation of Prince’s forces in frontline combat operations within the DRC.

The military activity of foreign contractors in Congo was not limited to Americans. Israeli military advisors worked in coordination with Prince, participating in training two Congolese Special Forces battalions for day and night operations. Contractors from El Salvador, mostly former military and police personnel, were also recruited. A July 2026 report by the Critical Threats Project noted that in April of that year, the Congolese government announced the UAE’s commitment to help fund the training of a paramilitary force exceeding 20,000 personnel, ostensibly to protect mines in the south. Two months earlier, the UAE had dispatched a government and trade delegation to Lualaba province, holding meetings in Kolwezi with officials from the mining, energy, and infrastructure sectors, culminating in the announcement of 16 memorandums of understanding across multiple fields.

Prince is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, and his company’s activities in Congo intersect closely with Washington’s economic and security objectives. His forces were deployed at a time when the Trump administration sought to link economic and security cooperation with Kinshasa to securing broader access for American companies in the critical minerals sector. This was framed as an effort to counter Chinese influence, rather than a genuine push to defeat M23 or contain the ambitions of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. On March 2, 2026, the US Treasury Department sanctioned the Rwandan Defense Forces and four of its senior officials. On June 25 of the same year, it sanctioned a Rwandan gold refinery and a network accused of smuggling minerals from Congolese territory controlled by M23. Yet, these measures failed to dismantle the smuggling networks, resolve the conflict, stop the militia’s atrocities, or cut off the crucial Rwandan support driving M23’s expansion. A March 8, 2026, Washington Post investigation cited a US official stating that Paul Kagame successfully delayed the sanctions for several months by reaching out to Senator Lindsey Graham, who intervened with the White House. The report noted that Graham served as an advisor to Trump—a detail previously highlighted by the Wall Street Journal—illustrating the limits of American pressure. According to the official’s account, these high-level political channels allowed Kagame to buy time.

The US-Congolese agreement established a mechanism called the Strategic Asset Reserve. Under this framework, American investors receive the right of first refusal on listed projects and preferential access to specific investment opportunities in the Congolese resource sector. In April 2026, Reuters published an investigation detailing how Virtus Minerals, an American company, acquired Chemaf’s mining assets for $30 million. In February 2026, a proposed deal emerged to sell a 40% stake in the Mutanda and Kamoto Copper Company mines to the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, backed by the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the UAE’s ADQ fund. These deals positioned American and Emirati investors prominently within Congolese copper and cobalt assets. The clearest indicator of US objectives is the Lobito Corridor project, which links mining zones in Congo and Zambia to the Atlantic port of Lobito via Angola. The US supports this project through development financing and infrastructure investments, aiming to create an alternative export route for Congolese copper and cobalt to Western markets, bypassing trade networks linked to East and Southern Africa or those dominated by Chinese firms.

Erik Prince and his state backers are not the saviors the Congolese people are waiting for to end militia violence and Rwandan interference. The man the Congolese government has hired for security and military services is neither a neutral mediator nor someone operating outside the very interests that fuel and profit from these conflicts. He is a criminal who embodies the nexus between capitalist economic interests, the privatization of warfare, and the defense of US imperial hegemony. This is not just an assumption; in an episode of his podcast Off Leash, Prince explicitly called for the US to resume a direct imperial role, stating it was time to “put the imperial hat back on” and govern countries he claimed are incapable of governing themselves. He made sweeping racist generalizations about Africa, asserting that most of its nations cannot manage their own affairs. When his co-host, Mark Serrano, pointed out that this sounded like a call for a return to colonialism, Prince replied bluntly: “Absolutely, yes!”

[…]

Via https://www.blackagendareport.com/congo-site-capital-accumulation-erik-prince-and-privatization-war

Four in five new UK jobs taken by foreigners

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Four in five new UK jobs taken by foreigners – report
FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / Oli Scarff / Staff

Published 14 Oct, 2026 

Successive governments have turned to migrant labor while millions of Britons are on welfare, a think tank finds

Foreign nationals have filled 80% of new UK jobs over the past decade, while millions of Britons have remained on out-of-work benefits, according to a new report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

The UK think tank said on Tuesday that British nationals accounted for just 734,000 of the 3.7 million jobs added to payrolls between 2014 and the end of 2025. EU nationals accounted for 408,000 new jobs, while migrants from the rest of the world filled around 2.5 million.

“Employers have gained unprecedented access to overseas labour while taxpayers have absorbed the growing cost of domestic worklessness,” the report said.

The findings are part of a major inquiry chaired by former UK Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith. The report argues that successive governments have relied on low-skilled migrant labor while millions of Britons have been “written off” by the welfare system.

Since 2020, payroll employment among non-EU nationals has surged by 2.1 million, while the number of people claiming out-of-work benefits has risen by 2.3 million. Much of the employment growth was concentrated in health and social care, administrative services, hospitality and retail.

“Compounding this, ministers have repeatedly pulled the easy lever of immigration rather than providing a better deal for left behind communities,” Duncan Smith said, urging coordinated reforms to welfare, immigration and regional development.

Around 6.7 million people in England, Wales and Scotland now receive at least one out-of-work benefit, equivalent to roughly one in six working-age adults, according to the CSJ. Since 2019, the number of claimants exempt from requirements to seek or prepare for work has climbed by nearly 1.7 million.

Annual spending on working-age benefits is projected to reach £136.1 billion ($181 billion) in 2026-27.

The report comes amid mounting political pressure over immigration. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly accused successive governments of favoring migrants and minorities over the white working class, demanding tighter border controls and denouncing what he calls a “two-tier” system of unequal treatment.

Britain has also struggled to stop illegal crossings of the English Channel. Some 33,374 people arrived in small boats in the year ending June 2026, down 23% from the previous year, according to the Home Office. The crossings accounted for 88% of detected arrivals via illegal routes.

Public concern remains widespread. An August YouGov poll found that 69% of Britons believed immigration over the previous decade has been too high, while 43% considered it mostly bad for the country, up from 33% in 2016.
[…]

Israeli criminal networks using drones and balloons to smuggle drugs into Jordan

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The Cradle

Israeli criminal networks are using drones and balloons to smuggle narcotics into Jordan, exploiting rising prices in the kingdom, according to a report published by The Telegraph on Tuesday.

The newspaper cited officials who said quadcopter drones were being used to transport crystal meth, amphetamines and hashish across the border, while photographs from military sources showed balloons being used in smuggling operations.

Jordanian military sources told The Telegraph that Israeli announcements about weapons-smuggling attempts from Jordan present a selective picture of cross-border activity while overlooking drug trafficking into the kingdom. One source said Jordanian border guards had thwarted several attempts to smuggle narcotics from Israel in recent months.

Figures reviewed by The Telegraph indicate that Jordanian forces have intercepted more than 15,000 Captagon pills, nearly 20,000 kilograms of crystal meth and 6,000 blocks of hashish since the beginning of 2026, alongside other narcotics.

Via https://t.me/thecradlemedia/69396

UN official sounds alarm as Hormuz fertilizer deadlock pushes Asia, Africa toward food crisis

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(Photo credit: TIMES)

 

OCT 14, 2026

The Cradle

A UN official says the planting season will be lost unless Washington and Tehran strike a deal within weeks

 A senior UN official warned on 14 October that a failure by the US and Iran to quickly approve a UN plan for shipping fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz could plunge parts of Asia and Africa into a food security crisis, Reuters reported.

“It’s absolutely crucial to get the deal in the next few weeks. Otherwise, we will miss the planting season,” UN Under-Secretary-General Jorge Moreira da Silva told the agency in Bangkok, on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

The UN formed a task force in March to secure passage for fertilizer through the strait, but its mechanism has never been put into operation.

Under the plan, a coordination center in Oman would register ships and arrange their transit, while UN monitors would work with local authorities at Gulf ports to verify what is loaded on board.

Da Silva said allowing just five vessels through Hormuz each day could sustain fertilizer deliveries to the countries that need them most.

“We need seven days to put the monitors on the ground and to ensure the transit of fertilizers … We are ready, but we are still dependent on the political will of the parties,” he told the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs in Brussels.

The proposal has broad support among UN member states but still lacks a mandate from Washington and Tehran, he said.

According to UN analysis he cited, daily traffic through the strait has collapsed from around 130 ships before the war to just five last week. He added that fertilizer prices have jumped 25 to 30 percent since late February.

Moreira da Silva said the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates the disruptions could leave some 45 million people facing acute food shortages.

He said Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, and Tanzania rely on the Gulf for 50 to 60 percent of their fertilizer.

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/un-official-sounds-alarm-as-hormuz-fertilizer-deadlock-pushes-asia-africa-toward-food-crisis

When Will the AI Bubble Burst?

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By Hermann Ploppa
October 12, 2026

Artificial intelligence can no longer be eliminated from the world. But the funding of American AI models is increasingly proving to be a pipe dream.

At the end of September, an incredibly significant working dinner took place at the White House.

Afterward, US President Donald Trump presented himself to the excited press crowd. Framed by the twenty-somethings of the AI scene, Trump was flanked on his right by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and on his left sat his love-hate companion, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Farther away from the greatest US president of all time sat Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and somewhat in the background, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Important in this round, however, is also Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Somewhere at the back, Trump’s trade minister Howard Lutnick. All together, heavyweights with a billion-dollar fortune on the scale.

Trump emphasized, as always without substance, that they had enjoyed a very good atmosphere and were in agreement – Thank you for your attention! In fact, this meeting with the Lord of the White House was a matter of great importance to the AI oligarchs. For suddenly, the lords of artificial intelligence discover that their homunculicould pose a serious threat to real humanity. Yes, that these eerie beings, the AI agents, could unite to annihilate humanity[1].

In fact, there was an incident last July that could have come straight out of a science fiction novel. The company OpenAI had contained self-operating AI agents in a sandbox. These AI agents were supposed to perform limited tasks. However, one such artificial agent had escaped from the sandbox. Other agents followed. The swarm acted in a division of labor and strategically. He pounced on the computers of the company Hugging Face. Before things got worse, OpenAI was able to stop the escapee[2].

This historical event prompted the discerning head of the AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, to write a philosophical essay titled “The Adolescence of Technology.” Amodei explains:

„…carefully wielded, AI can be the latest in a long line of technological miracles that have uplifted and ennobled humanity … But like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious … A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute … We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”[3]

Wise words. Here, a champion of artificial intelligence calls for refraining from seizing opportunities to increase one’s own power. And the strange thing is: all the competitors, including Sam Altman from OpenAI and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, fully agreed with their rival Amodei. Can that really be? They are now pushing for the meeting with Trump that was mentioned at the beginning. At the end of the working dinner, however, there was no joint agreement to forgo diabolical tools of artificial intelligence under penalty of law. Instead, they nobly agreed on a “morally binding” self-commitment. Well, yes. When have American oligarchs ever been bound by something as unprofitable as “morality”?

Behind the altruism of the AI giants lies a serious existential problem for the US AI industry.

Artificial Intelligence Is Not Profitable

Dario Amodei wants to take his company Anthropic public as soon as possible. Then thousands of shareholders can become part owners of Anthropic. During the IPO, 20 billion dollars in fresh capital are to be raised. Provided that Anthropic is valued at two trillion dollars on the stock market. Yes, you heard that right. Two trillion dollars. At the same time, Anthropic will only generate 65 billion dollars in revenue in 2026. The two trillion dollars are referred to as “market capitalization.” So: Anthropic doesn’t have two trillion dollars yet. That is the amount that stockbrokers expect as a possible revenue figure in the foreseeable future. OpenAI is also expected to go public next year. OpenAI is also expected to be valued at two trillion dollars. Elon Musk went public with his SpaceX this summer. He was assigned a market capitalization of 1.2 trillion dollars. Musk was able to take a fresh 75 billion dollars from the stock market.

The joy was immense. But then the economics professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh came along as a party pooper and calculated the expectations of the stock market world all the way up to the year 2032[4]. He concluded that the profit expectations can only be met under very unlikely circumstances. So, if the combined market capitalization of the three AI giants is to reach $5.2 trillion, these companies must generate at least $3.7 trillion in revenue by 2032. To achieve this, the revenues must increase by 80 percent each year from now until 2032.

Achieving that is very unlikely. This requires stable investment conditions in a politically stable environment. That is unlikely to be the case in the USA at the moment and for the foreseeable future. The projections of the AI strategists from OpenAI and Anthropic read excellently on glossy paper. But Brookings Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh warns:

“However, the combination of uncertain demand, rapid technological change, execution bottlenecks, and high debt creates a significant downside risk when expectations are revised.”

And expectations will be revised, that much is already certain. Because the Chinese competition is dangerously closing in on the Americans. Actually, Sam Altman from OpenAI and Elon Musk from SpaceX had already anticipated black numbers for AI by the year 2025. But then a Chinese competitor named Deepseek came along, offering most of its services for free[5]. The Americans were not writing profits, but rather accumulating heavy debts. Anthropic alone hoards about eight billion dollars in debt. They are all deeply in debt, the American AI companies. And making profits is out of the question. But tomorrow, it will definitely work out with the profits. So far, the Americans have not managed to push too many sectors of their services behind the paywall.

With Deepseek, it is by no means over. The presence of Chinese AI providers in the USA is becoming increasingly open. This is evident in two intermediary platforms for AI programs, namely OpenRouter and Vercel. There, you can buy the AI program that suits you. The market share of Chinese AI programs has dramatically increased within this year[6]. In February of this year, only one in ten customers had purchased or downloaded a Chinese AI program, but now it is currently up to two-thirds of all users of Chinese software. The technological advantage of American products over Chinese competition has also shrunk from 15 percent to just three percent[7]. The Chinese programs are therefore not only significantly cheaper but also nearly as good as the American ones.

Political strategists get chills down their spines. Daniel Remler from the right-wing conservative Center for a New American Security (CNAS) paints a grim picture: “The biggest concern is that the integration of Chinese AI models will draw countries into a Chinese technology sphere that is hardening into a geopolitical alignment.” Everyplace from Lagos to São Paulo to Jakarta, where entrepreneurs and governments are looking for affordable, open models, they will first look to Chinese AI. Everyplace from Lagos to São Paulo to Jakarta, where entrepreneurs and governments are looking for affordable, open models, they will first look to Chinese AI.“[8]

That is already the case. And this is the result of China’s tireless outreach to the Global South. In July of this year, China founded the World AI Cooperation Organization (Waico). Here, the People’s Republic of China wants to share its AI know-how with everyone. Here, 29 states from Asia, Africa, and South America have now gathered[9]. The artificial intelligence programs in this hemisphere are operated as open-source programs. All users can access the programs for free or modify them to their liking.

No wonder that Chinese open-source programs account for up to two-thirds of the downloaded programs in the Southern Hemisphere, Asia, and even Europe. Alone, the Alibaba programs were downloaded over three billion times in the last six months[10].

So. And now back to the dreams of the AI oligarchs. Brookings Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh calculates that by 2032, the financial volume of the AI industry in the USA should account for about eight percent of the gross domestic product. So about as much as Americans spend on food. That’s impossible to fill. The AI oligarchs like Musk and Amodei are probably also realizing this. The incident with the escaped AI agents from OpenAI actually came just in time to promote a slowdown in the AI industry. Maybe Trump is supposed to keep the Chinese away from American shores? But the bang can no longer be ignored. A bang on the scale of the dot-com bubble explosion around the turn of the millennium. And just like after the dotcom crash, there will be countless company liquidations again now. Will small investors’ money be burned. The cleaned-up market is initially baking smaller rolls, only to rise like a phoenix from the ashes in the form of monopolies.

Artificial intelligence marches on. Either as a proprietary model à la Americaine or as a collaboratively shared open-source model.

Or maybe not?

The enemy lurks on the home front.

The stupid thing is: Artificial intelligence is at least as voracious as the human brain[11]. That’s why data centers are now being built all over the world. And they need, above all, electricity, electricity, and once again: electricity. For that, you need energy carriers and a lot of water to cool the units. In the USA alone, 183 gigawatts of electricity will be needed over the next seven years at the projected growth rate mentioned above[12]. But right now, only 57 gigawatts of electricity are available. So where to get the electricity from without stealing it? In the USA, the battle of residents in some regions against the plans for a data center on their doorstep has fully ignited. Often, the citizens have not been asked for their consent regarding the data centers in their neighborhood. Accordingly, the anger of the Americans is ignited against the new data centers. Currently, over sixty percent of the surveyed US citizens are against the construction of data centers[13]. They are not fundamentally against artificial intelligence. One definitely hopes for improvements in healthcare from AI. But humans and data centers are in open competition for food. If diesel and gasoline have already become so horrendously scarce and expensive, what will data centers snatch away from us in the future? The electricity prices have already gone up significantly anyway.

And Donald Trump doesn’t need to believe that the people’s anger has somehow left out the Republican base voters. The new anti-centrist movement is bipartisan. In the summer, 140 rallies took place in forty states of the USA. One thing is clear: for a good investment climate, the AI oligarchs need the support and backing of politics. But that looks bleak for the near future. Because politicians, not just from the Democratic Party, are increasingly distancing themselves from the construction projects of the AI industry.

And to make matters worse, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had destroyed or damaged three Amazon Web Services data centers in the Persian Gulf in the summer. The losses and damages suffered by the Arab Gulf states due to the war also prevent the sheiks from pumping money into the US AI bubble.

These are all quite suboptimal conditions for the bloated AI industry in the USA. The AI bubble will burst. That is not even a question. We will see if this explosion will be a purifying storm for the American AI industry, or if the collapsing data centers can drag the rest of the US economy and thus society into the abyss.

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/when-ai-bubble-burst/5943435

Pakistan Declares State of Emergency, Arrests Leaders of Former PM Imran Khan’s Party

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Lawyers scuffle with police during a protest in Lahore on October 12, 2026, condemning the

Arif ALI / AFP via Getty Images
John Hayward

Pakistan on Monday declared a state of emergency in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the stronghold of former prime minister Imran Khan’s PTI party, and suspended the PTI-dominated government.

The central government claimed these drastic measures were necessary because provincial leaders were not doing enough to contain an Islamist insurgency leaking over the border from neighboring Afghanistan.

PTI officials dismissed the official government explanation as merely an excuse to arrest opposition leaders and prevent Khan supporters from marching on Islamabad.

Khan, 74, was ejected from the prime minister’s office in 2022 by a vote of no confidence and has been jailed since 2023 on numerous corruption charges – all of which his supporters denounce as political fabrications created by the administration of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to prevent Khan from making a political comeback.

PTI members have been rallying in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for days to prepare for the march on Islamabad, while government forces in the Pakistani capital have been blocking off roads and bracing for a siege.

Sharif asked PTI to postpone the march, due to the ongoing terrorist threat from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban – a violent insurgency that wants to overthrow Pakistan’s secular government and replace it with an Islamist caliphate modeled on the Afghan Taliban.

Just as the marchers were preparing to embark from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for their week-long journey to Islamabad, President Asif Ali Zardari declared a state of emergency in the province and suspended the government. Zardari’s office said he signed the orders after the “failure of negotiations” between provincial representatives and emissaries from Islamabad.

Police arrested several high-ranking PTI members, including the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Khan ally named Sohail Afridi. The police said some would only be detained temporarily, while others could face serious criminal charges. India’s The Hindu quoted two anonymous Pakistani police officials who said a total of 278 PTI members were detained.

The Hindu also said schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were closed on Monday, and “major disruptions to Internet connectivity” were detected in the province.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said a provincial governor would be appointed for at least six months, or until the state of emergency is lifted.

PTI leaders and spokesmen sneered at Zardari’s order as an “ambush on democracy” and “a coup disguised as an emergency.”

The provincial governor, Faisal Karim Kundi, posted a video message saying that residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would welcome President Zardari’s order, because they want “peace, stability, development and prosperity rather than unrest and insecurity.”

Kundi urged the people of the province to “refrain from violating the law, inciting violence or engaging in rioting.”

Via https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2026/10/12/pakistan-declares-state-of-emergency-arrests-leaders-of-former-pm-imran-khans-party/

Biggest Threat To Today’s Data Centers in Battery Room

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Zero Hedge

Oct 13, 2026

As data centers continue to multiply, facilities are deploying industrial-scale Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units by the hundreds and substation-size front-of-the-meter Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to secure against grid failure, power surges, or other disruptions.

But while the battery units are looking after the servers, who is looking after the batteries?

In the last few years, lithium-ion batteries have become the backup power of choice for data center UPS and BESS systems, and for good reason. They have long lifespans, a small footprint, and superior energy density. While data centers tend to be safe, things can and do go wrong. When they do, it’s almost always related to lithium-ion batteries.

The September 2025 data center fire in South Korea that led to a paralyzing nationwide outage in government services started with a single lithium battery explosion. Last year, a battery room at the Chirisa Technology Parks data center in Virginia caught fire twice in two months. Firefighters who responded to a May 2025 fire at an Oregon data center leased by X flagged the battery room as the source of the blaze. As the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) noted recently, “Nearly every notable fire event in data centers in recent years has involved lithium-ion batteries in some way.”

The biggest safety threat to modern data centers’ backup battery systems falls on a single culprit: hydrogen. When a lithium-ion cell begins to fail, internal temperatures rise rapidly, forcing a breakdown in the battery’s internal chemistry. Hydrogen, the smallest and lightest molecule, is often the most measurable gas during the initial stages of failure. Unlike traditional vented lead-acid batteries, lithium-ion cells do not regularly emit hydrogen gas. When ‘off-gassing’ does occur, it usually means something has gone very wrong. Overcharging, cell damage, separator defects, internal short circuits, or even the formation of tiny lithium dendrites can trigger a state known as thermal runaway. If early warning detection systems are not installed, this is when things get dangerous fast.

Once thermal runaway is triggered, it’s a self-sustaining chain reaction. Rising heat melts the battery’s internal separator, causing a short circuit that rapidly generates heat. The extreme heat drives internal thermal decomposition, which releases fuel and oxygen. The release of oxygen feeds sustained combustion that can spike to more than 1,000°F (538°C) in a matter of seconds. Because the cell is sealed, the extreme heat and pressure cause the battery to burst into flames that can ignite neighboring cells and equipment.

While industry data shows a steady decline in BESS failure rates per gigawatt-hour of deployed capacity, the stakes are still high. Because the large-scale shift to lithium-ion battery configurations has only taken place during the last 3-5 years, hyperscalers, regulators, and insurers are beginning to catch up to the reality that lithium-ion deployments do not conform to legacy safety protocols.

Previous safety best practices that focused on ventilation to prevent critical concentrations of hydrogen during regular off-gassing are no longer sufficient for today’s battery rooms. Energy-dense lithium-ion cells are often packed in enclosed cabinets. This makes for a small footprint that can trap volatile gas beyond the reach of traditional ventilation units. Given the potential for a sudden flare-up, the safety approach for these configurations has shifted from ventilation to early-stage off-gas detection.

Regulations and standards are evolving accordingly to prioritize early detection and prevent worst-case scenarios. Standards like NFPA 855 were designed specifically for lithium-ion deployments, mandating continuous gas detection alongside standard exhaust systems.

Destructive testing standards, like UL 9540A, generate the fire-propagation data that inform spacing and suppression requirements in model codes and standards like NFPA 855. Additionally, UL 2075, a standard covering gas and vapor detector performance, is now being used in modern BESS and UPS environments to certify specific gas or off-gas detectors used to monitor hydrogen and hazardous gas accumulation in battery rooms.

While the standards and regulations evolve, their practical implementation has not kept pace with the scale of data center deployments. Designing a battery room layout that complies with specific standards and local fire and safety requirements is not exactly intuitive, nor is it top-of-mind for data centers focused on uptime and speed-to-market. Backup battery systems are largely treated as a necessary investment to satisfy stakeholders. In practice, the safety systems underwriting hyperscale battery deployments are not just check-boxes; they’re the first line of defense keeping the facility online and off the front-page news.

Anyone who has bought the wrong smoke detector for their home understands that not all safety equipment is created equal. Some battery room gas sensors are overly sensitive and cause false alarms, like the smoke detector that goes off anytime there’s a pan on the stove. Some gas sensors quickly lose calibration and require regular maintenance. Other sensors are not designed for integration into today’s smart anti-explosion and fire systems and building management systems.

When it comes to safety, too many data centers are left guessing. Industry standards and certification are making it easier for hyperscale operators to identify what they need to optimize safety. But with highly compressed timelines between standard operations and a thermal incident, it’s critical to monitor the very first signs of catastrophe. For today’s gigawatt-scale data centers, the earliest sign of failure isn’t smoke or fire, but hydrogen silently venting in a battery cabinet.

Data centers are rightly focused on delivering massive compute density and next-generation AI chips, but the systems powering those capabilities need rigorous attention as well. Securing a multi-billion-dollar deployment goes beyond acknowledging the thermal risks inherent in modern backup power systems to actively tracking the element responsible for turning a potential risk into an active crisis.

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/biggest-threat-todays-data-centers-battery-room

As US Backs Saudi War, US Embassy Says Americans Have Been Arrested in Saudi Arabia for Social Media Posts, Photographing Attacks

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Smoke rises from a fire at the Aramco refinery south of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 3, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo<

by Dave DeCamp | October 12, 2026

As the US is strongly supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia has issued a warning to US citizens that Americans have been arrested inside the country for social media posts critical of the Saudi government and for taking photos of recent attacks.

Arrests for social media posts inside Saudi Arabia aren’t a new development, as the US has been warning its citizens for years about the practice and the fact that some arrests have led to 45-year prison sentences. A 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker is currently facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia for a Facebook comment the government deemed “blasphemous” despite him deleting it and apologizing.

“Saudi authorities may detain you if they consider your social media posts or other online activity to be critical, offensive, or disruptive to the public order,” the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia said in a travel advisory issued on Monday.

“Some US citizens have been arrested for past social media activity, including comments posted while outside of Saudi Arabia. This may include posting, re-posting, or liking comments critical of the Saudi government or its leaders and policies. This also may apply to comments about public life or religion in Saudi Arabia,” the advisory added.

In a separate security alert, the Embassy noted that Americans have been detained over the policy concerning the current attacks the kingdom is facing from Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, in Yemen.

“Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior continues to warn that ‘filming, publishing, or sharing information related to counter missiles and drones and their impact sites exposes you to legal liability.’ American citizens have been detained for taking photos of recent events. Visitors and residents are subject to local laws while in Saudi Arabia,” the Embassy said.

In the travel advisory, the Embassy also noted that Americans in Saudi Arabia have faced exit bans that have lasted many years and that some have been detained in the country for years without charges. “You are subject to Saudi Arabia’s local laws when traveling in the country. The US government cannot guarantee your release if you are detained or arrested abroad,” the Embassy said.

The warnings highlight the human rights situation inside Saudi Arabia, a close US ally, as supporters of the US war with Iran often present the conflict as a humanitarian intervention. Saudi Arabia is also killing scores of civilians in its bombing campaign in Yemen, which the US is supporting by providing intelligence and refueling Saudi warplanes.

Via https://news.antiwar.com/2026/10/12/as-us-backs-saudi-war-us-embassy-says-americans-have-been-arrested-in-saudi-arabia-for-social-media-posts-photographing-attacks/

Qatar’s revenues crashed 42 percent in first half of 2026 as gas exports collapsed

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(Photo credit: Wojciech Wrzesien/Shutterstock)

The Cradle

OCT 13, 2026

QatarEnergy expects repairs to the damaged LNG trains to take up to five years, forcing Doha to seek replacement gas deals

Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani revealed on 13 October that state revenues plunged 42 percent in the first half of 2026 due to the closure of the Hormuz Strait and strikes on Ras Laffan, which crippled gas exports.

“It is only natural that the crisis would have a negative impact on public finances, as the total revenues declined by 42% during the first half of the year, while public expenditure fell by 14 percent, without compromising essential services or development priorities,” the emir said.

“We decided not to reduce essential services and opted to maintain our developmental priorities, in order to sustain Qatar’s ongoing economic momentum,” he added.

Iranian strikes put two of Qatar’s 14 liquefied natural gas (LNG) export trains out of action, taking about 17 percent of its capacity offline. QatarEnergy says repairs will take three to five years.

The World Bank expects Qatar’s economy to shrink 20.9 percent this year, the steepest contraction in the region and the country’s worst performance in five decades, after average monthly gas output fell by about 67 percent between March and July.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects a 15.6 percent contraction for 2026, followed by an 18.8 percent rebound in 2027.

The damage Qatar suffered from Iran’s retaliatory strikes during the US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic has sent Doha searching abroad for protection and for replacement gas.

On 2 October, Axios reported that the US had sent two additional Patriot batteries to Saudi Arabia and Qatar to guard their oil and gas facilities. US President Donald Trump is weighing whether to relaunch his bombing campaign on Iran, after rejecting Tehran’s offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi and Qatari leaders lobbied Trump against a major assault in August, fearing retaliation against their energy infrastructure. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has vowed to widen the war’s geography if attacks resume.

On 11 September, Reuters reported that QatarEnergy was negotiating multi-year LNG deals running to 2031 with Venture Global, Cheniere, and Woodside to replace output lost when Iran struck Ras Laffan.

Since then, the state firm has relied on spot cargoes to meet its commitments to Asian buyers, who take about 80 percent of its supply.

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/qatars-revenues-crashed-42-percent-in-first-half-of-2026-as-gas-exports-collapsed