Tag: finance

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

The fuel crisis in Russia has started to ease in recent days as some refineries have restarted operations, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Sunday.

“The situation is gradually stabilizing, a number of oil refineries became operational again. The balance is better now, and the situation at fuel filling stations has considerably improved, including when it comes to supplying agricultural producers,” Russian news agency Interfax quoted the official as saying.

“The situation remains quite tense in some regions, especially in some regions in Siberia. We are effectively resolving issues of fuel supply manually at the federal headquarters with regions and companies,” said Novak, who added that the crisis “situation is temporary.”

Amid peak demand season, Russia has been suffering from gasoline and diesel shortages for more than two months now, as Ukraine’s drone campaign to strike Russian refineries forced many large processing sites offline in the spring and early summer.

Early this month, Russia banned diesel exports to protect its domestic supply, creating a ripple effect on the already tight global diesel market.

Since the spring, Ukraine has been expanding its offensive to cripple supply in Russia by targeting fuel supply routes and vessels, alongside a persistent campaign to hit Russian refineries and force them out of operation.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian attacks turned their focus on targeting Russia-linked vessels in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, with more than a hundred vessels hit by drones, per the Ukrainian military.

The Russian oil export terminals on the Black Sea have also gone offline in recent days, following Ukrainian attacks.

Russia’s largest Black Sea oil export terminal, Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk, effectively went offline last week, just days after drone attacks shut down the neighboring Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, tightening another artery that moves crude onto the global market.

The suspension of the CPC terminal loadings led to Kazakhstan cutting oil production, with output at Chevron’s giant Tengiz field reportedly falling by more than half as storage filled and producers were forced to reduce pipeline flows.

Guess who?… None other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has touched down in the UK for his meeting with new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

“Volodymyr, you are the first head of state or government I have congratulated since taking office as Prime Minister. And that is no coincidence. It is intended to send a very clear message: We stand 100% with Ukraine,” said Burnham.

The PM only took office last week, and Zelensky marks Burnham’s very first international visitor. For Zelensky, Burnham is the fifth British prime minister since the Ukraine war started.

Naturally the first thing Burnham did on the foreign policy front was to pledge his “unwavering support” to Ukraine, “both through the war and beyond.”

This is yet more affirmation of Burnham’s intent to carry on with and expand on Britain’s hawkish policies related to Russia and the Ukraine war which have persisted going back to Boris Johnson at the opening of the February 2022 conflict.

The UK was the earliest out the gate among Western powers to ship heavy weaponry to Kiev, and its support has only grown since.

Burnham while hosting Zelensky announced the UK is sharing the intellectual property of its “Stone Cloak” electronic jammers, which aim to interfere with Russian air defense systems, allowing drones and missiles to better penetrate Russian positions.

“Stone Cloak is the best of homegrown British innovation and proven on the frontline, and it will be vital to protecting our security in both our countries,” Burnham said. According to more from the visit:

Burnham said the visit of the Ukrainian president was designed to “send a very clear message” about the UK’s continued support.

“To put it simply, Volodymyr, I want you to know that we’ve got your back, you can count on me and you can count on us. You can count on the UK for as long as it takes,” he said at a naval base in Portsmouth on Monday.

Zelensky, meanwhile, said Ukraine’s relationship with the UK was “stronger than ever”.

Addressing Zelensky, Burnham said: “I am personally with you 100%, Mr President, and I will honour every commitment this country has made to Ukraine in full.”

Burnham added that he intended to visit Ukraine “soon” following the “very warm meeting” between the pair.

The prime minister also warned Moscow “should be in no doubt of our resolve” and that the UK would “not backdown until we achieve long lasting and just peace for Ukraine.”

Zelensky held his first meeting with Andy Burnham on HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth. pic.twitter.com/Ojk69Quhtg

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 27, 2026

Zelensky was hosted for the meeting aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth docked at Portsmouth on England’s south coast. After the Monday events in the UK, Zelensky is headed to Washington to meet with President Trump.

Burnham said the leaders had “talked at length” about Ukraine’s need for more interceptors to shoot down inbound Russian missiles, “particularly in terms of Ukraine protecting critical national infrastructure during the winters.”

Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

Turkey is simultaneously dumping US Treasuries, deepening Russia’s energy embrace, rolling out a tax regime to poach capital fleeing the Gulf… and squaring off against an Israeli political class that now speaks openly of Turkey as an enemy. It’s strategic.

Turkey sold nearly all of its US Treasury holdings in March — cutting them from $16 billion to just $1.8 billion in a single month. The official narrative frames this as emergency reserve management amid a weakening lira and inflation running above 32%. But the mechanics of financial stress don’t explain the direction of travel. Nations don’t systematically dump the debt of their allies.

President Erdogan has been explicit.

In a recent address he cast Turkey as “one of the shining stars of the new era,” invoking the restoration of Ottoman-era influence across the region. Turkey vehemently opposes Israel’s operations in Gaza, and in Ankara’s strategic calculus, Washington and Tel Aviv are increasingly viewed as a single entity. The Treasury sell-off is as much a political signal as a liquidity operation. The Turkish government has smelt blood in the streets and wants to capitalise on the situation.

The energy relationship with Russia tells the same story. Rosatom’s Akkuyu nuclear plant — a build-own-operate project in which Russia retains ownership for decades — just received a further $9 billion in Russian financing, with $4–5 billion deploying in 2026 alone. Turkey has loudly advertised its renewable credentials and a 2053 net-zero target, but Akkuyu sits outside that narrative entirely. When it comes online it will supply roughly 10% of Turkey’s electricity and lock in a structural strategic dependency on Moscow that no solar panel cancels out. Turkey talks diversification; it acts with ruthless pragmatism.

The Iran conflict has handed Erdogan an unexpected opportunity on the capital side.

The disruption to Gulf Cooperation Council financial hubs — Dubai chief among them — has put mobile, internationally structured wealth back in play. Investors who relocated to the UAE for zero-tax treatment are now reassessing. Into that gap, Turkey’s parliament on recently passed Erdogan’s flagship fiscal incentive package — nine permanent structural reforms that together represent one of the most aggressive capital attraction plays of the decade:

1. 0% income tax on foreign earnings for 20 years

2. 1% inheritance tax on all wealth

3. Full citizenship from $400,000

4. 2% one-off tax to repatriate overseas assets, no questions asked

5. 9% corporate tax — permanent

6. 0% tax on trading through Turkey

7. Business registration in one day via AI-assisted process

8. Machinery and equipment imports: duty-free, 0% VAT

9. Mortgage overhaul: 10% down payment, terms up to 25 years

The last item deserves particular attention. The mortgage reform isn’t just a financing tweak — it unlocks millions of first-time Turkish buyers who were previously priced out of the market.

That domestic demand surge lands at precisely the moment foreign capital begins flowing in under the new tax regime. Turkey’s residential real estate market was already undersupplied. The combination of newly bankable local buyers and inbound international capital chasing a low-tax domicile points to a meaningful price cycle ahead — at minimum in Istanbul and the coastal cities where foreign demand concentrates.

The architect of Istanbul’s financial hub ambitions goes back to at least 2009, when former Deputy PM Nazim Ekren was championing Atasehir as the anchor of Eurasia’s financial capital. Aran Hawker, who provided trading infrastructure to Istanbul’s exchanges in 2011, expects wealth repositioned not only from the GCC but from North America, Europe, and the UK — from people “not happy with political situations in those respective countries.” Istanbul Finance Centre transit trade income is now fully exempt from corporate tax through 2047.

The Greater Israel Shadow

Beneath the fiscal and energy calculations runs a darker strategic undercurrent — one that Ankara is acutely aware of and Western analysts largely ignore.

The expansion of Israeli strategic ambition across the region, accelerated by the Gaza operation and the broader Zionist maximalist project, now has Turkey explicitly in its crosshairs.

The Bosphorus — the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, through which a significant share of global energy and grain trade passes — is not simply a Turkish asset. It is one of the most strategically significant chokepoints on earth. Control of it, or the ability to influence who controls it, is a prize that serious regional powers do not ignore.

Israeli political figures have begun to speak with unusual candour about Turkey as a threat rather than a competitor. Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar stated plainly:

“We must begin to treat Turkey as an enemy state.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett went further, framing Turkey in the same breath as Iran:

“A new Turkish threat is emerging. We must act in different ways, but simultaneously against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility from Ankara.”

These are not fringe voices. When a sitting minister and a former head of government use the language of simultaneous threat management for both Iran and Turkey, they are signalling a strategic posture — one that has obvious implications for NATO cohesion, for the future of the Bosphorus as a neutral passage, and for the stability of the broader region.

Erdogan reads this clearly. The deepening of Russian energy ties, the rejection of US debt, the cultivation of Ottoman-sphere influence — these are not reactions to Gaza alone. They are pre-positioning against a regional order that Turkey now judges to be hostile to its existence as a sovereign power.

The Greater Israel project, in its maximalist form, envisions territorial and political influence stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. Turkey sits at the northern edge of that strategic horizon. Control or destabilisation of the Bosphorus would fundamentally alter the balance of naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea — a prize of the highest order for any power seeking regional hegemony. Whether or not one assigns full credibility to the maximalist reading, the signals from Israeli political leadership are sufficient for Ankara to treat the threat as real and plan accordingly.

A NATO member that sells US debt, builds Russian nuclear plants, courts capital fleeing Western disorder, and now faces explicit identification as an enemy state by Israeli leadership is not drifting. Rather, it’s repositioning on every front simultaneously.

The picture that emerges is coherent and accelerating….

Turkey controls the Bosphorus. It borders the Middle East, maintains NATO’s second-largest military, and imports the energy that geopolitical conflict makes more expensive — hence the inflation, the rate pressure, and the reserve burn. But Erdogan’s response is not to seek Western reassurance. It is to deepen the Russian energy anchor, signal alignment with the Global South’s reading of the Gaza conflict, position Istanbul as the beneficiary of Gulf instability and Western political dysfunction, and quietly fortify against a regional order that now names Turkey an adversary. The Treasury dump is one data point in a larger sequence. The Ottoman ambition is the frame. And the clock is moving faster than most investors realise.

*  *  *

Turkey’s repositioning is part of a much larger shift now reshaping the global economic and political order. In our special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, a contrarian money manager explains the forces driving this transition, the risks they pose to your wealth and personal freedom, and how you can position yourself to stay one step ahead. Get instant access to the special report here.

Kazakhstan has resumed crude exports through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) on Monday after the operator reopened its Black Sea marine terminal and resumed accepting crude from producers following a week-long suspension triggered by drone attacks, Kazakhstan’s Astana Times reported. 

Two tankers were loading crude from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project at the Novorossiysk terminal, while producers resumed delivering oil into the CPC pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said according to OilPrice.com. The ministry added that export operations would continue subject to ongoing security assessments.

The reopening follows last week’s suspension of crude intake and tanker loadings at the terminal after repeated drone attacks on vessels operating at or near the facility. Kazakhstan subsequently ordered producers to curb output to prevent storage facilities from filling after access to the export system was cut off.

Industry data cited by Reuters showed Kazakhstan’s oil and gas condensate production fell to 133,200 metric tons, or about 1 million barrels per day, on Sunday, down from an average 2.16 million bpd in June.

CPC separately confirmed pipeline operations resumed at 12:28 p.m. Moscow time. The ministry did not indicate how quickly production would return to normal levels.

The 1,500-kilometer CPC pipeline transports crude from Kazakhstan’s giant Tengiz oilfield across southern Russia to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and carries more than 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude exports. International producers including Chevron and ExxonMobil rely on the route to move Tengiz production to global markets.

The Chevron-chartered Suezmax tanker Asia was also positioned at the terminal on Monday, according to LSEG vessel-tracking data cited by Reuters. Chevron said it continues to monitor the situation at CPC but declined to comment further, the company told Reuters directly. 

The disruption briefly removed more than 1 million bpd of Kazakh production from the market, adding another supply risk as global oil flows remain under pressure from disruptions affecting both the Black Sea and Middle East shipping routes.  

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The most recent phase of the Ukrainian Conflict has been characterized by the “war of attrition” that the US has been waging against Russia through Ukraine after Trump decided to “escalate to de-escalate”.

This has thus far taken the form of drone strikes against energy infrastructure, online retailers, and maritime shipping in the Black, Azov, and now even the Caspian Seas.

It’s this last-mentioned aspect that forms the basis of the present analysis following Ukraine’s weekend strikes on targets in the Caspian.

According to Ukrainian sources, their forces struck an offshore oil extraction platform, a cargo ship and cargo vessel that were sanctioned for their alleged role in the Russian-Iranian arms trade, and a missile boat. If confirmed, then this represents the most eastward expansion yet of Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s maritime shipping after attacking its Black Sea Fleet over the years and recently causing enough chaos to suspend shipping in the Sea of Azov, which is linked to the Caspian by the Volga-Don Canal.

Of relevance, some of the oil that Russia produces there is shipped across that canal en route to Crimea and the global market, so targeting Caspian oil extraction platforms and suspending shipping in the Sea of Azov are part of a larger strategy. The plan appears to be to slash the Kremlin’s revenue, cause domestic fuel shortages with a view towards provoking political unrest, and exacerbate the attempted drone-enforced “blockade” of Crimea. This broad “southern front” is therefore very significant.

Casual observers from the West might thus be under the impression that the Ukrainian Conflict’s overall dynamics have shifted in Kiev’s favor as a result of the above-mentioned developments, but they’d do well to know that Russia has drastically ramped up its strikes against Ukraine’s Black Sea infrastructure.

This recently resulted in Ukraine suspending shipping across that naval corridor for the first time since 2023 in the most important achievement thus far of Russia’s new “systematic strike” campaign.

While Odessa remains out of Moscow’s reach, and there was never any attempt to capture it since the special operation began, the recent attacks against its infrastructure are clearly meant to demilitarize it (at least for now). After all, it’s from Odessa that Ukraine launches its naval drones against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and it’s also where Ukraine receives some of its maritime arms imports. It’s therefore arguably long overdue for Russia to take its port out of operation as well as all of Ukraine’s other Black Sea ones.

The radical intensification of the southern front could lead to one of three outcomes:

1. the situation continues to worsen;

2. a partial ceasefire is reached for ending attacks against ships and maritime infrastructure (though it’s unclear whether it would apply to Crimea);

3. or NATO gets involved.

As regards the last-mentioned, it’s the least likely but still can’t be ruled out after Turkiye committed to providing maritime security guarantees for Ukraine, which could hypothetically take the form of “escort missions”.

The larger trend is that US-backed Ukraine’s newfound focus on targeting Russia’s “soft underbelly” in this new “war of attrition” has resulted in its own “soft underbelly” being targeted as well as a form of (arguably long-overdue) reciprocal retaliation that’s making the broader Black Sea region a “no-go zone”.

The heightened stakes associated with this latest phase of the conflict suggest that an even greater escalation might be inevitable, but it’s still possible that this could be delayed, if not outright averted.

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

The following investigation contains verified facts, classified document references, and eyewitness testimony that some readers may find deeply disturbing. We have cross-referenced all statistical claims with official government disclosures, Freedom of Information Act releases, and whistleblower documentation. However, certain programs referenced operate under classifications beyond public scrutiny, and specific capabilities described remain officially denied by the agencies named. The author has chosen to present this material without the sanitizing filter of institutional caution. Reader discretion is advised—not for graphic content, but for the psychological impact of recognizing one’s own position within the architecture described. What follows is not conspiracy theory. It is Tuesday. It is your morning commute. It is the air you breathe.

Your bedroom has been listening for years. Not metaphorically—quite literally. While you slept, while you loved, while you whispered secrets to partners in the dark, the devices you invited inside for “convenience” were recording, analyzing, transmitting. That smart speaker on your nightstand heard you breathe. Your WiFi router mapped your movements through walls. The phone charging beside your pillow tracked your REM cycles, your midnight tossing, your 3 AM anxieties. All of it flowed through fiber optic veins into climate-controlled bunkers where analysts sift through domestic lives like archaeologists studying extinct species—except you’re very much alive, still walking, still paying monthly subscriptions for the privilege of being monitored.

This is the unvarnished reality of existence in 2026: privacy didn’t merely erode—it was systematically dismantled, commodified, and fed into machine learning systems that predict your behavior before you conceive the thought.

Eight billion souls now exist beneath an invisible dome of perpetual observation, each breath monitored, each heartbeat catalogued, each flicker of dissent intercepted before consciousness fully forms it.

Let’s examine the architecture of this prison with clear eyes:

•  4.9 million CCTV cameras surveil the United Kingdom alone – one mechanical eye for every eleven humans

•  300+ times the average Londoner is captured on camera during a routine commute

•  160 million license plate reads logged annually in the United States, creating travel histories precise enough to reconstruct infidelity, political meetings, religious observance, medical visits

•  0 – the number of ways to effectively opt out

Numbness serves the system.

These figures are designed to anaesthetize, to render horror mundane through sheer scale. So consider instead the texture of living under permanent scrutiny.

Morning breaks pre-monitored. Smart mattresses—marketed innocuously for “sleep optimization”—have already transmitted heart rate variability, respiratory patterns, sexual activity frequency, and parasympathetic nervous system indicators to cloud servers before your feet touch the floor. Bathroom scales identify you by weight distribution patterns as unique as genetic codes. Toothbrushes log duration and technique. Coffee makers timestamp your caffeine consumption. Refrigerators track caloric intake and dietary restrictions. Each data point seems trivial in isolation. Combined, they construct behavioral predictions accurate enough to anticipate your mood, your destination, your risk level before you’ve consciously decided to leave the house.

By 8:47 AM, probability calculations assess your psychological state. Predictive models anticipate where you’ll travel. Risk scores fluctuate based on deviations from your statistical norms—sleeping longer suggesting depression markers, skipping breakfast indicating financial stress, checking news before social media revealing political engagement levels.

Step outside and the grid tightens. Modern vehicles contain fifty to one hundred microprocessors, three hundred-plus sensors, and mandatory cellular connectivity that transforms automobiles into mobile surveillance platforms. Event Data Recorders capture speed, braking force, seatbelt usage, steering angle, and G-forces thirty seconds preceding any “incident”—though incident remains deliberately undefined, and data retrieval requires neither warrant nor notification in most jurisdictions. Drive through a toll booth, pass a traffic camera, park in a monitored lot, and you’ve added coordinates to a permanent travel log reconstructing your movements across years.

Public transit offers no refuge. Facial recognition payment systems in Moscow, Shenzhen, and expanding “democratic” pilot programs process biometric identities faster than card swipes, logging timestamps and travel patterns into permanent archives. London’s Oyster cards create movement histories retrievable by law enforcement without judicial oversight. WiFi tracking in subway stations identifies phones despite WiFi appearing “disabled”—devices emit probe requests every forty to one hundred milliseconds, broadcasting unique MAC addresses that create location trails accurate to meters.

Arrive at work and enter the observation laboratory. Keycard entry logs timestamps and precise locations. Computer systems record keystroke dynamics—typing rhythms as identifying as handwritten signatures. Corporate networks proxy all traffic through monitoring systems capturing URL visits, message content, download activity, duration metrics. Video analytics perform gait analysis, identifying individuals by walking patterns even when faces remain obscured. Elevator weight sensors combined with camera footage determine occupancy and identity.

Lunch breaks generate surveillance gold. Mobile payment apps—Venmo, Cash App, Apple Pay—create financial surveillance networks exceeding any tax authority’s historical capabilities, documenting transactions, social networks, relationship intimacy levels. Location data harvested from apps with “background refresh” capabilities reveals restaurant choices, duration of stays, table companions, subsequent destinations. Pharmacy visits trigger health condition flags. Political rally attendance generates risk score adjustments.

Return home to observation posts you installed voluntarily. Smart doorbells—Ring, Nest, Arlo—record four hundred million video clips monthly, creating neighborhood surveillance networks accessible to 2,014 police departments through “partnership” agreements requiring neither warrant nor homeowner consent. Amazon’s Neighbors app encourages residents to flag “suspicious” individuals—often coded language for racial profiling—feeding machine learning systems training data on human suspicion patterns.

Domestic spaces have transformed into comprehensive sensor networks. Smart speakers record ambient audio during “wake word” activation, with documented cases of accidental activation and human contractor review of private conversations including intimate moments and medical discussions. Smart thermostats track occupancy patterns, energy usage revealing daily schedules. Smart locks record entry and exit patterns shared with “authorized partners” including law enforcement. Smart appliances monitor usage patterns and “anomalous behavior.”

Television watches back. Samsung, LG, and Vizio models collect viewing habits, search queries, voice commands, and in documented cases transmit screenshots of displayed content every second. Streaming services build psychological profiles from consumption patterns—depression indicators from binge-watching metrics, political orientation from documentary selections, cognitive patterns from pause and rewind behaviors.

Even sleep provides no darkness. Trackers monitor REM cycles, apnea episodes, restlessness. Smart home systems adjust temperatures based on detected occupancy. Security systems log movement patterns. And in classified facilities processing daily harvests, quantum computers decrypt yesterday’s “secure” communications, correlate metadata patterns, construct association maps linking you to contacts of contacts, predict behaviors not yet conceived.

The smartphone remains surveillance engineering’s crowning achievement. Sixty-three percent of humanity carries tracking beacons exceeding anything totalitarian regimes of previous centuries imagined. GPS provides location within three meters. Accelerometers reveal physical activity, health status, emotional state through movement patterns. Gyroscopes map spatial orientation. Barometers calculate altitude changes identifying building floors. Microphones activate remotely without indicator lights—Snowden’s disclosures confirmed this capability. Cameras prove similarly accessible. Bluetooth scans identify nearby devices creating social network maps. WiFi mapping enables indoor positioning accurate to one to two meters.

Apps transform these sensors into comprehensive surveillance tools. Weather apps sell location permissions to data brokers. Flashlight apps access cameras and microphones as documented malware vectors. Social media harvests contact lists, message content, photo metadata. Navigation apps log every destination, route, duration, speed. Dating apps reveal intimate preferences, location patterns, communication content. Fitness apps transmit health data to insurance providers and employers. Banking apps create financial surveillance networks. Every “free” service monetizes behavioral prediction.

Encryption offers theater, not protection. PRISM and upstream collection programs—XKEYSCORE, TEMPORA, MUSCULAR—operate at infrastructure levels tapping fiber optic cables, compelling corporate cooperation through National Security Letters (gag-ordered demands preventing disclosure), and storing encrypted communications for future decryption when quantum computing renders current standards obsolete. Utah’s NSA Data Center processes yottabytes—storage capacity so vast it could contain all human communication for millennia.

“Incidental collection”—the euphemism for capturing domestic communications during foreign surveillance—creates permanent records subject to “minimization procedures” requiring neither deletion nor notification. FBI “backdoor searches” of Section 702 collection data numbered 3.4 million queries in 2021 alone—warrantless searches of content collected without warrant.

Stingray devices—cell site simulators deployed by law enforcement nationwide—mimic cellular towers forcing all phones within range to connect and reveal International Mobile Subscriber Identity numbers, location data, communication metadata. Baltimore police admitted using Stingrays 4,300 times without warrants. The FBI requires agencies signing nondisclosure agreements before receiving devices—secrecy prioritized over constitutional protections.

Predictive policing algorithms—PredPol, HunchLab—claim to forecast crime locations. In practice, feedback loops emerge: policing data from over-policed neighborhoods trains algorithms predicting crime in those same neighborhoods, justifying continued over-policing. Risk assessment scores determine bail, sentencing, parole—algorithmic calculations of “dangerousness” based on demographic correlations rather than individual behavior, encoding systemic bias into mathematical objectivity.

Social media operates as voluntary confession on industrial scale. Facebook’s 2012 “emotional contagion” experiment manipulated 689,003 users’ news feeds to study mood alteration. Twitter creates influence maps identifying “disruptors.” Instagram’s image recognition catalogs objects, locations, relationships. TikTok’s data collection—including keystroke patterns and clipboard content—raises national security concerns while demonstrating surveillance capitalism’s global reach.

The “Internet of Things” completes domestic colonization. Smart mattresses, toilets, mirrors, windows—all feeding data streams into centralized processing. DNA testing services—23andMe, AncestryDNA, GEDmatch—have provided law enforcement access to genetic profiles of millions who never consented to law enforcement use. Familial searching creates genetic surveillance networks implicating entire family lines. China’s compulsory DNA collection from Uyghur populations represents ethnic surveillance at the genomic level.

Financial surveillance operates through Suspicious Activity Reports requiring banks to report transactions exceeding $10,000 and increasingly patterns below thresholds. The Bank Secrecy Act and PATRIOT Act created financial tracking infrastructure monitoring every significant transaction. Cryptocurrency exchanges now require identity verification linking blockchain to real identities. The “war on cash” promotes digital payments creating comprehensive spending records.

Biometric databases expand relentlessly. India’s Aadhaar contains 1.3 billion citizens’ fingerprints, iris scans, facial photographs. China’s national biometric database integrates facial recognition, DNA, voiceprints, gait analysis. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification contains 117 million fingerprints, 52 million facial images.

Historical “conspiracy theories” proved insufficiently paranoid. Documents confirm: MKULTRA’s mind control experiments (1953-1973) involving unwitting subjects. COINTELPRO’s surveillance and disruption of political organizations (1956-1971). Operation CHAOS’s CIA monitoring of domestic anti-war activists. The FBI’s blackmail of Martin Luther King Jr. The NSA’s LOVEINT—analysts using surveillance to stalk romantic interests.

Neuroweapons research explores “remote influencing”—microwave auditory effects (the “Frey effect”), electromagnetic field manipulation, directed energy systems. Whether deployed or merely researched, such capabilities blur boundaries between physical and psychological warfare.

Corporate-state fusion creates totalitarian infrastructure without totalitarian intent. Data brokers—Acxiom, Experian, LexisNexis, Palantir—compile thousands of data points per individual, selling comprehensive profiles to government agencies, employers, insurers, political campaigns.

Opting out proves functionally impossible. Living without identification excludes participation in financial systems, housing, employment, healthcare. “Dumb” phones still connect to cellular networks providing location tracking. Cash transactions face increasing restrictions.

Psychological impacts manifest regardless of awareness. Self-censorship becomes automatic when surveillance is assumed. Creativity requires risk, experimentation, deviation—precisely behaviors flagged by predictive algorithms. Intimacy requires privacy; privacy requires confidence in unobserved space.

Legal protections lag technology by decades. The Third Party Doctrine holds that information conveyed to third parties receives no Fourth Amendment protection. Geofence warrants request location data for all devices in specified areas. Keyword warrants identify users who searched specific terms.

International frameworks offer no protection. The Five Eyes alliance shares intelligence while circumventing domestic restrictions. The 14 Eyes expands this network. Bilateral agreements create global surveillance networks.

Resistance strategies—encryption, anonymity networks, secure systems, Faraday cages, cash, offline communication—provide partial mitigation but fail against comprehensive surveillance. Metadata defeats content encryption. Device compromise defeats endpoint security.

Trajectory points toward total integration: central bank digital currencies enabling complete transaction monitoring; biometric ID requirements for internet access; AI-powered pre-crime prediction; social credit scoring integrating financial, social, political metrics; brain-computer interfaces creating direct neural monitoring.

What remains? Perhaps only recognition that surveillance stalking represents not aberration but essence—the logical culmination of technologies enabling observation, bureaucracies requiring information, power’s eternal expansion. Horror lies not in the watching but in the watched trading privacy for convenience, security, connection, entertainment. The panopticon’s genius was never the tower’s visibility but prisoners’ internalization of surveillance.

Somewhere in data centers humming with cooling fans and quantum processors, your profile grows more detailed, your predictions more precise, your autonomy more illusory. The cage was built while you slept. You woke inside it. You may never leave.

AND NOW… YOU ARE MARKED. PERMANENTLY.

Less than 24 hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with the US President at the White House Tuesday, and Trump not-so-subtly put the Israeli leader in his place while fielding questions from reporters aboard Air Force One.

Trump was asked about Netanyahu’s very public and long-stated opposition to Washington selling F-35s to Turkey. Trump responded by firmly stating, “Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not. Turkey has been a tremendous ally.“

He added in the remarks, “Turkey’s not a big fan of Israel, not a great fan of Bibi. But they’ve been great for me.“ He also repeatedly praised Turkey as a great ally of the United States.

It comes after Trump strongly hinted while at the annual NATO summit in Ankara earlier this month that he would approve the F-35 sale, though it would likely invite serious Congressional pushback.

This is not going to be a welcome development for Netanyahu, especially given that with the full context of the comments, Trump was highly praising Turkey while seeming to put down Israel:

“And frankly, we’re being very nice to a lot of countries that would not survive without us. You know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel…

…Turkey has been a great ally, for me. Nobody tells me what we should be selling. Turkey is not a big fan of Israel, you know that, right? And not a big fan of Bibi.”

Interestingly in the same thought he admitted Turkey is a bitter enemy of Israel, but still chose to praise Turkey while quipping that Israel wouldn’t be able to stand on its own without support from Washington.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu opposes sending the F-35s to Turkey…”@POTUS: “Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not. Turkey has been a tremendous ally.” pic.twitter.com/8gSzavJ6Ce

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 27, 2026

Trump did say that the US and Israel align on Iran policy, mostly at least. “We have a little difference but [are] pretty close,” Trump told reporters.

On the Iranians, Trump said: “They want to meet, and we’re meeting. There’s a chance we can make a deal. But without what we did, they wouldn’t even be talking to us.” Of course, it’s long been known that the Israelis are not in favor of talks, given the possibility it could end without the total dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.

“Bibi is coming here, he’ll tell ya…”

Trump:

We have been very nice to a lot of countries that wouldn’t survive without us.

You know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel. pic.twitter.com/jN8SVNXjLV

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 27, 2026

Trump had earlier this month after a July 4th call with Netanyahu said of ‘Bibi’: “We get along very good. [Netanyahu] knows who the boss is,” he told Axios. All the while, Turkey’s Erdogan has been locked in a war of words and steadily ratcheting exchange of threats with Israeli officials. That Trump should so openly embrace Turkey and Erdogan has been felt as a slap in the face for Israeli leadership.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

The Houthi threats to shipping in the Red Sea and its chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, have forced at least one oil tanker carrying Saudi crude to Asia to choose the much longer route through the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and around Africa.

The supertanker Olympic Luck, partially laden with Saudi crude at Yanbu on the Red Sea, transited the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean late on Sunday, according to shipping data monitored by Bloomberg.

The U-turn from Bab el-Mandeb indicates that some tanker owners aren’t willing to risk crossing southward into the Arabian Sea on the much shorter route to Asia, as the Iran-aligned Houthis have threatened – and struck – Saudi tankers in the Red Sea in recent days.

The Greece-flagged Greece-owned Olympic Luck is signaling an unspecified location in Asia, according to shipping fixtures seen by Bloomberg.

Other tankers continue to transit the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but in numbers that are the lowest in months, various ship-tracking services showed this weekend.

Traffic through Bab el-Mandeb has materially slowed, and some vessel owners have their tankers move northward in the Red Sea toward the Suez Canal. The Suez-Africa route to Asia makes the journey about a month longer than if tankers travel through Bab el-Mandeb.

Last week, a Denmark-flagged oil and chemical products tanker, the Torm Innovation, turned away from Bab el-Mandeb and moved north toward the Suez Canal. The tanker, which had loaded products at Yanbu, was in the East Mediterranean early on Monday, shipping data on MarineTraffic showed.

Despite the reduced traffic through Bab el-Mandeb, “Saudi crude has not stopped moving. It has bifurcated,” maritime intelligence firm Windward said on Sunday.

“Yanbu port has transitioned to entirely AIS-dark tanker operations at berth as vessels shield against a Houthi hit list,” it added.

Saudi Arabia has established a working alternative export route via the SUMED pipeline in Egypt and around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, adding cost and voyage time but demonstrating the market’s adaptability, Windward noted.

Chinese-linked cargo continues transiting Bab al-Mandeb under the Houthis’ established carve-out, the firm said.

A federal judge in Atlanta is weighing whether to throw out the evidence in what appears to be the first US prosecution of a traveler over a phone’s built-in “duress password” – a privacy feature that erases a device when the wrong code is entered.

Samuel Tunick, an Atlanta resident and US citizen, was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a), which makes it a crime to destroy or damage property to prevent the government from seizing it. The offense carries up to five years. He has pleaded not guilty and is seeking to suppress the government’s evidence, arguing the search and seizure that produced it were unlawful. A ruling is not expected before the end of October.

Tunick was returning from vacation on January 24, 2025, when Customs and Border Protection pulled him into secondary inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. According to his motion to suppress, agents demanded access to his phone on the stated suspicion that it contained child exploitation imagery, without offering evidence to support that suspicion. They told him they did not need a warrant because he had not yet crossed into the country – the government’s long-standing position that arriving travelers are not on US soil until admitted.

His lawyers say he asked for an attorney repeatedly and was refused, and that he was never advised of his rights.

Tunick provided a passcode. An officer entered it. The screen went dark, flashed repeatedly, and the device restarted with its contents gone. Agents seized the phone anyway and told him he was free to enter the country.

The indictment, returned in the Northern District of Georgia, alleges he knowingly destroyed, damaged, wasted, disposed of or otherwise acted to delete the phone’s digital contents in order to impair the government’s lawful authority to take the property into its custody. The document contains the typo “Untied States Code.”

At a hearing last Monday, a Justice Department attorney and the agents who ran the stop characterized the encounter as an ordinary airport inspection. They were looking for “anything that’s prohibited,” CBP officer Larry Findley testified.

What Preceded The Stop

Three hours before Tunick’s plane landed, a Homeland Security agent circulated an email carrying his name and photograph and stating that he was under investigation for suspected terrorism activities. It went to agents on CBP’s tactical terrorism response team and to an officer with the FBI’s Atlanta joint terrorism task force, according to The Guardian, which first reported the case.

Tunick’s attorneys argue the child-exploitation rationale was a pretext, and that the real interest was his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that spent years opposing the police training campus known as Cop City. The state’s own sprawling racketeering case against 61 people tied to that movement was dismissed last year by a Fulton County judge, with the Georgia attorney general appealing.

CBP’s tactical terrorism response teams were created in 2015 and have operated with almost no public visibility. The ACLU sued the agency in 2019 seeking records on the units, describing them as highly secretive teams that target, detain and interrogate travelers.

GrapheneOS

Tunick’s attorneys have confirmed his Google Pixel was running GrapheneOS, a hardened Android replacement stripped of Google’s tracking components. Among its options is a duress PIN – a second code, indistinguishable from the real one, that triggers an irreversible wipe. No warning, no confirmation prompt, nothing to give it away. Whoever types it cannot know what it is doing until it is finished.

GrapheneOS documents the feature as intended for people who may be forced to unlock a device, naming journalists, activists and travelers facing border searches – and warns in the same documentation that a triggered wipe could be treated in some jurisdictions as destruction of evidence. 

Matthew Dodge, an assistant federal public defender on Tunick’s team, called the use of the statute in this context incredibly rare. Runa Sandvik, who runs the security consultancy Granitt, said she had never seen a case built on a duress password, though she has spent years walking journalists and activists through the scenario. Christophe Boutry, a French cybersecurity and surveillance specialist, said the prosecution mirrors what is already unfolding in France and Spain, where authorities have run into GrapheneOS on the phones of journalists, lawyers and political opponents. His argument is one of ownership: the device belongs to the user, and the state does not get to dictate how it is configured.

Unfriendly Venue?

The Eleventh Circuit may be the government’s biggest advantage in the case. In United States v. Touset (2018) it held that border agents need no suspicion of any kind to search a device, forensic or manual, reasoning that if none is required to open a suitcase, none should be required for a phone. In the Fourth or Ninth Circuits the pretext argument would carry real weight – both require reasonable suspicion for forensic searches, and the Ninth confines border phone searches to digital contraband rather than general evidence of domestic crime. In Atlanta, the defense has to attack the scope of the search rather than the absence of grounds for it.

The statute, meanwhile, is also narrower than it looks. Section 2232(a) requires impairing the government’s lawful authority to seize such property. Lawfulness is an element of the offense, not merely a suppression question, so an unlawful seizure could put the conduct outside the statute altogether. 

A Fourth Amendment win may not end the case regardless. The alleged offense occurred in the agents’ presence, in response to the demand the defense says was unlawful, and courts generally hold that a new crime committed in reaction to an illegal search is not suppressible.

The Fifth Amendment may be the more promising route, because the act constituting the offense is speaking a passcode. If that was compelled in custody without warnings or counsel, the utterance itself may be suppressible. There is a wrinkle in Tunick’s favor: the same circuit that is least protective on border searches is among the more protective on compelled decryption, having held in 2012 that forced decryption can be testimonial. Prosecutors will argue that secondary inspection is not custody and that “unlock it or we keep it” is not legal compulsion.

Then there is intent. Officers typed the code, not Tunick, so the government must prove purpose rather than infer it from a physical act – and the defense has pointedly declined to concede he meant to wipe anything. The evidence that a duress code was configured at all lived on the device that now holds no data.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one…

By Herman Trabish of UtilityDive,Last month, protesters angry over high electricity costs disrupted a Las Vegas conference of executives for the nation’s biggest investor-owned utilities — a vivid example of growing public outrage that has forced the industry to again defend their legally guaranteed profit margins. 

As affordability concerns increase political pressure, several states have taken steps to lower utilities’ return on equity, either through regulatory or legislative action. Consumer advocates say these measures are long overdue, while utilities say suppressing their ROE could impact their credit rating, which would carry over into higher customer costs. 

It is possible the combination of how vital electricity has become in the 21st century and its rising cost in the 2020s could lead to a turning point at this moment in the acceptable level of utility profits, experts told Utility Dive.

In a potentially pivotal and soon-to-be-decided Maryland rate case, utility executives said the matter should be left to state regulators, while consumer advocates said regulators should lower the utility’s profits closer to its costs for serving its customers. 

Utilities in the hot seat

Affordability has become a more pressing issue as national average electricity prices have outpaced inflation, and many people blame utilities. A March Pew Research poll found 85% of respondents saw utilities “wanting to make more money” as a reason for increased home energy prices. 

The impact of profits is not only a matter of public perception. According to a series of reports from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, prices charged by investor-owned utilities, which represent about 70% of national electricity sales, are higher and have risen faster compared to public utilities without strong profit motives.

The reports also found that IOU revenue requests are higher than they have been in decades – totaling $18 billion last year – and that over the past five years, regulators have approved, on average, 64% of the dollar value of these increases, compared to an average of 52% over the previous two decades. 

Energy affordability concerns have also merged with popular backlash to data centers and their huge resource demands. The resentment has stirred up a large, receptive audience for consumer advocates questioning the regulated utility profit model.

Utility profit margins are set by regulators around the country and averaged 9.7% in 2025, while fluctuating from 9% to 10.5%, according to Synapse Energy Economics. Unregulated economic sectors have ROEs within, far above, and far below that range, but do not have the obligation to serve and are not required to seek approval for their profits like regulated utilities, according to the Regulatory Assistance Project’s 2016 Guide. 

ROEs are a matter for state utility regulators, said Dani Marx, spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for U.S. investor-owned utilities and utility holding groups.

“Independent state regulators work through open and transparent proceedings to evaluate infrastructure needs,” Marx said. 

Utility infrastructure often includes “an equity component, including a return on equity, to attract sufficient investment to fund these projects,” she added.

In December, California regulators lowered the ROE for its three largest investor-owned utilities by 0.3 percentage points each. Several states, including Pennsylvania, are weighing legislation to tie utility ROE to 10-year Treasury bonds, among other reforms.

ROEs get political

Some states, like Maryland, have begun chipping away at utility returns by passing laws requiring power companies to join regional transmission organizations in order to do away with so-called adder – additional ROE the company earns on transmission for being a voluntary member. 

Meanwhile, state leaders in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have asked regulators to consider rate requests carefully, signaling they may take more direct action in rate cases. 

The issue has also gained momentum in Congress. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, has gathered more than 20 cosponsors for the Lowering Utility Bills Act (H.R. 8568). The bill would require a utility to “calculate the return on equity at the lowest return on equity in an established range of reasonableness” determined by its regulators.

Reducing utility profits “saves all electricity users money on their bills,” said Mark Ellis, a former chief of strategy and economics with Sempra who now works as an independent consultant. 

In his opinion, today’s utility profits are “an unjust enrichment of utility investors at the expense of customers,” he added.

Utilities argue their profit margins must be set high enough to attract capital at low interest rates, which saves their ratepayers money in the long run while allowing utilities to maintain grid reliability.

If a utility’s authorized returns “are below those of comparable utilities, its ability to attract capital is at risk,” said Robert Leming, vice president of regulatory policy and strategy for Pepco Holdings, which is now engaged in a regulatory debate over profits at the Public Service Commission of Maryland.

Utilities need that capital “to provide safe and reliable service for customers,” he told Utility Dive in an interview.

An ROE case study

Some say the AI boom has introduced bottlenecks that are forcing utilities to consider alternatives to building, but others worry that the opposite is happening, and the hype cycle is fueling ill-conceived spending that will be on ratepayer bills for decades.

The current Pepco rate case offers an illustrative example of the state of the debate. The utility has proposed an ROE of 10.5%, an increase from its current 9.5% allowed ROE. The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel has proposed 7.7%.

The head of the OPC, David Lapp, told Utility Dive that many of the utility’s recent infrastructure investments could have been deferred. 

“Pepco is investing too much too fast and not in things that are cost effective and needed going forward,” Lapp said.

Pepco Holdings’ Leming disagreed. “Maryland’s ambitious climate and electrification goals require investment to modernize and upgrade the system,” he said.

Ellis, Lapp and others see high utility ROEs as a perverse incentive because it biases utilities toward expensive investments that add to a utility’s base of financed costs that earn ROEs and increase rates.

In addition, Lapp argues Pepco’s ROE is “inflated” by a financial strategy called ”double leveraging,” involving Exelon Utilities, Pepco’s parent corporation and only investor.

OPC contends that Exelon’s lower cost debt is being used by Pepco as higher cost equity, allowing it to borrow more lower cost debt.

Double leveraging “is not illegal if regulators approve it,” Lapp said. But if Pepco counts Exelon’s debt as equity in its capital structure, it raises the total ROE and, as a result, customer rates, he added.

“Exelon’s role does not change Pepco’s ROE needs,” Pepco consultant Adrien McKenzie told Maryland commissioners. Equity to support Pepco operations “must be raised in the capital markets,” based on returns competitive with “risk-comparable alternatives,” he added.

If Exelon debt to be paid back in 10 years is invested by Pepco in 50-year assets, Exelon would not be reimbursed soon enough to meet its debt, Pepco’s Leming added.

To justify the proposed 10.5% ROE, McKenzie presented multiple quantitative analyses and “a proxy group of risk-comparable electric utilities.” Credit ratings for Pepco of Baa1 from Moody’s and A- from S&P were central to his conclusion, McKenzie testified.

“Rating agencies and potential debt investors tend to place significant emphasis on maintaining strong financial metrics,” McKenzie told the commission. And this emphasis on financial metrics and credit ratings is shared by equity investors, he added.

Pepco’s Leming told Utility Dive he is focused on utility operations.

“Affordability is one of Pepco’s top priorities right now,” he said. Recent rising rates are linked to investments that have made Pepco highly ranked for customer satisfaction, he added.

But Pepco must be adequately funded to meet today’s “unprecedented” demand with new infrastructure, Leming continued. “That underscores the importance of having a competitive ROE to attract capital,” he said.

Lapp said his focus is customers.

“Everyone agrees investors in utilities should have the opportunity to earn the same return as an entity with a comparable level of risk,” he said. “But Pepco’s proposed 10.5% ROE is unfair to customers because its cost of equity is not just a little bit less, but significantly less.”

A ruling on Pepco’s ROE is expected in August.

Finding solutions

Reducing ROE can in fact impact a utility’s credit quality. Several Connecticut utilities, including Eversource and Avangrid, saw their credit ratings downgraded by credit agencies citing an inconsistent and unsupportive regulatory environment.

But that impact can be offset, Ellis said. “Increasing the equity portion of the debt-equity ratio and lowering the ROE produces ratepayer savings” without significantly altering the utility’s credit ratings, he added.

Ellis is a proponent of “competitive direct equity” as the “structural and political solution,” he said. “It would replace administratively set ROEs with a supply and demand-determined cost of equity through a competitive auction that would fundamentally change the utility incentive structure,” he explained.

In today’s rate cases, ROE determination “is a charade that is not calculated consistently or accurately,” Ellis continued. “The utility says it should be 11% and the consumer advocate says it should be 9% and the regulators compromise at 10% and move to the next proceeding.”

Utilities are accustomed to obtaining satisfactory ROEs through rate cases adjudicated by their state regulators and have no widely proposed alternative political solution. They warn regulators that reducing working capital puts reliability at risk.

But utilities’ rate case filings, like Pepco’s, typically include complex formulas for calculating ROE that overwhelm regulators and conclude that the utility needs an ROE increase, said Karl Rabago, a former Texas utilities commissioner and a frequent rate case intervenor on behalf of consumers.

“The original focus on balancing cost-of-service and earnings anticipated regulators would substitute for the forces of competition, and that has been lost,” Rabago said.