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Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

American artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on June 26 that the government has authorized it to release Claude Mythos 5, its most advanced AI model, to certain U.S. organizations, reversing a previous order that suspended access over security concerns.

The Trump administration on June 12 issued an export control directive to suspend access to Mythos 5 and Fable 5 – which shares the same underlying model as Mythos 5 but was designed for general use.

Anthropic said at the time that the government believed it had identified a method of jailbreaking Fable 5. Jailbreaking is the process of exploiting vulnerabilities to circumvent a software’s built-in safety guardrails.

In the latest development, Anthropic said the government had informed it that Mythos 5 could be redeployed to “a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers.”

“We are working to provision the approved set of providers and restore their access to Mythos 5 as quickly as possible,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

“We are pleased to see this progress and continue to work with the government to expand access to Mythos 5 and make Fable 5 available for general use again.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce did not extend that approval to Fable 5.

The department informed Anthropic of the change in a letter dated June 26, which was obtained by The Epoch Times.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in the letter that he has concluded that “appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 model.”

“Since the issuance of my June 12 letter, Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the covered models. These efforts have yielded significant progress,” he wrote.

Lutnick said that Anthropic has committed to working with the government to develop protocols and standards for the AI models. He did not specify how many companies would be granted access to Mythos 5 or the criteria for selecting them.

Meanwhile, OpenAI also announced on June 26 the preview release of its new model, GPT-5.6, which will be limited to a small group of users approved by the Trump administration.

The Pentagon designated Anthropic as a supply-chain risk in March after the company refused to change the user policy for its Claude model to grant the government unrestricted access, citing concerns that the technology could be used for mass surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said in February that it had no intention to use AI for such purposes and that it only asked Anthropic to allow it to use Claude models for “all lawful purposes.”

The designation, imposed under a federal law designed to protect military systems from foreign sabotage, prevents the company from doing business with the federal government and its contractors.

Kimberly Hayek contributed to this report.

Mass protests broke out in Beirut on Friday into Saturday, with supporters of Hezbollah voicing their outrage at the Lebanese government having just signed a ‘trilateral peace framework’ with Israel and the United States, despite the IDF occupation of southern territory and sporadic Israeli bombings persisting. 

Hundreds of motorcycle-riding supporters were also seen circling streets through central Beirut, near the parliament building and along airport road. In some cases protesters blocked roads near sensitive government buildings, and were seen burning tires. The national army has set up checkpoints, seeking to return order, but in some cases didn’t immediately move to disperse the protests.

“We certainly condemn and denounce this shameful agreement,” a 30-year old protesters from Blida, a town in southern Lebanon that Israel has occupied for months, told the NY Times. According to more:

One criticism of the preliminary deal is that the timeline for Israel’s withdrawal is not fixed, instead being based on how quickly Hezbollah can be disarmed. “The enemy is being granted freedom of movement and the ability to make whatever decisions it wants in the south,” Mr. Kassem said.

Washington has long been seeking to push Hezbollah’s influence out of national politics, and to ultimately see the Iran-backed group disarmed and its power neutered.

The protester’s have in turn exclaimed: 

“They sold us out!”

The Trump administration and Israel have been hailing it as ‘historic’ – also as the US is seeking to ensure the conflict in Lebanon won’t derail the broader peace deal with Iran, toward getting the Strait of Hormuz open again.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has meanwhile in new denunciatory words on Saturday charged that Lebanon’s government has given legitimacy to Israel’s “occupation for many years to come” by signing the deal.

“This could even lead to the annexation of these lands to the Zionist entity,” Qassem said. “We say to the Lebanese authorities: It is time for you to retract your sins that are destroying Lebanon.”

The Hezbollah Secretary-General vowed to remain “ready to cooperate and stand together for the sovereignty of Lebanon, the liberation of its land, the expulsion of the Israeli occupier.”

He also said that the US deal links Israel’s withdrawal to Hezbollah’s disarmament throughout Lebanon, which “is an extremely dangerous proposition that crosses all red lines and makes Lebanon a pawn in the hands of the Israeli enemy.”

Beirut right now!
People and motorcycle groups have occupied the roads in Beirut in protest of the Lebanese authorities signing and agreement with Israeli enemy that “legalized ” their occupation of South Lebanon and gave legal immunity to Netanyahu regarding his warcrimes. pic.twitter.com/acHBV3dFrb

— Hadi Hoteit | هادي حطيط (@HadiHtt) June 26, 2026

“The authorities are legitimizing the occupation for many years to come, and this could even lead to the annexation of these lands to the Zionist entity. Any agreement must be confined to the area south of the Litani River,” he added, stressing the Shia paramilitary group’s resistance to these developments will be steadfast.

Hezbollah had all along refused to be at the table for the Washington-hosted talks, and it accused Israel of a war of aggression on Lebanese territory, with an aim to expand Israel’s borders.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Milton Friedman’s famous one-liner that anchors half the inflation debates on financial television leaves out the part where the actual economics live. Once you put it back in, the doomist case gets a lot smaller.

Per Bylund recently wrote a sharp piece for The Daily Economy arguing that CPI and GDP have become Goodhart’s Law in action. When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure. He has a point, and we’ll come back to it. But the bigger problem with the inflation conversation isn’t really about CPI. It’s about the way the famous Milton Friedman inflation quote gets weaponized by people who almost certainly haven’t read past the comma.

The line you always hear is, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Full stop. Print money, get inflation, or corporations cause inflation. Then, the doomers grab a chart of M2 and a warning about hyperinflation.

That’s not what Friedman actually said.

What Friedman Actually Said

The complete sentence is,

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

That trailing clause changes everything.

The monetary doomists drop it because it complicates the bumper sticker. But “than in output” is where the real economics is.

Friedman was reasoning from the equation of exchange, MV = PQ. Money times velocity equals prices times real output. It’s an identity, not a theory. Where it gets interesting is when you ask which variable does the work. Friedman’s claim was that, over the long run, sustained changes in the general price level can come only from money growing faster than the economy’s productive capacity. Supply was already inside his framework. A collapse in output with steady money produces the same price effect as money growth with steady output.

So the “supply and demand drives inflation” intuition isn’t competing with Friedman. It’s living inside his model. The question is whether the imbalance persists, which depends on whether monetary policy accommodates it.

The Distinction Everyone Misses

Friedman drew a hard line between relative price changes and sustained inflation. That distinction is what gets lost in the modern debate.

When oil prices spike due to a war, consumers spend more on energy and necessarily less on everything else. Relative prices shift. Energy goes up, discretionary goods come under pressure. The general price level doesn’t have to rise unless monetary policy expands the money available to spend on everything. Without that accommodation, you get a one-time level shift in the price index, and then prices stabilize. That’s not inflation in Friedman’s sense. That’s a relative price adjustment.

This is why Friedman could call inflation “a monetary phenomenon” without being naive about supply shocks. He simply argued that supply shocks alone don’t produce sustained inflation. They produce volatility around a level. The trend in the level comes from the money side.

Here’s the problem with how this gets used today. Both the inflation alarmists and the cable news pundits flatten the distinction. The doomists see any money growth and forecast persistent inflation, ignoring that velocity might collapse and absorb the expansion. The pundits see any price spike and call it inflation, ignoring that without monetary accommodation, it’s likely to fade.

The 1970s are the clearest historical illustration of why both supply and money must be present for sustained inflation. Most people remember the decade as an “oil shock” story, but that’s only half right. CPI was already running hot before the 1973 Arab oil embargo and again before the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Money supply growth had been excessive for years, and interest rates had been held too low. The oil shocks didn’t create inflation out of nothing. They pushed an already-loosened cork out of an already-pressurized bottle. Lacy Hunt has been making essentially this argument about the current setup, and he’s right to flag the parallel. A supply shock landing on top of loose money is the configuration that produces a sustained inflation problem. A supply shock landing on a disciplined monetary base produces a level shift that fades.

Money Has to Grow for the Economy to Grow

Here’s where the doomist case really starts to fall apart. The accusation is that “money printing causes inflation.” But in a modern fiat system, every dollar of money in circulation is debt. Either it’s a commercial bank loan that created a deposit on the other side of the ledger, or it’s government borrowing financed through the banking system. There is no third option.

The Bank of England’s 2014 paper, Money Creation in the Modern Economy, laid this out explicitly. Banks don’t lend out reserves. They create deposits when they make loans, and the reserves are created in parallel. So the entire monetary base is, in a real sense, debt that has to be serviced with growing nominal income.

That has a structural implication that most armchair monetarists miss. If money doesn’t grow, the economy can’t grow either. Real debts (fixed in nominal terms) become heavier as nominal income stagnates. Defaults cascade. Credit contracts. You get 1933, which is exactly what Irving Fisher described in his debt-deflation theory. The system is built to require expansion.

So when someone screams about M2 going up, the relevant question isn’t whether M2 went up. M2 has to go up. The relevant question is whether it went up faster than the economy’s productive capacity could absorb it. That’s the real Friedman test, and it’s a much higher bar than the doomists set.

“In a debt-based system, the question isn’t whether money grew. Money has to grow. The question is whether it grew faster than what the economy can produce.”

Velocity Is the Missing Variable

The other piece almost nobody talks about is velocity. MV = PQ has four variables, not three. And V, the rate at which money circulates through the economy, is wildly unstable. Ignore it, and you get inflation forecasts that look ridiculous in hindsight.

Consider the cleanest natural experiment we’ve ever had. From 2008 to 2020, the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet by trillions through three rounds of quantitative easing. The doomists screamed about hyperinflation for the entire decade. It never came. Why? Because velocity collapsed. Banks parked the new reserves rather than lending them. Consumers deleveraged rather than spent. The money sat still. M went up, but V went down by roughly the same amount, and PQ barely moved.

Then 2020 happened. The Fed expanded the balance sheet again, but this time the government also sent stimulus checks directly into consumer bank accounts. Supply chains broke. Workers stayed home. And velocity, instead of falling, recovered. You had money growing fast, money circulating again, and productive capacity disrupted, all at once. Inflation hit 9.1% by June 2022.

That’s the cleanest example we’ll ever get of why the simple “M2 up means inflation up” framework is incomplete. Inflation emerged when M, V, and the supply constraint on Q all moved in the same direction simultaneously. The doomists were wrong from 2009 to 2020 because they ignored V. The “transitory” crowd was wrong in 2021 because they underestimated how all three would compound.

And now here we are in 2026, with a setup that’s worth watching closely. The Fed restarted bill purchases earlier this year, calling it a technical operation to ease strain in the repo market. Whatever the label, bank lending has surged. Loans and leases are growing at a 10% annualized pace. Commercial and industrial lending is running closer to 20%. Money supply is accelerating again. This is no longer a 2009-to-2020 regime where money sits idle on bank balance sheets.

The money is being put to work, the velocity question is firmly on the table, and the Treasury’s pivot to short-term bill issuance is forcing the Fed to operate at the short end of the curve whether it wants to or not. That’s the setup Friedman would have flagged. Money plus velocity plus a fiscal-monetary configuration that looks an awful lot like accommodation.

The Composition of Credit Matters More Than the Quantity

Beyond velocity, there’s a second piece that the bumper-sticker monetarism completely misses. Where the credit flows matters as much as how much credit gets created.

A dollar lent to build a factory expands future productive capacity, but a dollar lent to fund a stock buyback inflates current asset prices without expanding the economy’s productive capacity. A dollar lent to a consumer for a vacation expands current consumption without leaving any productive residue. Same dollar, same “money creation,” very different downstream effect.

The Austrians, including the school from which Bylund writes, have a real point here that monetarists routinely flatten. When credit funds are invested in malinvestment rather than productive capital, you can have apparent “growth” that’s really just hollowing out the productive base while inflating asset prices. Most of the post-2008 era worked exactly like this. Credit aggregates exploded, but the flow disproportionately went into financial assets, real estate, and corporate balance-sheet engineering. Consumer prices didn’t move much. Asset prices went vertical. That’s not inflation in the CPI sense. But it’s also not “growth” in any meaningful sense either.

The current AI capex boom is the live test of this framework. The bank lending surging through the financial system right now appears to be funding data centers, chip fabs, power infrastructure, and the related buildout. That’s productive credit by definition, as it expands future capacity to produce. If that’s what’s happening, the inflation impact of the recent money growth should be more muted than the simple M2 chart suggests, because Q is being expanded alongside M.

If, on the other hand, a large share of this credit is funding speculative valuations rather than real capacity, you get the Austrian outcome. Asset prices go vertical, productive capacity doesn’t expand to match, and the inflation eventually shows up either in consumer prices or in a brutal asset-side reversal. We won’t know which scenario we’re in for another year or two. But the framework tells you exactly what to watch. Track where the credit is landing, not just how much of it is being created.

How Different Schools Define Inflation

The reason these debates feel like everyone is talking past each other is that the underlying definition of inflation differs across schools. The table below lines up where each tradition starts and what it treats as the cause.

That last row brings us back to Bylund. His argument is that CPI and GDP have ceased to be useful measures because they’ve become policy targets. Goodhart’s Law in action. He’s not wrong about that. Price controls don’t fight inflation. They suppress the symptom (measured CPI) while worsening the disease, which is real shortages and capital misallocation. The 1971 Nixon wage-price controls are the textbook case. Government spending that produces no productive output really does inflate GDP without inflating wealth. The Soviet Union had impressive GDP growth on paper for decades before it collapsed because the “output” wasn’t producing things anyone valued.

So far, so good. But here’s where the critique runs into a wall. Bylund attacks the measures without proposing how policymakers, central banks, investors, or ordinary readers should actually operate without them. “Just understand the underlying concept better” isn’t operational. The Fed has to make decisions, allocators have to deploy capital, and investors have to make portfolio choices. You can’t run a $27 trillion economy on Austrian methodological purity.

Yes, CPI is flawed. Every serious economist knows it, but the answer isn’t to abandon measurement. It’s about using multiple measures rigorously, understanding their limitations, and triangulating. PCE, trimmed-mean CPI, sticky-price CPI, the Cleveland Fed’s median CPI, and M2 velocity-adjusted measures of money. These exist precisely because thoughtful people know any single number is insufficient. The “experts” Bylund attacks for treating CPI as ground truth are largely a strawman of cable news pundits and political talking points, not the actual analytical community.

What This Means for Investors

The bottom line is that both ends of the inflation debate are wrong in mirror-image ways. The doomists who quote Friedman as “money printer go brrr” stripped away the second half of his sentence, ignored velocity, and missed a decade of disinflation that should have updated their model. The CPI-is-everything crowd ignored the monetary side and got blindsided in 2021 by an inflation surge they kept calling transitory.

The synthesis that actually survives contact with the data is this. Sustained inflation requires money and velocity growing faster than productive capacity. In a debt-based system, money has to grow, so monetary expansion alone isn’t a signal of anything. The real signal is when the growth of money times velocity decouples from the growth of real output. That’s the Friedman test as he actually wrote it, and it’s still the right test.

For portfolios, this means that you should NOT:

• React to M2 data in isolation; look at M2 times velocity together.
• React to single CPI prints, look at the trimmed mean, and the sticky components.
• Assume government spending creates growth just because it shows up in GDP, ask whether it actually expanded productive capacity or just shuffled financial claims.
• Treat the measures as imperfect signals, not as ground truth, but don’t pretend you can invest without them.

There’s one more thing worth flagging for 2026. The Treasury is now funding a deepening deficit by tilting heavily toward short-term bill issuance, with the share of bills in total outstanding debt exceeding the 20% ceiling the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee recommends. When the borrower of last resort floods the short end of the curve, the central bank is pulled into providing liquidity there, whether it wants to or not.

That’s the textbook definition of fiscal dominance, and it’s the configuration that turns a discretionary central bank into an accommodator. Combine that with the bank lending surge and the AI-driven credit boom, and the relevant question for investors isn’t whether the Fed will tighten policy. The relevant question is whether the fiscal setup will leave the Fed any room to tighten in the first place.

That’s how you take Bylund’s Goodhart critique seriously without throwing out the analytical toolkit. And it’s how you read Friedman without becoming a caricature of him.

A lot of escalation has ensued in the last 48 hours, starting when Thursday Tehran struck a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, after which by the end of Friday US CENTCOM confirmed a series of fresh attacks on Iranian missile and drone storage sites as well as coastal radar installations, reportedly on Sirik Island located near the Strait of Hormuz.

Referring to Thursday’s attack on a vessel off Oman, the Pentagon called it a “powerful response to yesterday’s attack,” in the Friday statement. By early Saturday, Iran had re-retaliated and launched a fresh drone attack on Bahrain. Additionally, another ship in the Strait of Hormuz separately came under attack Saturday.

The Associated Press points to the obvious potential US-Iran deal (MoU) unraveling: “The attacks across the Persian Gulf show the danger of the Iran war again spinning out of control, even after Iran and the U.S. reached an interim deal to try and agree on a final accord to end the conflict” – though neither side has as yet indicated they are walking away from the deal at this point.

According to more details from the Saturday developments:

• Bahrain said it was targeted by “a number” of Iranian drones on Saturday, accusing Tehran of “undermining peace efforts” in the region. In a statement, the country’s foreign ministry said it expressed “Bahrain’s condemnation in the strongest terms of the targeting of its territory at dawn today,” adding that the attacks were a “blatant threat to the security of citizens and residents”.
• US Central Command announced that American aircraft had hit Iranian missile and drone storage locations as well as coastal radar sites in response to Iran striking the M/V Ever Lovely ship with a one-way attack drone as it navigated the Strait of Hormuz.
• “The Singapore-flagged cargo ship was exiting the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast at the time of Iran’s attack,” CENTCOM said, adding that Iranian forces had “clearly violated” the ceasefire agreement.

But it remains that Iran is now firing warning shots at ships that haven’t cleared permits to transit the Strait of Hormuz under Iran’s own protocol, which highlights that deep divisions remain over each side’s interpretation of the terms. The latest via Reuters:

• IRAN WEIGHS WALKING AWAY FROM SWISS TALKS AFTER US STRIKE
• IRAN MAY HALT SWISS TALKS AFTER US STRIKE ON SIRIK

Gulf states have newly condemned “in the strongest terms the treacherous Iranian attacks” on Bahrain, after drones hit the country’s territory. The GCC statement further alleged that the Iranians targeted “civilian infrastructure and properties”.

Other nations weighed in separately, with for example Kuwait’s foreign ministry saying “The continuation of these aggressions, amid regional and international efforts aimed at de-escalation and reducing tensions, represents a dangerous undermining of efforts for peace and stability and a threat to the security and stability of the region,” on X.

Amid all the tit-for-tat, Iran’s IRGC is blaming the US for breaking it commitments under the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). A Saturday statement described:

According to Article Five of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, arrangements for monitoring maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz are carried out in coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, according to the statement, the United States sought to violate this commitment through various movements and received an appropriate response, and the same will apply in the future. If any aggression is repeated, the response will be broader.”

According to the precedent that Trump set yesterday. This means that the US will now strike Iran again, and Iran promised a harsh response if this continues. https://t.co/Xhy3fLxKFL

— barry with the NED (@bonzerbarry) June 27, 2026

Al Jazeera has meanwhile reported Saturday that that IRGC ‘targets’ US military sites in region after attacks – and so the response could be ongoing.

Independent journalist and pundit Michael Tracey points out sarcastically but aptly that Indefinitely bombing Iran sounds a lot like what you might call “endless war”. And so the weekly tit-for-tat escalation might grow more regular until there simply is no more MoU deal to reference back to at all.

Ironically this comes just as Israel, Lebanon, and Israel hailed the signing of a ‘trilateral peace framework’ in Washington – and as Hezbollah is being pushed out of a political solution in south Lebanon, while the IDF occupation of significant territory remains.

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A federal court has quashed a lawsuit objecting to federal supervision of oil and gas operations in the Gulf of America following the government’s steps of exempting those activities from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), citing national security reasons. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland decreed the case moot and said it did not hold jurisdiction to continue. The dismissal comes after the Endangered Species Committee’s unanimous March 31 move to exempt all Gulf of America oil and gas operations from the ESA. 

The committee made the decision after the secretary of war concluded an exemption was required for national security reasons, marking the first time the committee has issued an exemption based on national security reasons.

The exemption rescinded the legal foundation for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s 2025 biological opinion and incidental take statement regarding those activities. 

Without underlying ESA requirements to enforce, the documents “retain no legal force,” the Justice Department said Thursday when announcing the court decision. 

“The Endangered Species Committee’s exemption reflects a judgment at the highest levels of government that producing American energy in the Gulf of America is essential to our national security,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement.

“Today’s decision clears away litigation that threatened development in the Gulf, in furtherance of President Donald J. Trump’s directive to unleash American energy.”

The Endangered Species Committee is composed of six senior federal officials and is chaired by the secretary of the interior. 

Congress empowered the panel to exempt agency actions from Section 7 of the ESA and directed it to grant an exemption whenever the secretary of war finds national security requires it. The exemption now governs the Gulf oil and gas program. ESA rules cannot be deployed to disrupt energy production that the government views as key to the nation, the department said.

Attorneys with the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s Wildlife and Marine Resources Section handled the matter for the government.

The decision marks a significant change in how ESA applies to major energy projects in the Gulf. 

Section 7 generally requires federal agencies to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service prior to taking actions that could affect endangered or threatened species or their critical habitat. 

The service examines potential impacts and, if appropriate, issues a biological opinion and an incidental take statement to allow limited harm to protected species if steps are taken to minimize effects.

The dismissed lawsuit challenged the 2025 biological opinion and incidental take statement for Gulf oil and gas operations. The exemption nullified those documents as irrelevant to the projects, putting an end to the legal dispute over their validity or sufficiency.

By dismissing the case, the court did not have to issue a ruling on the substance of the environmental claims. 

The result precludes one potential legal case that could have delayed or impacted energy development in the region.

Authored by James Xu via The Epoch Times,

The European Commission, Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands have joined the U.S.-led Pax Silica partnership, expanding a group focused on securing supply chains for artificial intelligence and other critical technologies.

The announcement came at a summit in Washington on June 23 hosted by the U.S. State Department. The partnership aims to strengthen cooperation on semiconductors, critical minerals, energy, and advanced manufacturing.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg welcomed the new members.

“The European Union does not join Pax Silica as one more name on a list. It arrives as what it is: the largest single market on Earth,” he said.

Helberg highlighted Germany’s industrial base, Greece’s shipping industry and strategic location, and the Netherlands’ longstanding role in semiconductor equipment, where it has long been a key partner.

According to the U.S. State Department, members signed a declaration committing to “mutual prosperity, technological progress, and economic security.” The agreement also calls for reducing excessive supply chain dependencies and building trusted technology ecosystems with private industry.

The European Union joined after EU member states authorized the European Commission to sign on behalf of the bloc.

Trusted Supply Chains

Pax Silica was launched in Washington in December 2025. Founding members included Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Israel, among others. They signed the initial declaration to strengthen cooperation on technologies considered critical to future economic security.

The partnership has grown steadily since then. Members now also include Australia, India, the Philippines, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Taiwan has endorsed the initiative’s principles through a separate joint statement but is not a formal signatory.

U.S. officials say the partnership is intended to build trusted supply chains among allies. The move forms part of broader U.S. efforts to reduce dependence on China for technologies such as advanced chips, critical minerals, and AI infrastructure.

China currently dominates global rare earth processing, accounting for roughly 80 to 90 percent of refined supply. It also holds a significant share of mining output for several key critical minerals used in electronics and renewable energy technologies.

In April, the United States and the Philippines announced plans for a 4,000-acre economic security zone in the Luzon Economic Corridor to support production for strategic supply chains under the partnership.

This zone is described by officials as the first AI-native industrial acceleration hub under Pax Silica.

Helberg said similar cooperation on critical minerals is under discussion with Kazakhstan, though no agreement has been announced. Such projects mark the initiative’s move into practical application.

Further announcements on new members and projects are expected in the coming weeks.

Reuters contributed to this report.

The Ukraine war is quite obviously escalating, especially regarding Ukrainian leaders seeking to “bring the war” to Russian soil, amid nightly drone attacks which have come in the hundreds and even thousands of late.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking to seize on the momentum of repeat drone hits on Russian refinery and energy infrastructure – a reality Russia has suffered over many months, leading to a current fuel crisis spanning dozens of cities and regions, and especially Crimea, which has temporarily halted fuel sales to common citizens altogether this week.

Ukrainian media is touting a new Zelensky plan to ramp up the pressure on Russia over the next 40 days, aimed at “pressuring Russia to end its war”.

He has ordered Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) to launch a new 40-day operation, which also includes “plan for long-range sanctions, medium-range sanctions, and the results achieved by the SBU,” Zelensky said on X. He’s further calling it an “influence operation.”

“For several months in a row, the SBU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones,” Zelensky said on Thursday evening. According to more of the statement:

I approved a 40-day influence operation for the Service against the aggressor state aimed at compelling it to end the war.

Importantly, for several months in a row, the SSU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones. The Center of Special Operations “Alpha” leads in terms of the occupier’s personnel and equipment neutralized.

Earlier, in mid-June, Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov proclaimed  “Hell is beginning,” for Russia and its military. “Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated,” he said at the time.

Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare against Russia’s much-larger and better armed military machine is in a significantly better position than the status of a year or so ago. Russian forces still have the upper-hand on the front line in the east, but the pain clearly being inflicted on Russia’s economy can’t be ignored at this point.

This sets up a potential slide into tit-for-tat escalation which could unleash a WW3 scenario. In the meantime this is an interesting-timed warning from Latvia and Poland:

Western intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that Russia may be preparing a limited hybrid operation targeting NATO’s eastern flank, potentially involving the Baltic states or Poland.

Such a move, officials believe, could be an attempt to test the alliance’s unity as the war in Ukraine enters a new phase.

According to reporting by The Guardian, intelligence officials from two NATO countries have warned that Moscow is considering a “provocation” rather than a full-scale military attack.

Report by Major General Yevhenii Khmara on our long-range sanctions plan, mid-range sanctions, and the results of the Security Service of Ukraine – specifically the Center of Special Operations “Alpha” – on the front.

I approved a 40-day influence operation for the Service… pic.twitter.com/Ue6O21i6xH

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 25, 2026

At the moment inside Russia, many regions of Russia seem powerless to stop Ukraine’s inbound drone waves, given also that conventional air defenses are set up to defend primarily against larger, faster-moving projectiles like missiles or jets.

President Trump has lately suggested that Ukraine is doing well in the war, or at least much better than it once was. Kiev now feels the pressure to keep this narrative going, also so it can attract more and more weapons and intelligence help. But at some point Russia will feel it necessary to strongly reassert its red lines. This could come in the form of another massive escalation, and against ‘decision-making centers’.

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Two can certainly play the “extremist” game…

Politicians, government bureaucrats, central bankers, spy agencies, and mainstream news outlets lie to us every day.  

For some people, the previous sentence is patently obvious.  For others, that sentence represents “fringe” thinking.  For certain law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe, that sentence reveals potentially dangerous “extremism.”

“Extremism” is such a morally squishy word.  It means nothing.  It suggests that the average beliefs of the average person in the average part of an average town are, on average, correct.  Should a person’s beliefs move too far away from the “average,” then that person will eventually fall into the “extremist” abyss.  Of course, the average person long believed that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth.  The average person long believed that bloodletting cured disease. The average person long believed in magic.  Relativity, microbiology, atomic physics, and quantum mechanics belonged to the “extremists.”

Defining “extremism” depends upon which populations are included when calculating an “average.”  To the average American, Islamic terrorism is religious extremism.  To the average jihadi in the Middle East, terrorism is part of the Islamic faith.  One man’s “extremist” is another man’s “religious cleric.”  Unsurprisingly, as more jihadists migrate to America, the more supportive of Islamic terrorism the Democrat Party becomes.  We now have several Hamas-supporting members of Congresswho define Americans opposed to Islamic conquest as “extremists.”  For a decade, Americans were told to be on the lookout for Islamic terrorism: “If you see something, say something.”  Now, if you see something and say something, you will most likely be denounced as an “Islamophobic bigot.”  If the definition of “extremism” can shift 180 degrees since the Islamic terror attacks on September 11, 2001, then “extremism” is a nebulous political label.

In the United States, citizens overwhelmingly support federal legislation that would require photo ID, proof of citizenship, and other safeguards to ensure that elections across the country are free, fair, lawful, constitutional, and secure.  

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans in Congress prefer to maintain the current “on your honor” system that can be gamed to permit large-scale vote fraud and rigged elections.  By any polling measure, Congress’s point of view is far from that of the average American.  Members of Congress, in other words, are the extremists!  If you listen to the extremists in Congress, however, our elections have never been more secure.

In fact, when you look at some of the most important policy issues today, it becomes quite clear that Congress is ground zero for extremism.  

Most Americans want Congress to stop spending more money than it receives in taxes; Congress has put us forty trillion dollars in debt.  Most Americans want secure borders and an end to illegal immigration; Congress has enabled an evil human trafficking system to exist for over fifty years that rewards criminals and has flooded the country with somewhere between fifty and a hundred million (nobody knows for sure!) illegal aliens.  Most Americans are concerned about lowering fuel and food prices; Congress has wasted trillions of dollars on “Green New Deal” scams that raise the household costs for fuel and food.  Most Americans believe that college admissions and job hiring should be based on a person’s merit, skill, character, knowledge, and hard work; Congress continues to divide Americans by the color of their skin and their sexual eccentricities.  Most Americans believe that men and women are biologically distinct; Congress pretends that biological sex is an imaginary social construct.  Most Americans believe that a dollar saved today should maintain the same value ten, fifty, or even a hundred years from now; Congress thinks printing and spending dollars, depreciating the U.S. currency, and artificially spiking the dollar-denominated valuation of stocks, homes, and other assets is the best way to fake a constantly “improving” economy.  Most Americans believe that we should refrain from military engagements overseas whenever possible; Congress can’t ever get enough of forever-wars.  Most Americans want their representatives to work for American citizens; Congress believes it should work on behalf of non-Americans all over the world.  Most Americans view their country as a nation; Congress views the United States as both a global empire and a home for every person on the planet.

On the most important issues, Congress is filled to the brim with extremists.  They should be put on official security lists and monitored whenever they travel more than fifty feet from their taxpayer-financed homes.  Instead, in the United States and throughout the West, the extremists run things.

That would explain why Christians are targeted for their beliefs.  That would explain why the governments of Europe and North America have flooded their countries with unassimilable malcontents from the third world.  That would explain why men are allowed into women’s restrooms and why pedophiles are accorded more respect than heterosexual married couples.  That would explain why Western governments have declared war on “climate change” when most people don’t care about elites’ obsession with the weather.  That would explain why so many European and North American politicians are willing to risk a nuclear war with the Russian Federation, while ordinary citizens have never been less willing to fight for the defense of their respective countries.

Perhaps the more that ordinary Westerners realize that it is the people running their governments, universities, and bureaucratic institutions who are most extreme, the less willing they become to do what those extremists say.  Six years ago, the extremists locked down the world because of COVID.  They closed churches, bankrupted businesses, disrupted childhood education, prevented family members from being together, and killed a lot of people with fake “vaccines.”  If public health extremists tried to pull another COVID today, would ordinary Westerners do what the politicians and bureaucrats say?  Or would Western citizens conclude that extremist governments endanger both their lives and liberties?

Two can certainly play the “extremist” game.  Two-hundred-fifty years ago, the British Empire believed the patriots of America’s thirteen colonies to be extremists.  The patriots disagreed.  They considered it extreme for members of Parliament to make decisions on their behalf while residing 3,500 miles away.  The two sets of “extremists” fought it out, and we American “extremists” now celebrate July 4 as Independence Day.

My question is this: How much longer can the governments of Europe and North America continue to ignore the wishes of their national populations before we find ourselves in a situation where there is an explosion of public declarations of independence from the political and bureaucratic extremists who have ruined people’s lives?  For, as much as Western governments appear to be betting on mass surveillance, central bank digital currencies, censorship, propaganda, and technocratic oppression as weapons of control to help maintain power well into the future, there’s nothing so unpredictable as a fed-up populace ready for a little revolution.  When enough people recognize themselves as average representatives of the public will and their government officials as extremists representing only their own interests, things get interesting.  Being labeled an “extremist” by government extremists means nothing.

One might even ask: Isn’t globalism tantamount to extremism when a politician puts other nations’ interests ahead of his own?  Surely, when a government official undermines the nation he serves by championing open borders policies or wasting taxpayer dollars on “climate change” boondoggles at the U.N., that official deserves to be labeled an “extremist.”  Globalists certainly don’t represent the average North American or European citizen.  But they do represent the average cosmopolitan bureaucrat who sees no country as home.

In a world of nations whose populations require different things, globalism is extremist.  

In a world of varying cultures and competing beliefs, forced multiculturalism is extremist.  

In a world where some people wish to be free, international government is extremist.

Fighting for liberty is not extremist.  It is government tyranny that is extreme.