“Ukraine Turns Real-Life Kills into Video Game Thrills for Drone Pilots”

That’s the title and subtitle of a Washington Post article today; here are a couple of excerpts:

The attack drone spots the Russian soldier in a field in eastern Ukraine and swoops in. Only when it’s nearly upon him does he see it. The onboard camera, sending video back to the remote pilot in real time, captures his panic. He throws his hands above his head and begins to run. The video cuts out.

Then a second video, shot from a surveillance drone: The soldier’s body lies in the field, motionless. The drone zooms in to show his apparently lifeless face….

[T]hese videos … were submitted to the Ukrainian government as entries in a competition among frontline drone pilots, with points and prizes for high scorers—a literal first-person shooter in the increasing video gamification of war…. Units earn points for each Russian soldier they incapacitate or kill and each weapon, vehicle or piece of military equipment they destroy. Points may be redeemed in an online government marketplace for more drones, with which to target more Russian forces.

It’s an interesting story, and I have no reason to doubt its factual accuracy. But it struck me as oddly lacking in historical context. I’m no military historian, but let me lay out my thinking; I’d love to hear what more knowledgeable readers have to say about it.

As I understand it, the regular use of film recording to confirm kills of enemy aircraft dates back at least to World War II. And, famously, there was something of a competition for confirmed kill counts; military members have always valued a reputation for success, just like everyone else has.

To the extent there’s any novelty with the Ukrainian drone story, it’s just that the Ukrainian military is extending that system for monitoring the killing of aircraft to killing individual soldiers. And I’m not sure just how novel that is, either: I have heard that drones are sometimes used to confirm sniper kills, though I’m not sure just how pervasive or systematized that is.

As to the rewards, if the tangible reward is indeed just more drones, that sounds like a pretty obvious approach: Give more resources to the most effective units. As I understand it, Soviet Army units who had especially distinguished themselves were labeled “Guards” units, and got better equipment. But I expect that this was common in other times and places as well.

Beyond that, the Soviet Union famously gave monetary rewards per aircraft kill (particularly when confirmed photographically) during World War II; even Communists could appreciate the value of financial incentives. Here’s an item from Stalin’s order of June 17, 1942 (see also “Aces of the Great Patriotic [War],” as well as this August 19, 1941 order):

To incentivize the combat work of fighter pilots, [I order that there be] established starting June 20 of this year a monetary reward in the following amounts:
— for every downed enemy bomber pay 2000 rubles;
— for every downed enemy transport plane pay 1500 rubles;
— for every downed enemy fighter plane pay 1000 rubles ….

The payment for destroyed enemy airplanes is to be made in the event of confirmation by ground forces, photographs, and reports of multiple crews.

A reward in extra battlefield equipment seems to be, if anything, less noteworthy.

So, again, the Post article is an interesting and informative read, and indeed the particular details of the system (drone recordings of kills of individual soldiers for purposes of allocating extra weaponry). But I expected it to tie things more to the history of military videorecording, and of military rewards for successful action, rather than just frame it as “the first of its kind anywhere.” I’d love to hear what readers who know more than I do about such matters think about this.

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Forum on “Emerging Applications of the Congressional Review Act”

Last week, I participated in a Federalist Society forum on “Emerging Applications of the Congressional Review Act,” featuring Michael Buschbacher of Boyden Gray, PLLC and Professor Alan B. Morrison of the George Washington University Law School, moderated by Laura Stanley of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The discussion focused on the use of the Congressional Review Act to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s grant of waivers of preemption to California for its greenhouse gas vehicle emission standards. The Government Accountability Office did not think that the waivers qualified as rules under the CRA. Michael Bushcbacher disagreed, for reasons explained in this op-ed.  Congress disagreed too, and used the CRA to rescind the waivers.

During the forum we discussed the decision to rescind the waivers, the legal and political implications of this decision, California’s lawsuit challenging the rescission, and what this (and other recent actions) mean for the future use of the CRA as a means to constrain administrative agencies. Video below.

 

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“Ukraine Turns Real-Life Kills into Video Game Thrills for Drone Pilots”

That’s the title and subtitle of a Washington Post article today; here are a couple of excerpts:

The attack drone spots the Russian soldier in a field in eastern Ukraine and swoops in. Only when it’s nearly upon him does he see it. The onboard camera, sending video back to the remote pilot in real time, captures his panic. He throws his hands above his head and begins to run. The video cuts out.

Then a second video, shot from a surveillance drone: The soldier’s body lies in the field, motionless. The drone zooms in to show his apparently lifeless face….

[T]hese videos … were submitted to the Ukrainian government as entries in a competition among frontline drone pilots, with points and prizes for high scorers—a literal first-person shooter in the increasing video gamification of war…. Units earn points for each Russian soldier they incapacitate or kill and each weapon, vehicle or piece of military equipment they destroy. Points may be redeemed in an online government marketplace for more drones, with which to target more Russian forces.

It’s an interesting story, and I have no reason to doubt its factual accuracy. But it struck me as oddly lacking in historical context. I’m no military historian, but let me lay out my thinking; I’d love to hear what more knowledgeable readers have to say about it.

As I understand it, the regular use of film recording to confirm kills of enemy aircraft dates back at least to World War II. And, famously, there was something of a competition for confirmed kill counts; military members have always valued a reputation for success, just like everyone else has.

To the extent there’s any novelty with the Ukrainian drone story, it’s just that the Ukrainian military is extending that system for monitoring the killing of aircraft to killing individual soldiers. And I’m not sure just how novel that is, either: I have heard that drones are sometimes used to confirm sniper kills, though I’m not sure just how pervasive or systematized that is.

As to the rewards, if the tangible reward is indeed just more drones, that sounds like a pretty obvious approach: Give more resources to the most effective units. As I understand it, Soviet Army units who had especially distinguished themselves were labeled “Guards” units, and got better equipment. But I expect that this was common in other times and places as well.

Beyond that, the Soviet Union famously gave monetary rewards per aircraft kill (particularly when confirmed photographically) during World War II; even Communists could appreciate the value of financial incentives. Here’s an item from Stalin’s order of June 17, 1942 (see also “Aces of the Great Patriotic [War],” as well as this August 19, 1941 order):

To incentivize the combat work of fighter pilots, [I order that there be] established starting June 20 of this year a monetary reward in the following amounts:
— for every downed enemy bomber pay 2000 rubles;
— for every downed enemy transport plane pay 1500 rubles;
— for every downed enemy fighter plane pay 1000 rubles ….

The payment for destroyed enemy airplanes is to be made in the event of confirmation by ground forces, photographs, and reports of multiple crews.

A reward in extra battlefield equipment seems to be, if anything, less noteworthy.

So, again, the Post article is an interesting and informative read, and indeed the particular details of the system (drone recordings of kills of individual soldiers for purposes of allocating extra weaponry). But I expected it to tie things more to the history of military videorecording, and of military rewards for successful action, rather than just frame it as “the first of its kind anywhere.” I’d love to hear what readers who know more than I do about such matters think about this.

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Forum on “Emerging Applications of the Congressional Review Act”

Last week, I participated in a Federalist Society forum on “Emerging Applications of the Congressional Review Act,” featuring Michael Buschbacher of Boyden Gray, PLLC and Professor Alan B. Morrison of the George Washington University Law School, moderated by Laura Stanley of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The discussion focused on the use of the Congressional Review Act to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s grant of waivers of preemption to California for its greenhouse gas vehicle emission standards. The Government Accountability Office did not think that the waivers qualified as rules under the CRA. Michael Bushcbacher disagreed, for reasons explained in this op-ed.  Congress disagreed too, and used the CRA to rescind the waivers.

During the forum we discussed the decision to rescind the waivers, the legal and political implications of this decision, California’s lawsuit challenging the rescission, and what this (and other recent actions) mean for the future use of the CRA as a means to constrain administrative agencies. Video below.

 

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America’s LNG Boom Is Real – But China Is Planning Beyond It

America’s LNG Boom Is Real – But China Is Planning Beyond It

Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,

  • The Iran war and Hormuz disruption have turbocharged U.S. LNG exports, giving Washington a major short-term energy dominance boost as Asia and Europe scramble for alternative supply.

  • China, however, enters the crisis from a position of greater energy resilience after years of investment in domestic production.

  • The U.S. still has a major long-term opportunity, but sustaining dominance will require turning crisis-driven demand into lasting partnerships.

The Iran war has handed the United States a rare opportunity: a new dawn of energy dominance in an increasingly fractured world. With coordinated US-Israeli strikes disrupting the Strait of Hormuz from late February, roughly 20% of global LNG supply has been stripped from the market since early March. Prices have surged across Asia and Europe. And into that vacuum, American gas has flowed.

The numbers speak for themselves. US LNG exports to Asia jumped sharply in April, with nearly a quarter of all American cargoes heading to a region that simply cannot afford to go dark. Deals are being signed, pipelines planned, and $100 billion in private investment is pouring into liquefaction plants and terminals, putting the US on a trajectory toward 220 MTPA of export capacity within five years. The administration’s energy dominance agenda, backed by promises to streamline permitting, has given producers a powerful political tailwind and reassured global buyers seeking reliability. Washington’s case for American LNG has never been easier to make.

But dominance built on a crisis is not the same as dominance built on trust. And there is a competitor watching this moment very carefully.

China entered this crisis in a structurally different position. Two decades of sustained investment in domestic energy production, spanning generation, storage, and distribution, have left Beijing considerably less exposed to the supply shocks rattling Western and Asian markets alike. Its economy has not been immune, but it has been buffered. That resilience has not gone unnoticed by governments scrambling to explain surging energy bills to their populations. While the US capitalises on the immediate demand surge, China is quietly accumulating something more durable: the perception of strategic foresight.

Yet beneath the boom lies a fault line. The conflict has been a short-term windfall for American producers; cash is flowing and the geopolitical case for US LNG writes itself. But the longer the crisis persists, the more urgently governments around the world will prioritise the same fundamental objective: never being held hostage to a single chokepoint again. The Hormuz disruption has concentrated minds in a way that years of energy dialogues have never quite managed. Countries across Asia and Europe are now accelerating plans to diversify supply sources, build strategic reserves, and develop domestic generation capacity across every available technology. The goal is insulation from the kind of shock this war has delivered, and that shift in priorities will outlast the conflict itself, because the memory of this vulnerability will not fade quickly.

This does not mean the window for American gas has closed. The transition to more resilient, independent energy systems will take decades, and reliable LNG from a powerful economy is precisely what energy-hungry Asian economies need throughout that journey. The US has the reserves, the infrastructure, the financial markets, and the geopolitical credibility that no other supplier can currently match. But Washington cannot afford to mistake a crisis-driven demand surge for a permanent structural advantage, because what buyers are ultimately building toward is a system in which no single disruption, whether in the Strait of Hormuz or anywhere else, can send their economies into shock again. The US needs to be architected into that system as an indispensable partner, not treated as an emergency option.

That requires more than competitive pricing and export capacity. It requires the kind of long-term supply relationships, infrastructure partnerships, and government-to-government commitments that turn a transaction into a dependency, the good kind, built on reliability rather than vulnerability. It requires Washington to show up as a strategic partner invested in the energy security of its buyers. And it requires the Iran conflict to reach a resolution that restores stability to global flows, because sustained disruption ultimately accelerates the very diversification strategies that could reduce the world’s reliance on any single fuel source.

That is why forums like Gastech matter far beyond the conference floor. At Gastech 2025 in Milan, a high-profile US delegation led by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum used the event to demonstrate Washington’s commitment to the global market and deepen long-term partnerships with European buyers. This September, the same strategic imperative shifts to Asia, as Gastech convenes ministers, industry CEOs, and technology leaders in Bangkok around the urgent supply security and resilience priorities now defining the global energy agenda. Bangkok demands the same level of engagement, but with even greater stakes. Positioned at the heart of the world’s fastest-growing demand region, it is where the contracts signed today will shape the architecture of energy relationships for the next decade. It is where the US can arrive not only as the world’s largest LNG exporter, but as the partner that helped Asia build the resilient, diversified, and secure energy systems its economies need, with American technology, American capital, and American gas at the centre of that architecture.

The use of energy as a diplomatic instrument, as a foundation for alliances and a signal of long-term intent, has already demonstrated its capacity to stabilise relationships and strengthen the position of reliable partners. But leverage only holds if buyers believe the relationship will endure beyond the current emergency. And that is ultimately what is being decided right now: whether the world organises its energy future around American reliability, or looks elsewhere for the security guarantees it needs.

American energy dominance is real, and the Iran war has made that case powerfully. But dominance has to be earned continuously, through the infrastructure being built, the contracts being signed, and the diplomatic relationships being deepened, conference room by conference room, deal by deal. The window is open. What matters now is how Washington chooses to use it.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 05/31/2026 – 14:00

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Did Iran Get Its Hands On A US Stealth Missile? JASSM-ER Wreckage Sparks Reverse-Engineering Fears

Did Iran Get Its Hands On A US Stealth Missile? JASSM-ER Wreckage Sparks Reverse-Engineering Fears

The U.S. committed nearly its entire stockpile of stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missiles to the military campaign against Iran and has fired at least 1,000 of these long-range, stealthy, precision cruise missiles to hit high-value IRGC targets.

One of the unavoidable risks of deploying advanced weapons, such as the JASSM-ER, is that unexploded or partially intact systems can fall into enemy hands, allowing adversaries to study U.S. technology, refine countermeasures, and accelerate the development of copycat versions.

A new report from Army Recognition, citing defense journalist Babak Taghvaee, claims Iran has recovered wreckage from a JASSM-ER near Arak, potentially giving Tehran access to fragments of the missile.

“The recovered debris reportedly includes composite airframe sections, structural components, propulsion fragments, and possible avionics elements that could reveal insights into stealth construction, fuel-efficient propulsion, and survivability design,” according to the military blog.

Army Recognition cited images posted on X by Taghvaee showing what is described as badly damaged JASSM-ER wreckage recovered in Iran. The missile appears largely intact and possibly unexploded, which, if confirmed, would give Tehran higher-value intelligence on the advanced missile.

This incident is reminiscent of a similar one in 2011, when Iran captured a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel stealth spy drone and claimed to have reverse-engineered the aircraft. Tehran later displayed and tested drones modeled on the RQ-170, including the Shahed-171/Simorgh and Shahed-191/Saegheh families.

Reuters reported in 2014 that Iran claimed a domestically built copy of the RQ-170 had flown.

Today, Iran is one of the leading manufacturers of suicide Shahed drones (besides Russia and Ukraine), which have wreaked havoc on U.S. military bases and allied countries. The U.S. is also ramping up its version of these drones called “Lucas.”

Tyler Durden
Sun, 05/31/2026 – 13:25

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Manufacturing Consent For Trump’s Invasion Of Cuba

Manufacturing Consent For Trump’s Invasion Of Cuba

Authored by Natasha Bannan via Common Dreams,

Yves here. I wish I had the time to research and unpack more clearly is the set of legal theories the US is abusing to prosecute Nicholas Maduro and his wife and now to justify the arrest of Raul Castro and the conquest of Cuba. The US seriously takes the position that we can impose strained invocations of US rules against terrorism and engage in extrajudicial seizures, as in kidnapping.

The article below describes how we are now putting a lot of weight on the thin reed of enforcing Batista-era property rights.

These days, most of Havana’s streets are fairly empty of cars, but full of people walking or riding bicycles, electric bikes, electric “tricycles,” or scooters. Trash has piled up on most corners where regular pick-up has become impossible given that the garbage trucks have no gasoline. The average conversation starts off with comparing who’s gone the longest without electricity.

The sympathy flows, as you exchange stories of what else you are going without: water, gas, food, medicine, transportation. People list the family members they haven’t been able to see and the medical appointments they’ve missed. Inevitably, someone will say better days are coming – “because they have to” – and to keep moving forward.

This week alone, the US Department of Justice indicted Raul Castro, the former head of state, who’s now 94 years old and largely out of public life. In addition, the Supreme Court gave a green light to Cuban-American-owned companies with property claims in Cuba from 67 years ago to sue tourist industry actors who “profited” from that land.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to grow more and more publicly agitated with Cuba’s refusal to bow to his demands, and Trump’s consistent incoherence shows an absolute lack of any clear policy position towards Cuba, aside from one that may economically benefit him and/or his family.

The indictment of Castro is a page taken from Trump’s playbook on Venezuela from earlier this year. There, the administration indicted a sitting head of state, Nicolas Maduro, as a legal pretext for a military intervention, which was labelled an “emergency” and thus not an act of war that would require Congressional approval.

The administration staged a geopolitical coup d’etat involving international kidnapping, acts of war in plain violation of international law and the U.N. Charter, and then imprisoned that leader as a message to the world of what happens to those who defy US interests. Such indictments serve as purportedly fixed legal fictions for shifting political pretexts.

In Venezuela it was supposedly the state’s support for criminal enterprises and gangs, which was the justification for the Trump administration’s stated reason for the extrajudicial killing of nearly 200 civilians in piracy actions in the Caribbean. Once Maduro was kidnapped and jailed, the administration has stopped talking gangs and narcotrafficking rings.

In Cuba, the Justice Department’s indictment of Raul Castro is a clear response to the political forces that commanded it. As the island nation is not complying rapidly enough to the changes demanded by Washington, the administration has escalated its threats, military preparations, and legal actions, albeit largely symbolic in nature.

Rubio’s Escalation Of Threats As Campaign Messaging

For decades, Marco Rubio has pushed for privately what the Cuban-American community in south Florida has not achieved in nearly 70 years: to run Cuba’s political and economic system remotely from Miami and Washington.

These remote “owners” of Cuba have driven and financed Rubio’s political career, leading to this moment where he is adamantly though unsuccessfully trying to sell the American public that Cuba is a national security threat while simultaneously telling Cubans that their government is too weak to protect them.

That inherent contradiction and incoherence, long the basis of US policy towards Cuba, have never been more dangerous than at this moment when Rubio’s rage and blind ambition to cause widespread destruction is bolstered by Trump’s monarchical goals.

The contradictory discourse is present in nearly every aspect of Cuba policy. Just this week, Rubio issued an Orwellian statement in response to the ICE arrest of Adys Lastres Morera, the sister of the head of GAESA, a Cuban entity that is connected to large swaths of the Cuban economy. Rubio was right to point out that “[f]or far too long, the family members of terrorist organizations, repressive anti-American regimes and other bad actors . . . have been given a free pass to enjoy the privileges of living in the United States,” but the United States also has a long tradition of granting sanctuary to terrorists, dictators, and war criminals.

In particular, Latin American leaders, generals, and intelligence operatives that have long done the US bidding in propping up violent regimes have been granted refuge in south Florida, the home of Rubio and other elected officials who have promoted violence over diplomacy.

Yet what makes international cooperation, collaboration, and survival possible is not just insisting upon respect for international law and human rights by all governments, but strengthening their ability to do so through dialogue and diplomacy. The Trump-Rubio administration has clearly not been serious about using diplomacy to solve global conflicts, and that holds true in Cuba as well.

The administration has tried to identify potential “opposition” in Cuba or political leaders it can “work with” like Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela. Real US diplomacy looks quite different. Twelve years ago, it brought to Cuba a boom of economic activity, a thriving private sector, better financed public institutions, and riveting cultural exchanges for over a million US residents who found in Cuba a rich cultural, musical, artistic, and academic partner.

Trump and Rubio, though they might articulate the same goals, have different ulterior motives. Their goal is not, and has never been, economic opportunity for Cubans. Instead, they want an economic boon for Cuban-Americans aching to exert political and economic control over a land many have never even visited.

Although Florida no longer plays a significant electoral role in US-Cuba policy, Rubio’s recent video talking to the Cuban people – and his messaging in general in escalating threats and aggression towards Cuba – is clearly intended to rally his base. What has caused widespread anxiety and fear among millions in Cuba has nevertheless excited his political base in south Florida.

Inside Cuba

These days in Havana, Cubans are experiencing a duality that has existed for generations who have lived under the threat of US military aggression and the daily reality of economic warfare. Cubans are exhausted. They are increasingly anxious and have reached the bottom of the well of hope. There is a saying that the last thing you lose is hope, meaning it is what you hold on to until the very end. Cubans are at the very end of their ability to see a hopeful future.

I get asked questions daily. Should I take my kids to a shelter? Will the United States bomb Havana? Where is it safe to go? Why don’t US citizens stop their government?

Cubans are experts at survival, and that’s exactly what they continue to do. As US Southern Command sends the aircraft carrier Nimitz into Caribbean waters, Cubans continue to carry on with daily life like they have done decade after decade. Most days, those around me look for an electric tricycle to take them to work or their child to school or have added a child seat to their bicycles. Cars that run on gasoline have become what one of my friends calls “garage adornments.”

Given the daily threat of military intervention and the four-month long oil blockade, activities like sleep have become a luxury. Many families cook or wash clothes at 3:00 a.m. when they get 1-2 hours of electricity. My friend sleeps on the floor with her son near the front door where air drafts can keep them cool in the sweltering heat and humidity. Most of us go without water for days at a time because lack of electricity makes pumping and distributing water impossible.

Another dear friend went 35 days with no water while she, her mother, and her toddler spent weeks traveling from house to house bathing and washing clothes. Cooking and cleaning become infinitely more difficult with no water, gas, or electricity. Some daycare centers use coal to cook lunch for undernourished children.

While we live under the perpetual threat of US military aggression, children continue to play in the street with sticks and deflated balls, families continue to find ways to get to work and buy food, and the deep spiritual and religious traditions that sustain many Cubans are turned to over and over again. War has a name and a face.

It’s not just a vague “government.” Here there are millions of people who owe the United States nothing and instead have only demanded to live in peace, in their homeland, however flawed it may be.

Originally published at .

Tyler Durden
Sun, 05/31/2026 – 12:50

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Congress Quietly Moves To Intertwine US, Israeli Militaries On Formal Level

Congress Quietly Moves To Intertwine US, Israeli Militaries On Formal Level

There are some stealth moves afoot by the Trump administration and Congress, which are poised to formalize the long-standing close US-Israel relationship, on the level of a formal defense pact.

A sweeping new legislative proposal in Congress is moving to more deeply intertwine and combine the two countries’ military arsenals. The House of Representatives’ version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released this past week contains Section 224, devoted to military integration with the name “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

The section lays out that the Untied States has already historically contributed an inflation-adjusted $200 billion in military assistance to Israel since 1948, and seeks to more permanently solidify this relationship on a legal basis.

Responsible Statecraft has reported that “Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.”

via Flickr

The report said the new congressional provision “would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech” while further proposing “network integration” and “data fusion.”

Crucially, this would in effect combine both countries’ military data, and further formalize intelligence-sharing. While all of these things already happen to a large degree, it is at the moment still subject to the policies and direction of whatever US administration happens to be in office.

If passed, the new legislation would make this automatic and basically irreversible – again, akin to a formal defense pact or treaty.

What follows is some fuller reporting from Responsible Statecraft, which warms that “the result could well be a US political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East“…

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The US and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the US has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the US provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the US providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the US and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the US beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in US politics: jobs in the US By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on US soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.

The ambitious scheme is unlikely to be met with much resistance from either the mainstream of the Republican or Democratic parties; however, the Dems have tended to vote against giving President Trump free reign regarding Operation Epic Fury. War Powers votes tend to break down along party lines, with the GOP typically shooting down these efforts of Congressional oversight.

But this could sail through with little or nothing in the way of public debate, or even knowledge, at all. It means future generations of taxpayers could find themselves even more deeply on the hook for the permanent defense of a foreign nation.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 05/31/2026 – 12:15

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Gold Waits As Global Markets Tempt The Unprepared

Gold Waits As Global Markets Tempt The Unprepared

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

2026 is screaming “Uh-Oh” signals from nearly every sector and asset class with alarming yet eerily ignored clarity. This explains why the longer-term case for gold couldn’t be more obvious, regardless of natural price retracements in the near-term.

In fact, if global financial conditions were not otherwise so disturbing, this historical moment in time would be fascinating.

But rather than just say this, let me show you.

Rising Yields: The Most Misunderstood/Important Signal of 2026?

For example, the $145T global bond market, which is $20T greater in size than the global stock market, remains less understood yet far more significant as an indicator.

Specifically, this “boring” bond market is foretelling an historical sovereign debt crisis which is already playing out before way too many closed eyes.

Yields on sovereign IOUs (British, American, German, Italian, Japanese, etc.) are climbing to the highest levels seen in decades.

Three Reasons/Warnings for Rising Yields

These yields rise when demand, price and, of course, TRUST in government bonds tank.

This dying trust has a lot to do with global debt levels at over $360T and U.S. public debt levels reaching an embarrassing $40T marker, which effectively makes America one big “bad credit.”

(1) Lenders Demand a Risk Premium

Those with bad credit, of course, are charged a higher risk premium or “yield” by lenders, which explains why the yield on the U.S. 10Y has risen by 75 basis points in a matter of months despite a Fed which has yet to raise rates in 2026.

The Fed, alas, is openly losing control of its bond market. This matters, because rising yields mean rising debt costs, which debt-addicted and debt-driven nations like the USA simply can’t control or afford anymore.

(2) More Buyers than Sellers of USTs

In addition to its fall from credit grace, the home of the world reserve currency and once sacred “return-free-risk” 10Y UST is watching helplessly as former buyers of its critical IOUs are rapidly becoming sellers—a force which just sends those fatal yields even higher.

China, for example, once held over $1.3T in USTs. Today it holds less than $650B. Japan, the world’s largest holder of U.S. debt, just sold more USTs in Q1 of 2026 than it has sold in the last four years.

(3) The Brutal Math of Debt

But the most obvious reason for the dumping of American bonds boils down to just brutal math.

Uncle Sam, which is now running an unsustainable 7% current account deficit, is adding $2.5T of new debt to its banana republic balance sheet per year. America spends 50% of its annual tax revenue just to pay interest on its outstanding debt.

Trillions more in unfunded liabilities are also owed, for which the USA simply does not have the funds.

To fill this income vs expense “gap,” it’s no great mystery that this can only be done with trillions more debased, “mouse-clicked” fiat dollars.

This extraordinary (and increasing) dollar-dilution direction explains why the DXY can’t break 100 despite spiking yields.

Gold and a Little Bit of History Repeating Itself

The slow yet steadily increasing death spiral of fiat currencies is fascinating, obvious and yet totally ignored by current stock chasers—at least for now.

It is also a perfect set-up for gold, which the world continues to ignore based on recent and short-term price action rather than longer-term preparation or historical understanding.

The fake liquidity now and to come to “solve” the above bond crisis is an almost mirror image of the 1970-1980 era, when the Dollar lost 50% of its purchasing power, and gold went from $35 to $850 an ounce.

But like the current bull run in gold, the template of the 1970s didn’t happen in a straight line, as midway through that infamous decade, gold saw sell-offs which shook out speculators yet made longer-term investors generational wealth.

The recent price declines in gold are thus no surprise within a secular bull cycle.

As explained elsewhere, gold’s value, liquidity and prominence have been confirmed by forced sales (from sovereigns to fund managers) to create needed liquidity in times of stress.

Such behavior confirms rather than detracts from gold’s rising profile and prominence in the years and cycles to come.

Nevertheless, many are understandably following traditional thinking that a “yield-less pet rock” is less impressive than a high-yielding sovereign bond.

But bonds are only “high-yielding” because they are unloved, distrusted and broken; the only way to “fix” them, moreover, is by debasing the very currency used to measure their so-called “higher” yields.

Such logic misses the currency-weak forest for the higher-yielding trees.

But as figures like Charles Mackay or John Hussman have so often reminded us, “logic” goes out the window when tech stocks and market meme manias replace basic common sense, sound valuation or even a mediocre grasp of history.

Meanwhile: Stocks Defy Sanity, Valuation and Common Sense

Looking at the current U.S. stock market is like looking at a bad, surrealist film with a cheap laugh-track.

By literally every metric, the S&P is grotesquely overvalued:

Investors are currently paying maximum prices for unprecedented valuation risk and historically minimal dividend income.

That’s not logic. It’s madness. As consumer sentiment tanks to the lowest levels recorded at the University of Michigan, and as U.S. credit card delinquency rates climb past 12%, the S&P smiles…

Lead to Temptation

As usual, the Wall Street whales and their Sirens on the rocky shores of the equity and credit trap are seducing the retail plankton to their cyclical doom—pumping stocks on the backs of suckers before the big boys take profits on the eve of a fall.

Of course, the infamous “Buffett Indicator”, which measures equity market cap against GDP, has never been clearer (or higher) in confirming such risk:

But the far more telling “Buffett Indicator,” in my mind, lies in the simple fact that Berkshire Hathaway is sitting wisely in nearly $400B in cash.

Alas, the Oracle of Omaha is openly getting out of harm’s way as legions of retail investors march toward an equity cliff.

The tragedy of the so-called S&P 500 (led by 10 stocks) is that it is really no stock market at all. Instead, it lives and breathes off the moral hazard notion that bad news is good news, as there is always a firehose of Fed liquidity (printed dollars) waiting to “accommodate it.”

Every dip is now perceived as a prelude to a V-shaped recovery compliments of the Federal Reserve, which is neither “Federal” nor a “reserve.”

From Temptation to Lying

But such a dishonest title is no match for the dishonest wordsmithing for which the Fed is now so infamous, whether in denying a “non-recessionary recession,” a growing rather “transitory” inflation trend, “non-QE QE” or just flat out lying about actual vs “reported” inflation.

In fact, the Fed’s desperate yet consistent policy of using dishonest words to buy time, markets and votes while hiding honest math will only continue under Kevin Warsh, a trend which he has all but openly confessed.

In case you haven’t noticed, Warsh intends to measure PCE inflation under a new metric called “trimmed mean PCE,” which effectively removes all the bad inflationary data to create a fictitious notion that inflation is under control.

This is duplicity at its finest. After all, even a witch can look pretty if you take away the warts, which is all Warsh’s new Fed policy boils down to.

In fact, what Warsh is doing is nothing surprising nor anything new.

The Oldest & Only Trick Left: Inflate Away Debt

While the rest of us endure the invisible theft of compounding inflation, the policy makers in DC will secretly welcome it as a means to inflate away their sovereign bar tab on the backs of your purchasing power and wealth.

This is called “negative real rates” or “financial repression,” and it’s the oldest trick in the book of desperately broke nations, namely: Let inflation rip higher than interest rates, but then lie about the embarrassing inflation.

When Even the Official Math is Bad

What’s as disturbing, however, is that even the “official” inflation data, as dishonest and downplayed as it is, is still alarming evidence of open monetary policy failure.

Current U.S. CPI inflation (the cost of consumer goods) is racing past 3.8%, and current U.S. PPI inflation (the business cost of making goods) is already at an embarrassing 6%–well beyond the Fed’s 2% “targets.”

But this is just the beginning. Since the Strait of Hormuz closed, the cost of fertilizer has risen by 20%, gasoline by 52%, European natural gas by 54%, jet fuel by 58%, and WTI crude oil by 60%.

Yet how can U.S. CPI and PPI inflation be in the single digits when everything else has risen by massive double digits?

Well, be patient, because the inflationary lag effect of this “conflict” in Iran (whatever you think of it) is racing toward your shores at an increasing wave height.

From Inflation to Gold: Keep it Simple

These inflation signals, as well as the bond signals above, and the stock mania already covered, are all just flashing neon-indicators of surreal “Uh-Oh” in the risk asset markets and an historical moment of currency debasement in your wallets and homes.

This is not fable but tragic fact.

Gold, whatever its current price, is positioning itself for a lengthy, secular and historical move north. It has a finite supply and infinite duration and is thus far more honest than the unlimited supply and finite duration of sovereign bonds and paper currencies.

For those who still think gold has not done enough, compare its recent history here:

…to the same history of global paper currencies here:

It’s really just that simple.

Gold will continue to climb because a global paper currency system distorted by decades of debt, dishonesty, desperation and debasement has nowhere to go but down.

For wealth preservation investors who understand the math of bonds and the history of debt, this simplicity provides for clarity in a time of fog, sanity in a time of madness, and wealth protection in a time of wealth destruction.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 05/31/2026 – 11:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/aCb5cFw Tyler Durden

Psychic Soldiers, Mind Readers, and Dolphin Drones: The Cold War’s Weird Paranormal History


Against a red background, a soldier with a black beret is seated, with an image of a dolphin behind him, and there are circles emanating from around his face. | Illustration: Midjourney

In the February 2019 issue of Armeiiskii Sbornik, the Russian Ministry of Defense’s official magazine, there is an article titled “Supersoldiers for the Wars of the Future.” The article claims, among other things, that the Soviet and Russian militaries learned to psychically control dolphins, disrupt radio and television broadcasts, and crash computers. 

These psychic experiments began in 1924, when Gleb Bokii, head of the special section of the Soviet secret police, opened a secret laboratory at 21 Kuznetsky Bridge in Moscow. With the help of Alexander Barchenko, his spiritual guru, he conducted top-secret experiments on hypnotism, brainwashing, and mind reading.

These exploits were far from the Special Section’s most eccentric. Bokii hosted wild orgies in a secret dacha in the suburbs of Moscow. Invited guests farmed, sunbathed, cooked, and ate together in the nude before engaging in group sex. Barchenko planned an expedition to Tibet to find the legendary Buddhist Kingdom of Shambhala. He believed that an ancient civilization hiding beneath the Earth’s surface, in Tibet, held advanced scientific knowledge that could be used to accelerate the path to communism. When Soviet Foreign Minister Grigory Chicherin heard about the proposed expedition, he quashed it and greenlit a separate expedition with the more prosaic goal of probing anti-British feeling in Lhasa.

Bokii and Barchenko’s Psychic Experiments Sparked an Arms Race

The Special Section kicked off a century-long paranormal arms race—with surprising legacies that can still be felt today. 

The Russian fascination with exotic spirituality predates the Soviet era. Russian orientalism flourished after the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, which granted the czar lands that formerly belonged to China’s Qing dynasty. Russian explorers and academics ventured into Inner Asia, and further afield into Xinjiang and Tibet. The intelligentsia of St. Petersburg snapped up their travel accounts, ethnographic studies, and spiritual guidebooks. In the imperial capital, Eastern spirituality met European new age trends: hollow-earth theory and meditation, reincarnation and tantric sex, Lamaism and occult science.

Bokii was active in the Ukrainian student circles of late-imperial St. Petersburg, where romantic nationalism and revolutionary socialism flourished underground. It is likely that this is where he first encountered ideas of Eastern spirituality and the occult. Barchenko, also of Ukrainian heritage, was a failed medical student turned provincial mystic and self-proclaimed scientist. Both underground movements—socialism and spiritualism—surfaced with the collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the Bolshevik coup d’état in 1917.

The Russian Revolution was not just a change in government. When the boundaries of the church, the czar, and the empire vanished, the revolutionaries believed they could reconstruct reality itself. Alongside the unprecedented violence, the early Soviet state was a laboratory testing the ideas that had been banned or suppressed in the Russian Empire. Bokii and Barchenko were at the forefront of this revolution. Their antics are described in Andrei Znamenski’s Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia.

One psychic skill Bokii and Barchenko undoubtedly lacked, however, was the ability to predict the future—neither foresaw that they would be executed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during the Great Terror. But their experiments have had a long afterlife, including in the United States.

The CIA Responds With Stargate Project ‘Remote Viewing’ Tests

At some point in the mid-20th century, knowledge of Soviet psychic experiments reached America. In 1950, American journalist and CIA officer Edward Hunter introduced the Chinese term “brainwashing” to English speakers. In articles, a testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (where he strongly implied that the United States should have nuked North Korea), and a book titled Brain-Washing in Red China: The Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds, he claimed that the Soviet secret police had taught Chinese communists advanced interrogation techniques, which were then used against American prisoners of war in the Korean War.

In 1972, Hal Puthoff, an American electrical engineer with a Ph.D. from Stanford University, began conducting “parapsychological” experiments at the Stanford Research Institute. In Puthoff’s telling, he was approached by the CIA, which told him that the Soviets were conducting similar research, and so the CIA began sponsoring his activities. This became the Stargate Project, a covert research program investigating how psychic phenomena could be used by the United States for military and intelligence purposes—later immortalized in the 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats, adapted from the book of the same name by Jon Ronson.

The results of Stargate are contested. In a 2005 interview with GQ, former President Jimmy Carter claimed that a psychic woman from California who worked with the CIA was able to locate a crashed plane—referred to as a Soviet Tupolev Tu-22 bomber in other sources—in an African  jungle. The woman entered a trance and wrote down a series of coordinates, which the Americans used to retrieve the plane. Carter wondered if this was “just a gross coincidence.” On an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Puthoff claimed that a CIA “remote viewer” reported the existence of the Soviet Typhoon-class submarine before it was public knowledge. Remote viewers were also said to have been involved in an attempt to use psychic powers during the Iran hostage crisis.

But are any of these stories true? A 1983 Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded that data from the Stargate Project was “highly variable” and “mixed with much extraneous or inaccurate information.” These concerns led to Project Grill Flame, an attempt to establish the reality and repeatability of the remote viewing phenomenon, assess its potential military and intelligence applications, investigate the psychic capabilities of adversaries, and develop countermeasures.

Grill Flame concluded that “remote viewing is a real phenomenon” and “a potential threat to US national security exists from foreign achievements in psychoenergetics.” Project documents also alleged that, in the Soviet Union, “this research is well funded and receives high-level government backing.” 

Russia Claims Soldiers Learned To Read Minds

Unfortunately, few documents from the Soviet side of the psychic Cold War have seen the light of day—but a handful of stories indicating their existence have emerged.

In a 2015 interview in Kommersant, Nikolai Patrushev, then secretary of the Russian Security Council, claimed former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright thought that Siberia and the Far East did not belong to Russia and that Americans were jealous of Russia’s resource wealth. Albright never publicly said anything along these lines. Patrushev’s “source” turned out to be a KGB-trained psychic named Georgy Rogozin who, armed with nothing but a photograph of Albright, penetrated her mind and read her thoughts. It just so happened that at that precise moment, she was thinking about carving up Russia. 

Rogozin was the deputy of Alexander Korzhakov, head of the Presidential Security Service, and advised him on all matters parapsychological. Reincarnations of Bokii and Barchenko, perhaps?

The aforementioned Russian Ministry of Defense magazine claims that Russian soldiers have learned to read documents locked in safes (regardless of what languages they were in), psychically identify terrorists, and go days without eating, drinking, or sleeping. Some of these abilities were ostensibly deployed during the Chechen Wars in the 1990s. One of these abilities was, of course, mind reading.

What Drives America’s and Russia’s Interest in Paranormal Research?

What are we to make of all this? Just as the Soviet interest in psychic espionage came after the overthrow of the czar, modern Russian interest in paranormal warfare was an aftershock of the collapse of communism. Joseph Kellner’s The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse details a rise in mysticism and new age religious movements in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s, like those of the early 20th century. The fall of empires gives birth to all kinds of bizarre belief systems. 

The American interest in psychic research seems to be a case of superpower paranoia. The dawn of the Cold War in America was accompanied by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R–Wis.) panic about Soviet spies, in which Hunter took part. A decade later, paranoia about Soviet moles drove former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton to repeatedly purge the agency. The United States conducted military interventions in search of communists all over the world—perhaps most destructively in Vietnam. And the CIA consistently overestimated Soviet capabilities, notably failing to foresee the Soviet collapse. Of course, the Soviet Union had its own paranoid overreactions: there was the omnipresent police state, the harebrained intervention in Korea, the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia (punctuated by the Cuban Missile Crisis), a U.S.-averted scheme to nuke China in 1969, and Afghanistan. Amid all this, was funding psychic research really so crazy?

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