Trump’s Overhaul Of The Federal Bureaucracy Backed By Recent Survey Research

Trump’s Overhaul Of The Federal Bureaucracy Backed By Recent Survey Research

Authored by Elizabeth Sheld via RealClearPolicy,

Since returning to office for a second term, President Trump has taken aggressive action to overhaul the federal bureaucracy. After a week in office some of Trump actions towards federal workers include: removing employment protections for civil servants, firing17 inspectors general, reassigning career officials in the Department of Justice, sending home 160 staffers from the National Security Agency and firing the lawyers at the Department of Justice who prosecuted Trump under special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump’s efforts have been met with hostility and criticism from the media and predictably from his political opposition.

Opinionist Phillip Bump at the Washington Post  writes Trump’s actions are “a sharp disruption of how the government works.” Bump laments that “Trump is clearly interested in…seeding loyalists throughout the executive branch.”  At Axios, Zachary Basu and Dave Lawler explain that Trump is “transform[ing] the federal bureaucracy into an army of loyalists.” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters “This gleeful hatred of the federal workforce will lead to nothing good.”

But are Trump’s efforts to transform the government workforce justified by a real concern that his policy platforms–which earned him a presidential victory–will be thwarted by anonymous bureaucrats?

Recent survey research suggests Trump is right to be concerned. Napolitan Institute found that just 45% of Federal Government Managers would follow a legal order from President Trump if they thought the order was bad policy and instead would do what they thought was right. Among managers who voted for Kamala Harris that figure jumps to nearly three-quarters (69%.) The survey also found a majority (52%) of the federal managerial class voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Those current survey results are consistent with events that developed in the first Trump Administration, where we learned how bureaucratic opinions on “right” policy interfered with the power of the duly elected executive officer.

Former diplomat Jim Jeffrey revealed that his team routinely mislead the Trump Administration after the president had ordered the withdrawal of troops from Syria. “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey said. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview.

While Jeffrey’s revelation came after Trump had left office from his first term, there was a real time revelation of a policy conflict between President Trump and the “interagency consensus” that would become foundation of the first Trump impeachment.

The policy difference originated from a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when Trump requested Zelensky open an investigation into possible corruption at the Burisma energy company before receiving a military aid package. Trump’s 2020 election opponent Joe Biden’s son was on the board of Burisma.

A central part of the subsequent impeachment case was testimony from Lt. Alexander Vindman (ret.), who had been detailed to the National Security Council and present for the phone call. Vindman explained in his opening statement to the House impeachment committee he was concerned the president chose to wield his executive authority in a way that was at odds with the “interagency consensus.” Vindman testified “…a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency,” Vindman said in his opening statement. “This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”  But Vindman and the “interagency consensus” have no authority to determine or execute their interpretation of U.S. government policy or in other words, “do what they thought was right.”

The New York Times editorial board supported and encouraged the usurpation of executive authority in favor of the “right” bureaucratic opinion by praising the government bureaucracy overriding or ignoring President Trump’s lawful authority. “…patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others…have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.”

There is no way to know exactly how extensive bureaucratic resistance interfered with Trump’s ability to govern in his first term, but we do know 46% of current Federal Government Managers would ignore the legal order of President Trump and instead do what was “right.” Trump is making the correct move to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in order to deliver on the campaign promises that got him back in office.

Elizabeth Sheld is a veteran political strategist and pollster who has worked on campaigns and public interest affairs.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 12:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/V85EWl3 Tyler Durden

NYT, NBC, NPR, Politico Evicted From Pentagon Press Offices In Favor Of Trump-Friendly Outlets

NYT, NBC, NPR, Politico Evicted From Pentagon Press Offices In Favor Of Trump-Friendly Outlets

The innumerable consequences of the 2024 election keep gushing forth at a pace that’s hard to keep up with. Here’s a new gem: On Friday evening, the Department of Defense told The New York Times, NBC News, National Public Radio and Politico that they have two weeks to vacate their long-held and treasured offices inside the Pentagon. 

Three of their four replacements skew decidedly to the Trump-friendly sector of the political spectrum: the New York Post, One America News Network and Breitbart. Throwing a bone to leftists, HuffPost news snagged Politico’s old slot. The Pentagon Press Association said it was “greatly troubled by this unprecedented move by DOD to single out highly professional media.”

The short-notice evictions from the hallowed “Correspondents’ Corridor” spring from the launch of a “new annual media rotation program for [the] Pentagon Press Corps,” according to a memorandum sent by DOD spokesman John Ullyot on Friday and posted by CNN Pentagon correspondent Haley Britzky. The program seeks to “broaden access to the limited space…to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalist value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon,” said Ullyot.

The booted outlets will retain their status as full members of the Pentagon Press Corps, entitled to attend briefings and be considered for travel with officials. “The only change will be giving up their physical workspaces in the building to allow new outlets to have their turn to become resident members of the Pentagon Press Corps,” wrote Ullyot. 

An excerpt from the DOD announcement that four of the left’s favorite news outlets are being kicked out of their Pentagon press offices

Make no mistake: Those physical workspaces are a big deal. “Kicking out reporters HURTS coverage. If you can’t file your stories from inside the building you are disadvantaged. If you don’t have a work space you are disadvantaged,” wrote former Pentagon Press Corps VP Kevin Baron on X. That commentary was part of a thread condemning the development as “the erasure of journalism at the Pentagon.” 

The Pentagon Press Corps comprises more than two dozen outlets. The program calls for one outlet from each press medium to rotate from the premises every year. As if Breitbart’s invitation into the Pentagon weren’t enough to outrage establishment media types, the fact that it’s taking the “radio” slot from NPR only compounded the indignation. In a Friday night article, CNN’s Brian Stelter called foul:  

“Breitbart – a well-known web site for pro-Trump coverage and commentary – barely has a radio operation of its own. The word ‘radio’ doesn’t appear on its home page at all. The media outlet has a distribution deal with SiriusXM and one big podcast, Breitbart News Daily. Its footprint pales in comparison to NPR, which provides news coverage for local stations all across the country.”

In another hilarious, leftist-pummeling swap, One America News Network will be sliding into NBC’s slot. Expressing sympathetic disbelief, CNN’s Britzky emphasized that NBC “has an entire booth w/ cameras etc.” NBC News promised to soldier on, telling Reuters,

“We’re disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades. Despite the significant obstacles this presents to our ability to gather and report news in the national public interest, we will continue to report with the same integrity and rigor NBC News always has.”

For the many Americans who are still angry about legacy media’s aggressive role in working to derail Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, Politico’s punishment is perhaps the most satisfying. The outlet took the lead in spreading the consequential, Deep State lie that Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” — first reported by the New York Post — was part of a Russian misinformation scheme. That lie helped ignite unprecedented censorship of the Post’s coverage. Fittingly, the Post — the country’s longest-running newspaper — is among the outlets graduating to space in the Pentagon. 

This infamous 2020 Politico article paved the way for broad social-media censorship of the New York Post’s legitimate reporting of Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop contents 

“The National Press Club is deeply concerned by the Defense Department’s decision to remove certain media organizations from their dedicated spaces in the Pentagon,” club president Mike Balsamo said in a statement. “Any action that restricts the ability of journalists to report on the operations of the U.S. government should alarm all who value transparency and press freedom.” Balsamo pointed to the Pentagon press corps’ history of “diversity,” yet the announced swaps inarguably increase viewpoint diversity. 

The Pentagon’s shot across the bow of legacy media follows Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s announcement that the White House will significantly broaden media access, with an emphasis on alternative media. “The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media that are seated in this room,” she said in her first press conference. 

Never a dull moment in Trump II: The Revenge. What’s next? 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 11:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/Zv2boPt Tyler Durden

The Hidden Dangers Of AI In Finance

The Hidden Dangers Of AI In Finance

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

Jim Rickards recently published a compelling article on AI risk for Insider Intel subscribers.

In it, Jim discusses a different way in which AI could crash markets. One that is totally separate from the DeepSeek, China, and NVIDIA angle we’ve been covering for the past week.

Today we’re going to review his key points and explore them in detail.

Here’s Jim:

The ultimate danger arises when a large cohort of asset managers controlling trillions of dollars of assets all employ the same or similar AI algorithms in a risk management role. An individual robot working for a particular asset manager tells the manager to sell stocks in a crashing market. In some cases, the robot may be authorized to initiate a sale without further human intervention.

Taken separately, that may be the best course of action for a single manager. In the aggregate, a selling cascade with no offsetting buy orders from active managers, specialists or speculators takes stock prices straight down. Amplification through feedback loops makes matters worse.

Individual AI systems have various trigger points for selling. Not all will be triggered at once, yet all will be triggered eventually as selling begets more selling, which triggers more automated systems that add to the selling pressure, and so on. There are no contrarians among the robots. Building sentiment into systems is still at a primitive stage.

This is a good example of why I read Jim’s work. He always approaches issues from a unique and thoughtful angle.

This risk is clearly real. We are now at the point where trading firms are integrating LLMs (AI models) into their proprietary algorithms.

What happens if a majority of trading firms are using the same AI software to drive their trading? For example, it’s likely that many money managers have integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT models into their algos.

Now that DeepSeek R1 is the new shiny object, maybe a significant portion of firms are switching to that model.

Perhaps DeepSeek approaches trading in a completely different way. What happens if ChatGPT interprets data bullishly, but DeepSeek sees the same information as bearish?

This means that the release of a new cutting-edge model could actually change the market’s direction. It’s newer, it’s smarter, and it thinks stocks are overvalued by 40%! Sell!

Or perhaps even more disturbing, what if all the leading models come to very similar conclusions? Everybody deciding to buy or sell at the same time is a recipe for trouble. It would magnify moves on the way up and down, and could create a nasty feedback loop (as Jim points out).

70% of Markets

Today algorithmic (software-driven) trading accounts for an estimated 65-70% of American stock market volume. And this number is only increasing.

We don’t know how deeply AI models (specifically LLMs) are integrated into trading algorithms at this moment. Investment software is notoriously secretive. But my guess is it’s a significant part of the market and growing fast.

For example, we can assume that large trading firms are using LLMs/GPTs for market sentiment analysis. They’re reading and digesting social media like LinkedIn and X to figure out if the public is scared or greedy. This data is then integrated into core algos.

AI sentiment analysis has the potential to be a very useful tool for traders. However, the risks Jim mentions do apply. We will likely see increased “herding” behavior as a result.

Sentiment analysis is one thing. But are we at the point where LLMs are actually making trading decisions at a large percentage of firms? My guess is that if we aren’t there yet, we will be soon. Using AI models is an order of magnitude cheaper than hiring Harvard MBAs and Princeton PhDs.

As I mentioned earlier, AI users tend to latch onto the latest, hottest model. ChatGPT dominated early on, then Anthropic’s Claude became the trending new thing. Now, China’s DeepSeek is making waves.

There’s a very real risk of herding reactions if everyone is trading off similar analysis. And if everyone is constantly switching to the hot new model, there are countless ways in which it could affect markets going forward.

Mr. Rickards closes his piece with a powerful metaphor:

“You might want to re-read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The novel centers on the creature made by Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The term “creature” is not incidental; it’s intended to evoke the term Creator. Contrary to movie portrayals of the creature as a brutish, homicidal monster, the literary version was actually highly intelligent and learned French, read Shakespeare, and was able to engage in long philosophical discourses.

Of course, such natural language processing and self-learning are exactly what AI is about. The creature can be thought of as the first fully realized AI system in literature. The central dilemma in Frankenstein was not whether the creature was intelligent (it was). The dilemma was whether it had a soul. You can draw your own conclusions. My view was that the creature did not have a soul … but perhaps it deserved one. Now we face the same dilemma with AI.”

One way to prepare is to hedge the digital world with the analog (gold and silver), as Jim suggested yesterday. I especially like silver here (which is +3.6% on the day as I write this and looking good).

*  *  *

Insider Intel subscribers can read Jim’s full AI analysis here. And if this topic interests you, I strongly recommend checking out Jim’s new book: MoneyGPT – AI and the Threat to the Global Economy. The book couldn’t be more relevant.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 10:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/F3pQV6W Tyler Durden

Stablecoin Volumes Surpassed Visa & Mastercard Combined In 2024

Stablecoin Volumes Surpassed Visa & Mastercard Combined In 2024

Stablecoins, which play a major role in the global cryptocurrency ecosystem, saw massive adoption in 2024, with their transfer volumes beating those of Visa and Mastercard combined.

The annual stablecoin transfer volume reached $27.6 trillion last year, surpassing the combined volumes of Visa and Mastercard by 7.7%, according to a Jan. 31 report by crypto exchange CEX.io.

As CoinTelegraph’s Helen Partz reports below, one of the major catalysts amplifying stablecoin transfer volume has been the increased use of bots, especially on Solana and Base, CEX.io lead analyst Illia Otychenko said.

Tether’s USDt, the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, accounted for 79.7% of stablecoin trading volume on average, strengthening its position amid surging stablecoin reserves on centralized exchanges.

Stablecoins beat Visa and Mastercard despite losing share in the market

Stablecoin supply saw a significant surge of 59% in 2024, reaching 1% of the US dollar supply. Despite beating Visa and Mastercard in volumes, stablecoins lost 13.5% in share within the total market cap, CEX.io noted.

The market share drop mainly occurred in the third quarter of 2024 amid decreased activity in the broader crypto market.

2024 quarterly transfer volumes of stablecoins vs. Visa and Mastercard. Source: CEX.io

Regarding their overall growth, CEX.io’s Otychenko said:

“Stablecoins experienced a surge in both supply and volume following the post-election spike in crypto activity, surpassing Visa and Mastercard by over two and three times, respectively, in Q4 alone.”

Otychenko pointed to trends indicating that regular users are increasingly using stablecoins for savings and remittance transfers as a cost-efficient way to transfer value compared to traditional payment methods.

“However, stablecoins’ role as the lifeblood of crypto trading and DeFi interactions currently far outweighs this trend,” he added.

Bot activity accounted for 70% of stablecoin transfer volume

Trading bot activity comprised a massive share of stablecoin transaction volumes in 2024, which CEX.io estimated to account for 70%. On Solana and Base, the bot transactions accounted for 98% of the volume.

“High bot activity within the network doesn’t necessarily mean ‘worse’ transfer volume,” Otychenko said, adding that bots are often used to improve market efficiency through arbitrage or cover gas fees by paymasters.

Bots can be used for harmful practices like frontrunning, sandwich attacks, pump-and-dump schemes and snipping liquidity pools. Still, the bot dominance in stablecoins could also represent the maturation of certain networks, he noted.

Ethereum and Tron retain dominance, but other networks build up momentum

Ethereum and Tron continued to dominate as the primary networks for stablecoins in 2024, accounting for more than 83% of the market by the end of the year.

At the same time, their combined share fell from 90% at the beginning of the year, pointing to the ongoing diversification across other networks, particularly Solana, Arbitrum, Base and Aptos.

Stablecoin market cap distribution by network. Source: CEX.io

“This shift was particularly pronounced for Tron, which saw its market share decline significantly from 38% to 29%,” the report noted.

Ethereum’s stablecoin market cap surged by 65% in 2024, reaching a new all-time high. This growth was partly driven by a reduction in transaction fees following the Dencun upgrade in March, as well as post-election optimism in the United States, Otychenko said.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 09:55

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/1BoMmvU Tyler Durden

Russia May Lift Restrictions On Nukes If US Goes Through With Trump Missile Defense Order

Russia May Lift Restrictions On Nukes If US Goes Through With Trump Missile Defense Order

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Russia may expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons if the US goes ahead with a major missile defense program that’s been ordered by President Trump, Russia’s TASS news agency reported on Thursday.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday to develop an “Iron Dome for America” that can intercept ballistic, hypersonic, and other types of advanced missiles, unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range crude rockets. The order also calls for an improvement in missile defense to protect US troops deployed in other countries and the territory of US allies.

Via Associated Press

Writing in the Russian journal International Affairs, Grigory Mashkov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special ambassador, said the US’s global missile defense posture was already a threat to Russia and said expanding it further “puts an end to the prospects of strategic offensive arms reduction and preservation of strategic stability on the previous terms.”

Mashkov said that it is “not ruled out that in the current conditions of confrontation with the West, with its policy of inflicting strategic damage on Russia, we may face the need for moving away from restrictions on nuclear and missile arsenals in favor of their quantitative and qualitative increase.”

He said one possible retaliatory measure Russia could take is adjusting its position on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other commitments Moscow has made related to the transparency of its nuclear stockpile.

“We will have to take a fresh look at all our commitments in the area of strengthening transparency and confidence-building measures, and suspend discussions on nuclear risks and threats, which are becoming empty talk in the context of growing efforts by the West to undermine strategic and non-strategic nuclear deterrent forces,” Mashkov said.

Trump’s executive order clashes with his recent comments about seeking “denuclearization” with Russia and China since it’s clear the development of a major new missile defense system would spark a new arms race.

Mashkov warned that an arms race was already underway. “A missile arms race is already in full swing. So is the large-scale modernization of nuclear arsenals and WMD delivery vehicles. The militarization of space is gaining momentum, which, in the near future, is likely to become another scene of military confrontation,” he said.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 09:20

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

Sweden Lets 5 Suspects Held In Killing Of Quran-Burning Activist Go Free

Sweden Lets 5 Suspects Held In Killing Of Quran-Burning Activist Go Free

Iraqi refugee and anti-Islam activist Salwan Momika was shot dead overnight on Wednesday, shockingly as he was in the middle of a live-stream in his apartment.

Five people had immediately been arrested in connection with the murder. Suspicion has been raised over the obvious likelihood that Islamic hardliners took his life, given Momika had become well-known for holding regular Quran-burning events. He would also upload videos of this ultra-provocative religious offense towards Islam to the internet.

It’s unclear what specific evidence police had on the five suspects, for example whether they were actually apprehended at the apartment grounds where the killing took place. The speed at which they were arrested, within hours of Momika’s death being revealed, strongly suggests they may have been linked to the scene.

WANA via Reuters

But shockingly, the suspects who have not been named, have been released. “A Swedish prosecutor said on Friday he had decided to release from detention five suspects who were held over the killing on Wednesday of an anti-Islam campaigner,” Reuters confirms.

Just a day prior, here’s how Anna Westberg from Stockholm police’s media center presented the initial arrests: “Five people were arrested overnight in connection with the murder incident.”

The suspects’ release is sure to arouse deep anger and frustration among the European right, given it has the appearance of pro-Islamic appeasement. 

Meanwhile the police are presenting it as a case of the evidence being thin:

While five suspects were initially apprehended by police, the suspicion against them had weakened as the investigation progressed, Senior Prosecutor Rasmus Oman said in a statement on Friday.

The five were, however, still subject to further investigation, Oman said.

Also interesting is that Swedish police have raised the possibility of foreign involvement in the killing.

This also as Reuters highlights the following past statement out of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2023 that people who desecrate the Koran should face the “most severe punishment” and that Sweden had “gone into battle-array for war on the Muslim world” by supporting those responsible.

Salwan Momika, AFP/Getty Images

Momika’s Quran-burning events have long been widely condemned in Europe and internationally (especially Middle East leaders) as incitement; however, the slain activist always defended what he was doing as acts of free expression.

His native Iraq was especially outraged that Swedish authorities allowed and protected the Quran-burning events. However, a Swedish court was expected to rule on whether it is protected speech.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 08:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/1tIKD28 Tyler Durden

The Net-Zero Gap: Global Green Spending Is Falling Short Of Targets

The Net-Zero Gap: Global Green Spending Is Falling Short Of Targets

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

  • Global green energy investment hit a record $2.1 trillion in 2024, up 11% from 2023, but growth has slowed.

  • To achieve net-zero by 2050, annual investment needs to reach $5.6 trillion, meaning current levels are only 37% of what’s required.

  • While China leads in green spending, investment in the US has stagnated, and it has fallen in the EU and UK.

Global investments in green energy solutions topped $2 trillion last year, for the first time ever, but the world needs to pour in $5.6 trillion each year into low-carbon energy to get on track for global net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement, BloombergNEF said in a new report on Thursday.

Last year, green energy investments reached a record high globally, but the pace of growth has slowed from the 2021-2023 period, according to BNEF’s report Energy Transition Investment Trends 2025.

The world invested a total of $2.1 trillion in low-carbon energy in 2024, up by 11% compared to 2023, the report found.

However, the pace of growth has slowed. In the years 2021 to 2023, global investment in clean energy jumped by between 24% and 29% each year, according to BNEF.

Electrified transport continued to be the top segment for low-carbon energy investment, drawing in $757 billion in 2024.

China remained the single biggest market with $818 billion of investment, up by 20% from 2023 and increasing investment in all sectors.

China’s total investment last year was greater than the combined investment of the U.S., the EU, and the UK.

However, investment was stagnant in the U.S., at $338 billion, and fell in both the EU and UK, hitting $381 billion and $65.3 billion, respectively, BNEF said.

The research provider also noted that energy transition investment will have to average $5.6 trillion each year from 2025 to 2030, in order to get on track for global net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement.

The current investment level of $2.1 trillion implies that the world is only at 37% of what is required to get on track, BNEF said.

“There is still much more that needs to be done, especially in emerging areas like industrial decarbonization, hydrogen and carbon capture, in order to reach global net-zero goals,” commented Albert Cheung, Deputy CEO of BNEF.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 08:10

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/nGD9y8s Tyler Durden

US Transfers 90 Patriot Missiles From Israel To Ukraine In Pivot

US Transfers 90 Patriot Missiles From Israel To Ukraine In Pivot

This week defense officials told Axios that the United States has begun transferring Patriot air defense interceptors from storage in Israel for eventual delivery to Ukraine.

Some 90 Patriot missiles will first be sent from Israel to Poland, after which they’ll go to Ukraine as part of stepped-up efforts of Washington to boost Ukraine’s air defenses. Russian missiles and drones have been pummeling Ukrainian cities, and especially power and energy infrastructure, on a near daily basis.

The Patriot system has become somewhat irrelevant or outdated in Israel since it was first introduced there some three decades ago. Israel is now reliant on the Iron Dome and its other domestically developed systems.

Via US Army/National Interest

The Patriots have instead long been used for training purposes in Israel, with the bulk of the arsenal having been relegated to storage. 

Axios notes that “Last April, the Israeli Air Force officially decommissioned the Patriot air defense system, more than 30 years after it was first given to Israel during the first Gulf War.”

From there, the prior Biden administration began working on a plan to refurbish the stored missiles and give them to Ukraine.

But Israel was deeply wary at the time of poking or crossing Russia:

  • For several months, Israel dragged its feet out of concern Russia would retaliate, perhaps by supplying sophisticated weapons to Iran.
  • A Ukrainian official tells Axios Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take his calls on that issue for weeks.
  • But in late September, Netanyahu finally approved the idea, an Israeli official says.

Israel will no doubt be much more cooperative with the US on Ukraine in the wake of December 8. That’s when longtime leader Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, and with the end of his rule Iranian forces have pulled out of the country.

Additionally, Russia is busy packing up its two military bases on the Syrian coast. The bases’ ultimate status is anything but clear at this point, but much heavy equipment has been set up at a Libyan port.

While Assad was in power, and Russian presence inside Syria was significant, Israel had to maintain a delicate balance in its relations with Moscow and Washington. Throughout nearly three years of the Ukraine war, Israel has rebuffed calls from Kiev to send weaponry. 

Ukraine has tried to argue that the presence of Iranian drones used by Russian forces is a threat which Israel can help counter. It’s looking like Israel may begin boosting some level of support to the Zelensky government in coordination with the US, also as the truce in Gaza is holding.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 07:35

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

France Won’t Fight The US Over Greenland

France Won’t Fight The US Over Greenland

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

It’s not going to risk breaking up NATO, let alone over a war that it’ll certainly lose, no matter how tough its Foreign Minister is trying to sound as part of a ploy to present France as the EU’s leader.

Politico quoted French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot as saying that his country had discussed the possible deployment of troops to Greenland with Denmark in order to protect it from Trump’s claims, but Copenhagen didn’t want to move forward with Paris’ proposal. He then shrugged off the scenario of the US invading to make it seem like the aforementioned disclosure and its outcome were no big deal. It therefore appeared as though he only wanted to emphasize that France will protect the EU’s borders.

The reality though is that France won’t fight the US over Greenland if it came to that.

First, it would destroy NATO’s unity, which could lead to the second consequence of the US pulling out of the bloc and leaving the Europeans on their own to face Russia.

Third, France would certainly lose, so the fourth point is that there’s no reason risking all this for Denmark’s sake. And finally, Greenlanders might ultimately vote for independence, thus making France’s intervention a neocolonial war with the US.

As was assessed in late December, “The Panama Canal & Greenland Are Trump’s For The Taking If He Really Wants Them”, but it remains to be seen if he’s willing to use military force to that end or if his claims to both are just a negotiating tactic to respectively expel Chinese influence and keep it at bay. There’s also the possibility that he wants to turn them into protectorates, whether formally or otherwise, with unclear privileges for American citizens, companies, and/or the military.

In any case, these are important enough imperatives for the US to seriously consider the use of force if necessary depending on how negotiations over each might go, which stands in stark contrast to France’s interest in Greenland. France only wanted to reaffirm the importance of protecting the EU’s borders and present itself as the bloc’s leader amidst its traditional rival with Germany in this regard. It lacks the political will to actually make good on this pledge against the US if ever requested by Denmark to do so.

What this entire episode illustrates though is that Trump’s claim to Greenland has prompted panic among the Europeans.

They never expected anything of the sort to happen and are now at a loss for how to respond in the event that he applies more pressure upon Denmark. No matter how highly some European countries like France still think of themselves, the fact of the matter is that they’re still the US’ junior partners and even outright vassals in most cases. They depend more on the US than the inverse.

For that reason, it’s highly unlikely that any European troops in Greenland would do anything more than fire into the air in the event that Trump authorizes the military to seize that island, since using lethal force against American troops would spark an unprecedented intra-NATO crisis. The power dynamics between them are such that the European members of the bloc have become convinced that they need the US to protect it against Russia and therefore won’t risk being abandoned by the US over Greenland.

It also shouldn’t be forgotten that France never ended up conventionally intervening in Ukraine last year despite threatening to do so. That’s because it couldn’t secure Article 5 guarantees from the US. Since France obeyed the much weaker Biden Administration and showed that it wasn’t really as gung-ho about fighting Russia as it made it seem, it’ll predictably obey the much stronger Trump Administration and not dare to militarily challenge it over Greenland, which is much less significant for the EU than Ukraine is.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/01/2025 – 07:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/37rGUNK Tyler Durden

Escobar: Dancing To Trump’s Disco Inferno

Escobar: Dancing To Trump’s Disco Inferno

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

In the late 1970s Donald Trump, in his early thirties, cocky as ever and recently married to Ivana in 1977, could be seen on and off hitting the electric New York City night life especially at glamour/hard partying disco dive Studio 54.

A certified dancefloor killer at Studio 54 was Disco Inferno by The Trammps, mixed by dance wizard Tom Moulton, released in 1976, two years before perennial Trump favorite YMCA – now resuscitated to global furor as the soundtrack to Trump 2.0 dance moves.

For all practical purposes, Trump is now the DJ turning the whole planet into a Disco Inferno (“folks are screaming, out of control”), as everything is “so entertaining when the boogie started to explode”. And the Trump “boogie” serially exploding is no less than the non-stop amplified sound of theater, bombast and uncontrolled chaos.

The spectacle of Trump’s sound and fury – a torrent of executive orders, photo ops, carefully scripted illusionist tricks, breathless headlines – signifying…something veils the same old imperial mindset, now blasting out in the open as a weaponized three-ring circus. Stagecraft invariably trumps substance as every smirk and scowl is media-weaponized to the enthralled, bloodthirsty arena spectators.

Mr. Disco Inferno won a mini-trade war with Colombia in only 10 hours, after posting an image depicting himself as an Al Capone-style Mafia boss in pinstripe suit and fedora hat, standing next to a sign that reads “FAFO”, which means “F**k Around and Find Out”.

He will win the proxy war in Ukraine. In 24 hours. Sorry, in 100 days. Sorry, maybe more. And “if they don’t settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I’m going to put massive tariffs on Russia and massive taxes and also big sanctions.” Why? Because, “you know, I love the Russian people.”

He brags that the United States “has the largest amount of oil and gas” (it does not) and is going to use it; he will “ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down oil prices” (they will say no); because if “the oil price came down, the war in Ukraine would end immediately” (this is definitely not a “cause and effect” case).

He will make “the largest tax cuts in US history.” The US can ensure LNG supplies to Europe (of course, at a huge mark-up); the US “does not need Canada to make cars, as well as Canadian oil and gas”;the United States’ “massive oil and gas reserves” will allow it to “become a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of AI and cryptocurrencies”.

Buried in the sound and fury is the fact that the US can count on a steady stream of gas for domestic needs but that turns problematic when it comes to exports. Hence the expropriation obsession – as in outright Empire of Plunder: the US badly needs Iraqi, Syrian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Iranian and Russian reserves. Because even if carefully exported, there is insufficient liquification facilities in the US to supply the EU. And that’s why Europe remains largely dependent on Russian LNG and other sources since the sabotage of the Nordstreams.

Satisfaction…came in a chain reaction

Yes: there is incoming blood on the dancefloor.

To get into the real groove of Disco Inferno, we might as well focus on the top three challenges for Trump 2.0:

  1. the tech war against China;

  2. the geoeconomics war against the Global Majority;

  3. and the proxy war in Ukraine.

The irruption of Hangzhou-based Chinese tech start-up DeepSeek on the global stage was something for the ages, instantly decimating the spun-to-death “small yard, high fence” American strategy to smash China’s tech advances.

DeepSeek should indeed be seen as the “biggest dark horse” in the open-source Large Language Model (LLM) domain, now identified from Jakarta to Wall Street and Silicon Valley as potentially Beijing’s secret weapon in the AI war with the US. Even Mr. Disco Inferno was forced to admit DeepSeek’s breakthrough as a “wake-up call”.

At the heart of the matter we find two clashing models: neoliberal hypercapitalism versus meritocratic socialism.

The head of DeepSeek, Liang Wenfeng, is a fascinating geek. His given name (Wenfeng) means “Vanguard of Culture”; one of the meanings of his family name (Liang) is “bridge”. So he may be seen – as he is in China – as Mr. Bridge to the Vanguard of Culture (here’s Mr. Bridge in an excellent interview , in Chinese; please use auto-translate).

Mr. Bridge pulled a spectacular Sun Tzu on US sanctions over exporting advanced graphic processing units (GPUs), especially Nvidia’s advanced chips. Moreover, Chinese Big Tech firms cannot compete with the financial firepower of US Big Tech.

So the answer was to develop cost-efficient powerful LLM models, without access to literally hundreds of thousands of Nvidia H100s chips. DeepSeek stated they had used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and only $5.6million to train a model with 671 billion (italics mine) parameters: that’s a very small fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train models of the same size.

And everything was developed locally, via scores of PHDs from the top Chinese universities – Peking, Tsinghua, Beihang – and not American Ivy League experts.

So in a nutshell DeepSeek is a 100% Chinese LLM companywhich was capable to come up with open-source models and a free downloadable app for every consumer to use. That in itself destroys the current American-imposed neoliberal hypercapitalist AI business model.

The rules of the game indeed are being rewritten. So what is the – predictable – American response? Call for more sanctions. In parallel, DeepSeek was forced to suspend new registrations because its site suffered a massive cyberattack. Talk about the price to pay for eviscerating a humongous $1 trillion off the techno-feudalists gathered at the New York Stock Exchange.

Mr. Disco Inferno of course supports the commodifying of all data compared to free data for everyone. Right before the DeepSeek shock, he had – theoretically – secured as much as $1 trillion from the Saudis, including to a large extent investments to develop AI and data centers in the US.

The new game of course is just beginning. Stargate, OpenAI’s joint venture with Japan’s SoftBank, also heavily plugged by Trump, plans to spend at least $100 billion on AI infrastructure in the US. In parallel, Elon Musk’s xAI is massively expanding the Colossus supercomputer to contain more than 1million GPUs to help train its Grok AI models.

I couldn’t get enough, so I had to self-destruct

Now to the war against the Global Majority. Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson is adamant: in an absolutely must read essay, he concisely explains that “when Trump promised his voters that the United States must be the ‘winner’ in any international trade or financial agreement, he is declaring economic war on the rest of the world.”

The key Hudson take away: If nations in the Global South are to save their economy “from being plunged into austerity, price inflation, unemployment and social chaos”, they will have to “suspend payments on foreign debts denominated in dollars.”

It’s a work in progress: “Circumstances…are forcing the world to break away from the US-centered financial order. The US dollar’s exchange rate is going to soar in the short term as a result of Trump blocking imports with tariffs and trade sanctions. This exchange-rate shift will squeeze foreign countries owing dollar debts in the same way that Mexico and Canada are to be squeezed. To protect themselves, they must suspend dollar debt service.”

There may be serious problems ahead for Mr. Disco Inferno: “Trump’s America First political theater that got him elected may get his gang unseated as the contradictions and consequences of their operating philosophy are recognized and replaced. His tariff policy will accelerate US price inflation and, even more fatally, cause chaos in US and foreign financial markets. Supply chains will be disrupted, interrupting US exports of everything from aircraft to information technology. And other countries will find themselves obliged to make their economies no longer dependent on US exports or dollar credit.”

Prof. Hudson notes how Trump “thinks that the US economy is like a cosmic black hole, that is, a center of gravity able to pull all the world’s money and economic surplus to itself. That is the explicit aim of America First. That is what makes Trump’s program a declaration of economic war on the rest of the world. There is no longer a promise that the economic order sponsored by US diplomacy will make other countries prosperous. The gains from trade and foreign investment are to be sent to and concentrated in America.”

The EU, in the Global North, is even more vulnerable to “America First”. Davos came and went with a mere blip on the screen, apart from the odd US banker bragging about “peak pessimism” in Europe – linked to the incoming Trump tariff tsunami – and head of the European Central Bank Christine “Look at my new Hermes scarf” Lagarde wondering it was “not pessimistic” to say that Europe is facing an “existential crisis”.

The US-EU trade balance stands at a hefty 1.5 trillion euros a year, including massive Atlanticist investment flows. But what really matters is the financial mess in individual EU nations, especially top two Germany and France, with their Via Dolorosa to be extended ad infinitum when it comes to their cost of borrowing driven by tax cuts in the US.

I heard somebody say (Burning Burning) burn that mother down

And now to the Forever Wars front.

Mr. Disco Inferno, posing as a humanitarian for the non-stop camera clicking, has asked vassals Jordan and Egypt to de facto become accomplices in ethnic cleansing, absorbing as many as 1.5 million people from Gaza. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory”.

Turning a genocide into a real estate opportunity  in a “phenomenal location” will proceed in parallel with energetically courting the Saudis, after MbS in Riyadh promised last week to invest at least $600 billion – and up to a possible $1 trillion – in the US.

The official Saudi position is on the necessity of “strategic investments” to “stabilize long-term revenue streams” – not to mention consolidate lavish spending on all those US-made weapons systems. Call it a classic geopolitical case of Power of Capital merging with The Strategy of Chaos.

Telling Riyadh how to dance is one thing. To entice the Russian bear to the dancefloor is a completely different proposition.

As star French historian Emmanuel Todd has brilliantly demonstrated , “Trump’s job will be to manage the defeat of the US against Russia.” That’s the toughest call ever. Trump’s supreme anathema is to be seen as a loser.

So there are only two feasible options.

1. To “end the war” by not really ending it, just postponing it to the end of the decade, stealing a de facto Russian victory via massive spin and a gargantuan P.R. campaign.

2. Keep weaponizing Kiev – especially via NATO vassals, while posing as a peacemaker who cannot deliver because of Russia. That will be a toxic variant of the current “war until the last Ukrainian”.

That kind of gimmickry won’t fly in Moscow. Putin and the Security Council have made it extensively clear the conditions for a real end to the war – not a pause for NATO rearmament.

The authentic-or-not 100-day plan for a possible deal that has been circulating in the Washington-London-Kiev echo chambers touches on a few probabilities: a Putin-Trump phone call in the next two weeks or so; a possible meeting, bilateral (Trump-Putin) or trilateral (with the Ukrainian actor; quite unlikely) until mid-March; start of negotiations on the main parameters; a possible ceasefire by Easter; an International Peace Conference by the end of April, mediated by US, China, some EU members and some from the Global South; presidential elections in Ukraine at the end of August.

Key parameters: Ukraine as a neutral state, and not a member of NATO; member of the EU by 2030; Ukraine does not reduce the size of the army; does not officially recognize Russian sovereignty over conquered territories; “some” sanctions against Russia lifted immediately after the conclusion of the peace agreement, some – over the course of three years – depending on Russia’s compliance; all restrictions on the import of Russian energy to the EU to be lifted; and last but not least, the thorny matter of a “European peacekeeping contingent”.

The CIA is feeding all sorts of misinformation to Trump on everything from the real state of things in the battlefield to the state of the Russian economy. As it stands, Russians watch all the bombast with barely a smirk. Peskov: “Moscow still hasn’t received word from Washington about possible Trump, Putin contact… Readiness for meeting remains.”

So far, nothing. Totally empty game playing. Perhaps Trump, in secrecy, may be practicing his master shot: “The heat was on, rising to the top / Everybody going strong, and that is when my spark got hot”.

Time to hit the dancefloor.

(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot

Well, it may turn out that the really hot spark will be detonated not by Mr. Disco Inferno, but by dance partner Vladimir Putin.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/31/2025 – 23:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/EwyvYd7 Tyler Durden