Debt Rattle October 15 2026
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October 15, 2026 at 8:57 am #253111
Raúl Ilargi Meijer
KeymasterWalter Langley Never morning wore to evening but some heart did break 1894 • “I Come From Your Future”: A Frenchman’s Warning To All US Democrat Voter
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 15 2026]October 15, 2026 at 9:33 am #253114Dr. D
Participant“Two Emirati Ships Sink In Hormuz In Under 24 Hours As IRGC Claims 5-6 Vessels Targeted Nightly
You did it! You finally did it you magnificent bastards! You finally both hit and sunk a ship! Excellent work! This is what a “War” is. And Oil is $95. Not even to Biden levels. Where’s my $250,000 a barrel, Pepe? There are no gas lines except in France where Ze has shut off the Russian refineries. I guess Hormuz was a zero after all.
“Iran Hormuz Attack Spree Starts Choking Oil Flows (Again), UBS Warns
Probably, and right on schedule. Predictable as rain. Iran’s only strategy for the world is to make Americans vote Democrat and voluntarily surrender to Islam. Uhhh, no. No thank you actually. But it demonstrates they have no MILITARY path to victory. Which is boring.
Can they sink a destroyer? Sure! That’s war! ...And will be militarily useless. How many would they have to sink to matter at all? I dunno, a third of them? But we’d be actually mad and trying then, not really nice and holding back like now.
“Mohammed bin Salman Is More At Risk Internally Than From Houthi Attacks
Probably, but doesn’t that just demonstrate how militarily ineffective all of Yemen is? That’s not demonstrating strength and certainty not the way Pepe advertises if the only way to lose is have one of your half-brothers stab you in the back. That could have happened any Wednesday, and actually did. That’s why he gave them a talking to at the Carlton-Ritz back there. And the CIA brothers had a helicopter crash. Boy was Brennan mad.
The Undead Empire Strikes Back: How The UK Still Rules The World | Alex Krainer
The Undead Empire: Looting Russia: Why the British Empire Never Died | Alex Krainer
Krainer shifts to being almost entirely in the Luongo/London camp without saying so. He has bills to pay and jails to avoid. But this paradigm – same as mine – necessitates that Iran is London’s Fiefdom and proxy, and the U.S. is attacking London back through their proxy and not Iran at all. …Which is why no one is killed, and Iran doesn’t post the pics in the headlines every day. This back-feeds through Israel – another London colony – but that story gets ungodly complicated and is much less sure. The paradigm is America is fighting our second War of Independence against Globalism. Which is why we’re allies with Russia.
“Germany Puts Ukrainian Ex-Officer On Trial For Nord Stream “War Crime” As Defense Says Pipelines Were Fair Game
Everything about this is bananas, and putting it on trial to be debunked is bananas squared.
“”It’s A Pity…”: Zelensky Feels ‘Betrayed’ By Trump & Elon Musk
“This is not the right side of history…”Yes, being on the side of LITERAL NAZIS is the “right side of history”. Yup.
“People Who Bought MAGA Hats!? Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost Hoovered Up Data On At Least 639,000 Republican Voters, Donors
Two things: 1) Jack didn’t — Jack can do nothing without the FISA and the whole judiciary agreeing. That specifically means Justice Roberts. 2) Jack is not a prosecutor but a regular citizen. He was never correctly and legally appointed.
And he subpoeana’d THE UNITED STATES, and every person in it, while being some guy off the street. Let that sink in. Both USSC Roberts and all Congress love it, and do nothing about it. That seems odd. Almost as if they have no power themselves and are scared of someone.
October 15, 2026 at 11:25 am #253127Germ
ParticipantEx-Brighton, Port Vale and Gillingham captain Doug Loft has died at 39 after a “medical emergency.”
That’s the entire explanation from the clubs and the media.
No further details.
Just “medical emergency.”“STAR TRAGEDY Doug Loft dead at 39: Ex-Brighton and Port Vale star dies after medical emergency as heartbroken EFL club pay tribute”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/40659880/doug-loft-dead-port-vale-brighton/
TVASSF
October 15, 2026 at 11:28 am #253128Dr. D
ParticipantToday:
“Democrats are starting to realize President Trump’s Midterm Blitz is workingParallel realities. He’s both the most and least popular. It’d going to be both a Democratic and Republican tidal wave. …No really, we can tell the Democrats think they’re going to marginally lose by their own speech and actions. I watch them for my clues and I agree. Who cares what Trump does.
“”It may already be too late for negotiations with Russia” – Aaron Maté explains to Americans that the best moment to secure peace was missed long ago.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Also the Duran/ Alex2 talks about how there has to be a “Negotiated Peace”. No s—t Sherlock! that’s how EVERY war ends. So Taken Literally, Mate is saying Russia and Ukraine will still be in war in 2399, No. Or that WE have ANY responsibility to have peace at all. No. Idgaf if Russia and whoever NEVER have peace – ain’t nothin’ to do with me! Ain’t my war, we’re not in it! Blow yourselves to pieces for all I care, that’s “Sovereignty”. So his meta-assumption is either 1) The U.S. is the only broker worldwide and all peace agreements must be stamped by us. …That is to say we are and Empire and Trump is Caesar. No. 2) We are IN the war, therefore it can’t end without us: also No. So far as officially we have no men, no money, no weapons there. We’re not in the war. EUROPE is in the war. They are buying our stuff (which we haven’t delivered) and handing it to Ukraine.
So Aaron: it’s not too late, buddy! I guarantee they’ll be a peace. And I hope to God it has nothing to do with us at all, and Russia just takes whatever they feel like and dictates terms to Europe all the way out the British Virgin Isles. Sadly, Trump feels differently than I do and WANTS to stop 2 Million Europeans from dying for no godly reason and have peace. THAT’S WHY THEY HATE HIM. But although I understand him trying to leverage all his forces, it’s a fool’s errand. And that’s what Putin says. And like I said, I watch Putin, etc, not Trump.
““I Come From Your Future”: A Frenchman’s Warning To All US Democrat Voters (ZH)
Why is everyone standing way back, watching this man be burned to death like a photo op instead of helping? A: just ONE guy grabbed a fire extinguisher and tried to stop a school on fire, and they beat him into a hospital. So maybe like that. I’m sorry, you may be an accessory to murder then. Good luck.
Doesn’t matter. They may beat you – or they may not. Depends on how it impresses them. P.S. Is this AI because what is he standing on, there in the center? The only spot the sidewalk is broken? Nevermind.
“FRANCE-GERMANY 10-YEAR YIELD SPREAD WIDENS 8BPS TO 135BPS
Bessant is attacking, or rather, he’s pressuring all EU vs UST. But if LeGarde tries to save Germany, the Euro blows. And if she saves France, Germany blows out. …Back up a step though: IF ALL EUROPE DIDN’T SUCK, and wasn’t catastrophically corrupt and mismanaged in a way that makes the 3rd world jealous, there’d be no pressure at all. The pressure would be on the U.S. then. The problem is, we suck, way, way, way, way, way, way less than they do and are headed in the right direction.
Like I said: The U.S. goes down LAST. That’s a given. So they are trying to make EUROPE break, and take the blame, and Bessant is tag-teaming with Japan to make it. Again, that’s EUROPE’S fault. For sucking. For doing everything every economist ever dreamed of saying not to, importing 40 million 3rd worlders, and starting a land war in Asia for four years. What do you want me to say? The laws of physics don’t apply to you? I’m just shocked they didn’t crack 2 years ago.
“The worst part is that no sound person voted for this Western decline.”
In a sense, they didn’t vote for it in Europe either. I mean, yes, they’re core Socialists, but they didn’t vote for the EU where every referendum failed, none of the nations were eligible (Greece, Italy), and when the voters backed away, they didn’t listen and forced them for 20 years with increasing violence.
It’s not fair to say they want this, just because they were slower to get it and are possibly only 51% now.
““Poland’s most bellicose security conference is openly flirting with the idea of dismembering Russia..”
How’s that worked in the past, boys? And people pretend Poland is the victim of something, they’ve acted like this for centuries. DON’T MOUTH OFF AND ATTACK EVERYONE IN EUROPE. Just Stop.
Okay, what do you think Russia’s going to do, knowing this? ‘Cause it’s not good. Like the U.S. you should get on your knees and thank God almighty Russia is the good guys who have so much natural restraint, cause you could cease to exist in about 25 minutes with every Pole dead. The very fact you’re breathing means Russia isn’t really after you.
Same with Ukraine, which at least is large enough to have SOME chance. Like 1:1,000. But I get tired of reminding that IF Ukraine showed the slightest danger or chance of winning, Russia would nuke them. So no. No chance at all.
Anyway, not only is that Article/Meeting delusional, but you look at the Infograph there: “Full NATO Membership” means f—k all. There is no NATO, Trump said so, and there’s no Army in Europe without us. They’re the planet’s biggest joke. If anyone attacked, all the others would decline to Article 5 ‘cause: Excuses! and leave Ya hangin’. “As Long as It Takes!” — Joe Biden. “Whatever it Takes” – Europe. …Unless it takes money, arms, or men, then forget it. Again, yesterday, Europe paid Russia TWICE what they paid Ukraine. With friends like these…
Last: knowing all this sets Russia’s goals and strategy for the war, how it must be won and ended. So thanks for that, now it has to be far longer and more violent than otherwise. P.S. this is Applebaum’s wheelhouse here.
“The reason this is all significant is that it opens up other options for Trump, as opposed to waiting until the midterms.”
None of that looks like it’s happening. Sure it could: and it’s probably all made up. So they could bomb the moon on the same premise. But pay attention.
“El-Sayed supports many planks in the Democratic Socialists of America platform.”
Might be worth noting that those planks include erasing the United States as a nation and all Human Rights in 1-10A. No pressure.
“The DSA is not a majority. But it can throw a monkey wrench into both parties’ plans.”
Not really. Having Hasan and AOC and the DSA speak is the greatest advertisement to vote Republican. I honestly believe it’s the Right who is secretly paying and directing them. They’re just too good. Bond could not invent a villain like this.
“• Treasury Hits Bank of America with $1.2 Billion Fine for Money Laundering (CTH)
For the love of God, finally. An amount that matters and might dissuade crime. Wasn’t BoA buying those jumbo jets for Mexican drug cartels?
“• Major Banks Discriminated Against Conservatives (Matt Margolis)
This part is fine. The problem is that there’s no competition thanks to Government monopoly. So no, you may not do that. No Muh Private Corporation, ‘cause they ain’t.
“Christian organizations lost service over their views on abortion, LGBT issues, and traditional family values.”
As constantly said, THOSE were controversial. But the #Opposite to amputate children was NOT controversial. How can only one side of an issue be controversial? It’s either in contention or it isn’t. A: “Because I pick favorites and enforce whatever I like!” No Rulez! I use any excuse that comes to my head, so make me! I know: I’m just pointing out that you’re not a Rule-follower. You’re not obeying anything but your feels. Your violent hate and petty vendettas are running the roost.
“• Racism in the False History of The NY Times 1619 Project (Paul Craig Roberts)
While it was a minority, all these details about black slave ownership etc are relevant, esp to the cartoon-crayon sense of slavery that exists today. PCR has trouble with the “Recent Unpleasantness” and isn’t a fair arbiter. He says Lincoln was fighting the Black slaves in the South, which is true, but tell me how you fight a nation without fighting or harming its people, because every general over all time wants to know that. C’mon. Then when we point out that Lincoln and every general actively avoided a Sherman’s March to the sea for three years, even though they COULD, and they knew it all along, well then it just shows how stupid and useless the North is, and how weak Lincoln was. …You can’t have it both ways. It wasn’t until the South wouldn’t stop or come to any other solution that the North was forced to do that, very obviously against their own will. Then they’re the bad guys.
And so again today. That’s how you know it’s London, because that’s their M.O. — London 101. That’s not how Americans act. Inject guilt on both sides, then leverage that guilt to make them kill each other again. Rinse, repeat. Don’t be a punk. It ain’t us, it’s YOU.
“• Supreme Court Challenge to Sharing of Viewing Records on Free Sites (Turley)
Interesting, but note the USSC has time for this, not election fraud on time, and not Jack subpoena’ing every American and every Congressman if they bought a red hat. No time for that.
“Ultimately, Congress could step in to tweak the law if the Court rules”
It’s Congress’ only job to do and fix this. Nothing to do with the courts. In a sane world, Congress would see the case filed and amend the law to fix it years ago. Your law sucks, stop wasting the courts’ time and fix it. But Congress writes s—t laws ON PUROPSE knowing they can be interpreted by Court and FDA/EPA anyway they feel like. Then reversed a day later with no law passed either way: indeed the proto-EU way to Soviet Government. No one is elected, no one is responsible, no one to appeal, and there’s no fixed law. Perfect.
“SpaceX wants to launch Starship up to 456 times a year from Texas.
Hey I thought launching ships blew a hole in the Ozone. So I guess all the laws of Physics changed again?
“I think it’ll be worth $20 trillion, $30 trillion, $50 trillion”
Not to be a jerk, but, where’s the profit? Is all space made of solid gold with a creamy nougat center? I see you SPENDING money, I see no way to make money back. Still no logical explanation at all.
I’m not doubting it, just that whatever they’re really after is something they’re not telling us.
October 15, 2026 at 2:25 pm #253129John Day
ParticipantWar Debts Forever https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/war-debts-forever
To make sense of what is taking place now in geopolitics and finance is difficult, because the actual mechanisms of value-extraction to suupport the operational systems are misrepresented and, therefore are misunderstood by most people.
Credit-money is created from 10% money and 90% trust-in-the-lender, and lent out to an entity, based on collateral which may be seized if it is not paid fully with real, physical economic output at interest. This is true for sovereign governments, and especially their banks and central banks.
It was not true of kings. Kings were known to die without fully paying debts. Bankers and consortia of money-lenders derived a scheme to maximize their long term profits by lending in perpetuity to the people of a country, not the king. This required creatinga facade of persistent governance by the consent of the people, which meant that they consented toi war-loans which might not be paid off in their lives, but would remain valid-debts forever. National debts were invented.
Financial interests, to profit most fully, created names and the appearance of being part of the nation for PR purposes, but private corporate entities to collect profits. This was perfected in the corporate entity of the Bank of England, in The City of London, under the installed English King William of Orange, brought over from the Netherlands by a consortium of Dutch and English financiers, including the Rothschild banking family.
Under Bank of England management Napoleon was defeated, the common lands removed and sold for profit, as common-people were expelledfrom their ancestral lands to starve, work and die in the new industrial cities.
The United Kingdom became unsurpassed in provisioning the guns, navies and armies of war under this regime, and became the greatest military empire in the world, returning profits to the financial machine of The City if London, and a cost of human horrors, anguish, slavery and privation. The arrangements of private credit creating mostly-credit money, to lend for nations to wage wars of conquest or defense, payable with interest, in full, with real-stuff, persists and always seeks fresh collateral for loans, and avenues for profit.
There is a point of view that this fractional-reserve-lending financial system is the over-arching enemy of humanity, and of productive people who seek only to enjoy the fruits of their own labors without being harmed or parasitized. The system lends at high rates to encourage rapacious war profits, and also to enable the desperate arming for wars of defense by the targeted peoples. As all loans are secured by valuable collateral, the bankers and other financiers always profit from both sides of every war, and the horrors thereof.
If one considers the operational-structure of the current debt-money-based financial system as being an agent within the current dynamics of the world, rather than merely the shared financial infrastructure, the view of conflicts is very different from the case where nation-states and national-interests are viewed as driving forces of history.
The promise of payment of debts at interest, with real goods and services in the future is the driving gradient over time. The nations and their peoples will persist and pay the financial elites. It is clear that the amounts owed are in great excess of what can ever be paid, especially as fossil-fuels are declining in quality and increasing in cost, along with copper and other ores.
This creates tension, as all elites want to be paid in full, while realizing it is impossible, so it is to their advantage to find ways to exclude competing elites from channels that will pay, while positioning themselves to own the rights to those channels. Owning pipelines and trade choke-points seem advantageous, so wars are fought for such ownership and control, and also for the power to choke a competitor from vital flows.
The City of London interests prefer to remain anonymous, but BlackRock Capital Management is not a bad marker for them. It is the largest private-wealth management corporation. Rumors have persisted that BlackRock, the Bank of England and other City of London financial entities bet heavily upon schemes to break Russia politically through war against Ukraine and international financial sanctions, and as that has gone against their plans, they will fail to collect on loans or Russian and Ukrainian collateral. Their books will have to be reconciled to reality when any peace treaty is signed, which should reveal widespread insolvency. Therefore, European financial institutions are working to keep European political leaders in the anti-Russia war camp.
The peoople of Europe feel otherwise, do not want to die fighting Russia, and very much want the cheap Russian gas and oil back to revitalize their dying economies.
The political tide has turned already, despite censorship and information warfare by financial elites. Germany’s AfD, and Marine LePen’s Front National take reasonable and nationalist-populist stances. They seek rapproachment and trade with Russia, and to exclude migrants from culturally disparate countries who do not naturally integrate into productive society, but turn to crime and use up state-welfare resources.
Global finance has been a campaign contributor in the US and in European countries, but it struggles to portray a scenario where the interests of global financial elites align with the interests of working people and families anywhere.
The current news is that Trump and Putin have made a deal to sell Russian diesel fuel, and other products, to the US and other nations, without sanctions, until April 2027. They talked for 90 minutes. This particular deal was worked out already before the call. Most of their conversation has not been revealed. It is assumed that contingency plans were discussed, which would serve Russian and US interests, as seen by the 2 men. It was noted by all that they would like to end the Ukraine war quickly, and the only agreeable terms are Russian terms, which include capitulation of the Ukrainian military, giving up all territory which voted to rejoin Russia, as defined by Russia, to de-nazify, remain militarily neutral, and to assure rights for all Russian speakers and churches within Ukraine.
The US has been asking Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries, and since the phone call has cancelled Starlink service to any receiver traveling over about 100 miles per hour, as would be the case for drones and cruise missiles aimed at Russian refineries. The US stopped notifying Ukraine of Russian ballistic missile launches towards Kiev and other cities for 2 nights. The reasons are disputed, but the implication is clear. Ukraine can expect to have drones disabled, and to suffer heavily from Russian attacks on electrical services, warehouses, gas stations, bridges and all logistics as winter approaches. The suffering will be great for Ukrainians who have not left. Kyiv is being abandoned, as advised by Mayor Klitschko.
This is a hard play by Russia to force capitulation of Ukraine this winter, with US support, and if Ukraine will even announce elections Donald Trump can make good political capital of that for November 3 midterm elections. Ukraine’s current state of emergency lasts until October 31. There are a lot of Rada members who need to vote one way or another when that comes up. They are being contacted by wealthy emissaries from European entities and their CIA handlers. No debate has opened on the topic yet. Nazi factions have held the power of fear until now, particularly for Zelensky himself, who lives each day at their pleasure.
What might change is European financing for the Ukrainian military and their corrupt puppet-leaders. It Frederich Merz and his coalition are unpopular, and eventually to be replaced, how long can they continue to fund the Ukraine war? French elections will be held April 19, 2027.
There is a groundswell of German economic policy support for trade normalization with Russia, and talk of a deal to re-open at least one Nordstream pipeline with US financial involvement as assurance. How much encouragement to nationalist populism can be afforded by cooperation betwween Trump and Putin? It is certain that they are considering this.
As for actual sales of Diesel to the US by Russia, they have not yet happened, and may be legally fraught, but the removal of secondary sanctions immediately de-stresses Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian oil and distillates.
In this view there may be advancement of populist national interests by the agreements between Trump and Putin, at the expense of European (and other) old-money, which extracts rent from productive sectors of society, as Michael Hudson often observes. This is something that we will all be following through the winter and spring.
The Hormuz war has become an attritional war with Yemeni nationalists against the Royal House of Saud, and Iranian nationalist military forces against the US, Israel and their collaborators in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. Secret side deals are being done, but oil from that region has become very expensive in blood and treasure.October 15, 2026 at 2:26 pm #253130John Day
ParticipantRichard Cook, The Historical Theft of the Sovereign Power of Money Issuance by the Money Power. Part I
The chartering of the Bank of England was the primary milestone that ushered in the era of domination of the nation-state by the private financial interests that since then have ruled the world economy—at least in the Western nations and their colonies and dependencies—until today. This is the Money Power. It was their financial wealth, bypassing the dying system of feudal land tenure, that served as their entrée into the controlling echelons of state governance.
This fateful transition took place decisively with a deal between the English and Dutch financiers who were coming to dominate the world’s birthing industrial might and King William of Orange who was brought over from Holland with his wife Mary Stuart in the overthrow of her father, King James II, in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688.
William and Mary were closely allied with the Money Power, who by now were the only ones able to put fully equipped professional armies with disciplined cavalry, financial and logistical superiority, and modern artillery capable of reducing castles, onto the field of battle. The “deal” with the new titular monarchs was that the financiers who controlled Parliament—the “donor class” of that era—would share sovereign power with the monarchy. It was particularly the Bill of Rights of 1689 that transformed Britain and eliminated all traces of royal prerogative carried over by the Stuart kings.
But the sovereignty of the nation as personified in the king was now lost to obscure men whose power was secured through movement of increasingly large sums of money and credit in backroom transactions. In other words, it was a takeover by “robber barons” who operated out of the counting-houses which were becoming banks. Their center of operations was the “City” of London—that self-governing square mile at the heart of the “Big Smoke.” Over time, a similar revolution was enacted in France, Germany, Austria, Italy—and the U.S.—though a significant element of patriots in America fought back.
This monetary revolution was a massive assault by the Money Power on European royalty and aristocracy and their replacement by those who had become rich through money lending and trade. https://www.globalresearch.ca/historical-theft-sovereign-power-money-issuance-money-power-part-i/5943610 ‘Massive’ Russian attack on Ukraine kills at least 9, damages power sites – Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine’s partners failed to warn of Russian ballistic missiles attack on Kyiv. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/14/massive-russian-attack-on-ukraine-kills-at-least-six-cuts-power-in-kyiv
Ukraine Attacks Two More Refineries After Trump’s Proclaimed ‘Energy Ceasefire’: Kremlin https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/ukraine-attacks-two-more-refineries-after-trumps-proclaimed-energy-ceasefire-kremlin
SpaceX Reportedly Caps Starlink Speed As Kiev Defies Trump’s Calls To Halt Refinery Strikes
The Kyiv Independent cited presidential adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, who wrote on social media that the measure took effect overnight and applies to the StarShield “military service package,” setting a threshold of 100 miles per hour (about 160 kilometers per hour). https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/spacex-reportedly-caps-starlink-speed-kiev-defies-trumps-calls-halt-refinery-strikes Simplicius, Panic in Kiev as AFU’s Starlink “Mysteriously” Throttled One Day After Intelligence Blackout
A day after Zelensky accused the US of cutting “intelligence support” and not providing early warning against Russia’s ballistic missile strikes on Kiev, pandemonium has ensued in Ukraine.
Now the country’s leadership has accused the US of cutting its Starlink support as well…
..Musk immediately responded with a clarification: the military version of Starlink is infact operated by the US DOD under the name Starshield and is not controlled by Musk or SpaceX. You can see him responding directly to the star ex-Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov himself—note that Fedorov claims connectivity was already being restored at the time…
..Musk was forced to divest himself of this arm of his company early in the war in order to continue presenting a “neutral” face for his enterprise and not have it messily linked to offensive military actions which he likely knew would be pushed into very ethically “gray” areas of striking Russian civilian and dual-use infrastructure...
..The Ukrainian 7th Rapid Response Corps of the Air Assault Forces reports that Starlink disruptions are occurring in the Hulyaipole/Orikhiv direction, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, this morning.
The so-called Starshield package, which conducts data transferring for drone flights, has received limitations on speeds of 110-120+ km/h, where the connection can be lost for 10-20 seconds making it difficult to control the drones. Additionally, the launch of high-speed mid-range drones has become almost impossible...
..Starlink is used not just offensively by Ukrainian long-range drones but also defensively in interceptors that target Russia’s own strike assets which have been hitting Kiev. As such, Russia’s recent crippling strikes on Kiev’s facilities now stand to become even worse if these disruptions continue.
In light of the above, today WaPo dropped the bombshell that the US has in fact been threatening key Ukrainian personnel with an intelligence cut-off should Zelensky continue to hit Russian oil sites…
..Strangely, while this was going on a “secret” Starlink ground station in Bulgaria which provided services to the AFU was allegedly torched…
..No matter what really happened with the early warning and Starlink fiasco, the fact remains that the US appears to have sent Ukraine a final ultimatum that intelligence will be completely cut off if Ukraine continues to hit Russian energy, at least according to the earlier reports.
Ukraine has already been hitting Russian energy since last night, and vows to continue doing so. This can only mean we can expect a major clash between the two former “partners” in the near future, though many predict Trump will simply TACO out as per usual. In fact, the restoration of Starlink service can already be considered a backtrack, but we’ll see how the situation actually unfolds. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/panic-in-kiev-as-afus-starlink-mysteriouslyOctober 15, 2026 at 2:28 pm #253132John Day
Participant Martial Law in Ukraine: What Restrictions Are in Place, Until What Date, and What the Law Allows – Martial law in Ukraine has been extended until October 31 https://sud.ua/en/news/ukraine/372770-voiennyi-stan-v-ukraini-iaki-obmezhennia-diiut-do-iakoi-daty-ta-shcho-dozvoliaie-zakon
Moon of Alabama, The EU-NATO Establishment Is Waging A Hybrid War Against Europe
The (fake) elite which currently leads in many European countries as well as the European Union in Brussels is determined to wage a war against Russia.
Unfortunately for them the people they rule over have no interest in that. The leaders are waging a massive propaganda campaign to change their minds.
They are following a line set by Hillary Clinton who, after losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, blamed Russia for interfering with it...
..There is though a ‘hybrid war’. But it is one waged by the western ‘elite’ against its own people:
Ultimately, serious scrutiny of the “Russian hybrid warfare” narrative can only lead to one disquieting conclusion. A “hybrid war” is indeed being waged against Europe — but it is being waged by the EU-NATO establishment itself, against its own population. Europeans are being subjected to a sustained campaign of cognitive or psychological warfare aimed at conditioning them to believe that Europe is under attack from Russia, and that these hybrid attacks are a prelude to conventional hostilities — a claim for which, by and large, there is little or no proof. What the record points to, in fact, is a deliberate campaign of threat inflation in which governments, media outlets and defence-funded “think tanks” have colluded to instill a permanent sense of fear in the population, through relentless coverage of “incidents”, “attacks”, “sabotages” and “campaigns” that, in most cases, simply do not exist.
Yesterday Andy Burnham, the unelected Prime Minister of Britain, blamed Russia for the outcome of Britain’s Brexit vote… There had been an extensive parliament investigation about imagined Russian influence on the Brexit referendum which had found none. Burnham is now, without any evidence, claiming such influence because he wants to roll back Britain’s exit from the EU. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/10/the-eu-nato-establishment-is-waging-a-hybrid-war-against-europe.html German opposition demands Trump-style diesel deal with Russia
AfD and BSW are pushing for an end to sanctions against Moscow as soaring fuel prices squeeze German consumers https://web.archive.org/web/20261012005412/https://www.rt.com/news/647061-germany-opposition-diesel-deal-russia/ Bulgarian PM Stuns EU With Full-Throated Backing Of Trump-Putin Diesel Deal – “You know what is our problem right now in Europe? High fuel prices,” Radev said in English as he attended a two-day summit of leaders. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bulgarian-pm-stuns-eu-full-throated-backing-trump-putin-diesel-deal
October 15, 2026 at 2:29 pm #253133John Day
Participant Look at the participants: US and Europe preparing peace plan to improve post-war state of Ukraine and Russia – Washington Post
According to the official, the package will consist of four core components. First will be the reconstruction of Ukraine. The World Bank and the investment firm BlackRock are seeking to establish a financial mechanism to rebuild the country’s devastated regions. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/10/13/8057759/ Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-10-15
AI credit stress spread into stocks and then into Asia. CoreWeave CDS closed +135bp, the neocloud basket had its worst day of 2026, and overnight the KOSPI tripped an 8% circuit breaker. A hot September CPI (3.7%) pushed the 5Y to a 2007 high, then the 10Y gave back 21bp as the selloff turned into a haven bid. Silver lost 6% while gold crawled back to pre-CPI levels.
New on the war desks: Zelensky ended the refinery-strike pause after a 160 km/h Starlink cap, and Hormuz logged what may be its first mine sinking. Saudi-Houthi and Taiz are escalating continuation...
..Kyiv lifts its refinery-strike pause – “The block is out. We’re done,” Zelensky told the FT, ending a three-day pause. The Ryazan refinery is burning after an overnight drone raid (chigrl, financialjuice)
This follows WaPo reporting that the US warned further energy strikes would trigger an immediate intel cutoff (vick55top)…
..Two masked men set fire to 11 of 17 Starlink ground antennas near Sofia, echoing the Sept 23 arson at a Polish site (bayraktar_1love, InsiderGeo)…
..Washington and Brussels – Semafor: Trump is “furious”, and a full intel ban is being discussed (simpatico771). WaPo: the Ukrainian embassy was warned of an immediate cutoff if energy strikes continue (vick55top)
FT: the US wants Europeans to unfreeze some Russian assets to revive talks (zerohedge). European officials rejected the idea (TheApeOfGoldST)
Zelensky says he feels “betrayed” by the US-Russia diesel deal (zerohedge)
The EU disbursed another €2.86B, taking total aid past €231B (TheApeOfGoldST). Slovakia’s Fico refuses to join any new multi-billion loan (MilitarySummary)…
..AI credit hits equities: CoreWeave CDS +135bp, neocloud basket -12%, SOX heading for an 8-day losing streak
The CoreWeave unwind
Shares fell ~15% as stocks “finally notice what credit has been screaming” (zerohedge)
The unsecured 2032 bonds yield ~15% against a 9.625% coupon. Part of the $104B backlog is pledged to secured lenders, so it does not backstop every creditor (shanaka86)
Gartner says over 80% of neoclouds will fold (zerohedge)…
..A new open-source model claims to match Fable 5 at 60x lower cost (KobeissiLetter). https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-15 Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-10-14
The Saudi-Houthi war became an oil-for-oil exchange. Riyadh bombed Sana’a’s central fuel station, the Houthis hit Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters (the Saudi Energy Ministry confirms a fire), missiles were still flying at Riyadh this morning, and Houthi ground forces broke into western Taiz.
Russia ended the US-brokered energy truce with a record Zircon salvo that left 600,000+ Ukrainians without power, on a night Kyiv says it got no early warning and its Starlink links were throttled. The rest is continuation: more Hormuz hits, diesel higher, AI credit spreads wider, and CPI lands today with the 10-year above 5%...
..Russia ends the energy truce with a record strike; 600,000+ without power – Zelensky: 39 ballistic missiles and 120+ drones; 26 power facilities and 4 oil and gas sites damaged; people killed and injured (ZelenskyyUa).
AMK’s revised count is ~40 missiles, including a record 24 Zircons, mostly launched from Bryansk for the first time (GEROMAN).
Hours earlier Ukraine had set an oil depot in Valuyki (Belgorod) on fire with 500+ drones, its first energy strike since the truce (HormuzLetter).
US pressure on Kyiv shows up on the battlefield: no missile warning, Starlink throttled – Zelensky confirms partners gave no warning before the strikes (KyivPost). He told NPR the administration threatened to cut intelligence over Ukraine’s refinery strikes (MilitarySummary).
Sternenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence: Starlink drops above 160 km/h, some missions failed, and he thinks the White House asked for it (AMK_Mapping_). The cap was reportedly tightened to 60-70 km/h within hours (GEROMAN).
Hormuz: two more ships hit, a US-owned tanker turned back, and Reuters says Iran is widening its target zone – UKMTO warnings 170-26 and 171-26: a container ship and a tanker struck in the southern corridor (MenchOsint).
26 vessels struck in two weeks, per Brett Erickson, quoted by philippilk.
Reuters: Iran is attacking more often and moving into the Gulf of Oman and waters off Qatar and the UAE, to keep oil high before the midterms (MilitarySummary). https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-10-14 Alastair Crooke, Mohammed bin Salman is more at risk internally than from AnsarAllah attacks
As the military conflict between Yemen and Saudi Arabia continues, the latter has become increasingly dependent on attacks against Yemeni civilian targets — by Sept 2025, reports confirm that “nearly 15,000 civilians have been killed by direct military action, most of them in air strikes by the Saudi-led Coalition.” Yet the Yemeni armed resistance, taking its cue from Iran’s experience, sees that Saudi is infinitely more vulnerable via its energy infrastructure sitting out in the open.
If Yemen continues to strike at key Saudi economic and energy assets with precision, the consequences for Riyadh will multiply — the battlefield will increasingly become that of Saudi infrastructure destruction and pain for the West versus Yemeni civilian casualties...
..In short, unless MbS capitulates to AnsarAllah demands — which it seems he is incapable of so doing — the consequences could develop into a devastating macro-economic cascade occurring within the key pivot situated at the centre of the Gulf economic model; a cascade, furthermore, which, as its momentum grows, and foreign capital flees the kingdom, will bring a systemic collapse to the entire western colonial enterprise in the Gulf.
The more paradoxical element to this drama is that it is not from AnsarAllah’s attacks that MbS’ is most at risk — or from which his downfall might be precipitated. It will not come from the battlefield either. Regime change inside Saudi Arabia will come about as a result of his own hand — his compulsive quest to centralise control...
..MbS’ fear is that one F15 pilot, outside of the privileged Royal family Stipendiary circle, might choose to attack one of the Kingdom’s princely palaces (instead of striking at an AnsarAllah target) as a prelude to an all-out military revolt. This is no fanciful threat — an old “Saudi hand” recalled recently hearing one young Saudi officer threatening to do exactly that.
By cutting off traditional tribal patronage by which tribal leaders had expected to receive their share of the kingdom’s oil wealth; by seizing tribal lands earmarked for MbS “vanity projects”; and by actively working to reshape Saudi Arabia’s core legitimacy away from traditional tribal-religious alliances towards a nationalist, youth-driven identity centred around Vision 2030, MbS has cut away the political leverage that traditional tribal elders historically held within the Royal Court.
MBS has made many enemies through the transformation of the Kingdom not towards a nation-state, but rather toward being the property of a single family. https://ronpaulinstitute.org/mohammed-bin-salman-is-more-at-risk-internally-than-from-ansarallah-attacks/Two Emirati Ships Sink In Hormuz In Under 24 Hours As IRGC Claims 5-6 Vessels Targeted Nightly https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/burning-container-ship-sinks-strait-hormuz-irgc-proclaims-5-or-6-vessels-targeted
October 15, 2026 at 2:30 pm #253134John Day
ParticipantEven the F-35 uses Chinese parts, but… Report Alleges Houthis Building Advanced Missiles With Help From China https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/report-alleges-houthis-building-advanced-help-china
Saudi Airstrikes in Yemen’s al-Jawf Province Kill Nine Civilians, Including Five Children
The Saudi bombing campaign is backed by the US, which provides intelligence and targeting data and has resumed refueling Saudi warplanes https://news.antiwar.com/2026/10/12/saudi-airstrikes-in-yemens-al-jawf-province-kill-nine-civilians-including-five-children/Israeli Gaza-war vets: “The Rule Was: ‘Shoot Everyone You See’”
More than 70,000 killed; even more wounded; destruction without end: Ten Israeli soldiers speak about feelings of revenge, orders to shoot and “collateral damage.” https://israelpalestinenews.org/the-rule-was-shoot-everyone-you-see/Seven-Year-Old Dies of Wounds as Israeli Attacks Kill Five More in Gaza https://www.palestinechronicle.com/seven-year-old-dies-of-wounds-as-israeli-attacks-kill-five-more-in-gaza/
Gaza prisoners left with fractures and untreated injuries in Ganot prison https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/10/12/371849/
October 15, 2026 at 2:31 pm #253135John Day
ParticipantIsrael demolishes over 11,000 homes in West Bank in 3 yrs. https://en.mehrnews.com/news/248519/Israel-demolishes-over-11-000-homes-in-WB-in-3-yrs
One must apply for permission to cross town to one’s farm, for instance: Israeli army tightens movement restrictions around Jenin refugee camp https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/10/12/371865/
$30/bbl extra: Oil shipping and insurance costs exceed one-third of the commodity value — OPEC
The ministers affirmed the critical importance of safeguarding the international maritime routes to ensure the uninterrupted flow of energy https://tass.com/economy/2201093 This will help keep gasoline prices down in Texas: Soaring Tanker Rates Leave Americas Awash in Crude Oil
“It’s all freight,” said Scott Shelton, an energy specialist at TP ICAP. Venezuela, the US and Canada all produce more oil than they consume, he said, so they rely on exports to Asia to balance their crude markets.
With US diesel prices soaring, the cheap, stranded barrels should be getting snapped up in a diesel-starved market, since heavy crude yields more of the fuel than lighter grades. But Gulf Coast refiners have already bought as much as they can process, analysts and traders said.
Venezuelan exports have surged since the US captured former President Nicolas Maduro in January, then started pushing to reactivate the country’s oil sector. Canadian output is at a record and Washington has released more than 130 million barrels from its emergency reserve.
The cost of hiring a supertanker from the US Gulf Coast to Asia, meanwhile, has more than quintupled since February. https://gcaptain.com/soaring-tanker-rates-leave-americas-awash-in-crude-oil/ Global Coal Demand Rises as LNG Shortage Deepens
Persian Gulf LNG flows remain severely disrupted, pushing Asian LNG prices above $26/MMBtu and European gas prices above €81/MWh.
Coal is roughly 80% cheaper than LNG, encouraging Asian and European buyers to increase coal imports ahead of winter. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Global-Coal-Demand-Rises-as-LNG-Shortage-Deepens.htmlOctober 15, 2026 at 2:32 pm #253136John Day
Participant Taiwanese investment is good for the Alaska gas pipeline buildout, and for long-term energy security for Taiwan, but this may be a poison-pill for a mainland takeover of the island, as the LNG would stop coming. Trump Touts Taiwan-Alaska LNG Deal Offering Decades Of Conflict-Free Supply Beyond Hormuz https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/trump-taiwan-alaska-lng-deal-offering-decades-conflict-free-supply-beyond-hormuz
Martin Armstrong, Americans Are Losing Faith in the Economy
Americans are becoming more pessimistic, and their expectations for inflation are moving in the wrong direction. The University of Michigan’s preliminary October consumer sentiment index fell to 46.3 from 48.1 in September, below the 47.8 economists expected. One-year inflation expectations reached 4.7%, while five-year expectations rose to 3.5%. The survey points to mounting frustration over living costs, particularly among people with lower incomes and smaller investment portfolios…
..The deterioration is far deeper than one disappointing monthly reading. Michigan’s sentiment index stood at 56.4 in January; October’s preliminary 46.3 is almost 18% lower. Compared with October last year, sentiment is down 13.6%, while the index measuring current economic conditions has fallen 23.7%. That current conditions measure plunged 12.2% in just the past month. Meanwhile, expectations for inflation over the next year have climbed from 3.4% in February to 4.7%.
People see their circumstances deteriorating and expect further price increases. A family cutting purchases to cover necessities does not need another lecture about how resilient the consumer remains. Continuing to spend because you still need food, fuel, and shelter tells us very little about whether you can comfortably afford them.
Look at the obligations competing for that paycheck. The median monthly mortgage payment sought by home-purchase applicants was $2,162 in August, according to MBA, before adding property taxes and homeowners insurance. Financed new vehicles carried an average payment of $787 in the third quarter, with 21.2% of buyers committing to more than $1,000 a month. KFF’s 2025 survey puts workers’ average contribution to employer-sponsored family health premiums at $6,850 annually, roughly $571 monthly, before deductibles and other medical bills. Child Care Aware’s national childcare price estimate for 2025 was $13,184 annually, approximately $1,099 a month, but these are all low figures. These describe different groups, rather than a single average household, but combine those benchmarks for an illustrative family with one financed car and one childcare bill and you reach about $4,619 monthly before groceries, utilities, fuel, school supplies, student loans, or taxes. Parents are paying somebody to watch their child so they can go to work, financing the car that gets them there, and paying for health coverage that still leaves additional bills when somebody becomes ill. Then officials tell these same people they need to pay more in taxes each year. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_america/americas-current-economy/americans-are-losing-faith-in-the-economy/ Hold Reiner in your heart: REINER FULLMICH SUBJECTED TO RUSHED AND UNEXPECTED PRISON TRANSFER
On October 8, 2026, Reiner Fuellmich was abruptly transferred from Bremervoerder to another prison (JVA Lingen) without prior notice being given to him, nor to his legal team, to whom he was denied a call at the time when he understood what was going on. https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/urgent-bulletin-about-reiner-fullmich Meryl Nass MD, You’ve probably heard about the United Nations “Political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” (PPPR)-a non-binding reminder that the cabal hasn’t given up – After the overwhelming majority of nations voted for it yesterday, they then said why they didn’t like it! https://merylnass.substack.com/p/youve-probably-heard-about-the-united
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH BREAKING: 153 Nations Adopt UN Pandemic Declaration to Push FAST-TRACKED Vaccines Within 100 Days and Crack Down on “Vaccine Hesitancy”
The dangerous UN declaration raises concerns that scientific censorship, lockdowns, and experimental vaccine mandates could be back on the table. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-153-nations-adopt-un-pandemicOctober 15, 2026 at 2:33 pm #253137John Day
ParticipantProb’ly safer than Cheetos. Clutch pearls, anyway: 3D-Printed Fake Meat and Fish Have Officially Entered American Grocery Stores Without Clear Labeling
Israeli company Steakholder Foods is rolling out artificial steaks, chicken, and fish under its PERFECTA brand—with NO mention of 3D-printing on the packaging. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/3d-printed-fake-meat-and-fish-have Jessica Rose Ph.D. explains: A theory of consciousness deriving spacetime – And why it probably means that AI will never be a true threat as a god, of sorts. https://jessicar.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-consciousness-deriving
October 15, 2026 at 3:05 pm #253138Michael Reid
Participanttboc:
The following is my parsing for dummies like me
our real nature is divine: pure, perfect, eternally free
ignorance covers our real nature and the real nature of the world around us
ignorance ceases with knowledge
we are the real truth of our existence
in the real truth of our existence we live, move, and have our being
October 15, 2026 at 3:18 pm #253139Michael Reid
ParticipantA theory of consciousness deriving spacetime
And why it probably means that AI will never be a true threat as a god, of sorts.Jessica RoseOct 14, 2026
You cannot derive consciousness from the physical world – from spacetime. But you should try.It’s consciousness all the way down.
Spacetime derived from consciousness
Dr. Donald Hoffman would argue that our everyday experience of reality is a useful evolutionary illusion rather than a direct window onto the world. As professor emeritus of cognitive sciences at UC Irvine, his research interests include Vision, Cognitive Science, Consciousness and Evolutionary Models of Perception. Hoffman has worked as a project engineer at the Hughes Aircraft Company and a research scientist at the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He’s no joke with his background in quantitative and computational psychology, and as a truly humble and curious human, he seems the right guy to probe questions about the nature of consciousness, and perhaps might help to prove that it cannot be derived from spacetime, if this is the case.
Hoffman has endeavored to build a mathematical model of consciousness, and has used that model to offer a formal solution to the “combination problem” of consciousness. In other words, he’s used math to explain how a bunch of conscious agents combine and fuse into a unified “you”. He would claim that there is a layer of software outside of spacetime, and agrees with theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler that “There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum”. This statement comes directly from Wheeler’s 1989 paper Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search For Links.
“Nobody can be anybody without somebodies around.”
John Archibald Wheeler
Wheeler would say that the Universe is made up of our choices and what we choose to measure, matters. Can’t say I disagree with that. You should read what he wrote about time and choice.
What seems obviously true is that the observer participancy process is at the core of all science. Observer-participants generate information, information generates spacetime, and spacetime loops back to observer-participants. This is an infinite loop, and according to Hoffman, if we are to understand the role of the observer in terms of quantum theory, the loop must be “cracked”.
We need to have an understanding of how our theories close the loop first.
Notes on the observer
Newtonian physics doesn’t need the observer. Einstein’s theory of spacetime requires clocks and coordinate systems, not necessarily conscious observers (see: time dilation and length contraction – physical effects measurable by instruments). In quantum theory however, the role of measurement is more fundamental. The Schrödinger equation is a linear differential equation that governs unitary evolution and preserves superpositions. All this means is that all possibilities are persistently maintained with no outcome. When a measurement occurs (when the observer observes), it is postulated that the wave function (Ψ) collapses to a single outcome. This observer is any physical detector and need not be a conscious mind. Think of the double-slit experiment to visualize this.
I don’t want to brain break, but I find it too tempting to wonder of the observer stays in superposition. In other words, if the Schrödinger equation applies to everything (including observers), then there would be no collapse to a single outcome, and by extension, reality would never settle on a single definite outcome. So all possibilities remain real.
According to textbooks, measurement is an exception to unitary evolution. Pure Schrödinger (unitary) evolution cannot collapse the wave function or produce a unique outcome. If the physical world is described solely by this evolution with no exceptions, and this evolution cannot give you a unique outcome, then that description of the physical world cannot give you a theory of measurement. Decoherence does not solve this problem.
Conscious agents as observers
Hoffman is proposing a theory of conscious agents (participators as per Wheeler’s terminology) that would describe a layer of software outside of spacetime by looking at longterm behaviour that projects into spacetime. He is formalizing the idea of the observer using mathematically precise statements and has created a model for these conscious agents, taking the first step to derive all of physics from consciousness, and not the other way around.
Phenomenal.
The problem with deriving consciousness from spacetime
“If we are the ones who ‘build’ the spacetime, how come we don’t get [as many] spacetime[s] as people,” he wrote on November 8, 2005. “How come just one? Pursue further that one.”
John Archibald Wheeler
Trying to derive consciousness from physics might be an impossible problem. This is not say that it shouldn’t be tried, however. And in fact, it is being tried all the time and has been for quite a long time. But if do you start with a physical system inside space and time, and then try to boot up consciousness, you will inevitably fail. Think of it like trying to explain what something tastes like to someone using math. I would agree with Hoffman that you can’t do it because subjective experience resists reduction to physical descriptions.
If you did have a theory of consciousness that started from physics, however, a pertinent and real question you might ask yourself is: What specific consciousness experience (as in: what precise Markov matrix – n^2 elements of the matrix) does the theory explain? Again, can you use it to explain the smell of rain and why it is not the smell of mint? Remember that scene in the Matrix when Mouse asks how the machines know what tasty wheat tastes like? Any purely physical account is in the same position as the machines who may have gotten the memories wrong: it can match input–output patterns and neural correlates, yet it lacks the resources to determine or explain why one experience has the character it does rather than another.
If Hoffman is right, then it would be impossible for anything that starts from physics (neurons, quantum states of microtubules or AI) to create consciousness. To date, there is no theory of consciousness that does have a specific example that “works” from the point of view of going from spacetime physics to consciousness.
Using math to map conscious experiences
There are conscious experiences. This is true. A headache. The smell of petrichor. There are on the order of trillions of conscious experiences for humans. And other animals and living things also have different conscious experiences. There are these experiences, and then there are the probabilities of the transitions between these experiences.
Let’s say that a conscious experience can be described using a Markov matrix, where each matrix represents conscious observer. N.B. A Markov matrix is simply a square matrix used to describe the transitions of a Markov chain, where each entry is a non-negative real number representing a probability. A Markov chain is simply a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Think of it like this: each conscious experience – like the smell of petrichor – together with the chances that it will turn into any other feeling – like sadness – can be described by a matrix of any size. This matrix is a fixed transition matrix and it is thought to be the inherent start point of a conscious agent. It is a fixed rule that governs transitions between experiences and not derived from anything more basic.
I will have to think about what that means. Sounds like God to me.
If the matrices describe the conscious agents, then the relationships between these matrices is the trace logic they share, and this is where the magic lies. This trace logic ties together all Markov matrices and thus it ties together the conscious observers. A trace represents the predictable subsystem an observer perceives when they cannot observe the entire system, effectively mapping to a logic of probabilistic beliefs. We can quantify this and build physics from it.
Keep a counter that increments every time the experience changes in the Markov chain (an enhanced Markov chain). Compare, for example, a full chain that includes red, green and blue transitions with one of its traces that sees only red and green. Now compare a larger matrix with one of its traces – a smaller matrix that describes only a subset of the same states. The counter on the full matrix clicks more often than the counter on the trace, because the trace misses some transitions. Hoffman notes that this slower ticking on the trace is reminiscent of time-dilation. A related notion of distance between states in the chain shows an analogous contraction.
How many steps will the commute time take? How many steps will it take to get from red to green back to red? Mathematicians say that the expected commute time maps to the square of the Euclidian distance. Nice result. There is a class of Markov chains (cyclic Markov chains) that yield Minkowski space (flat spacetime/contractions).
This is not a proof yet, but it might become one. There does not seem to be an obstruction to Hoffman’s theory, and this is massively significant because it means that from the theory of conscious observers/agents, spacetime can be derived.
This shows that our model of this reality (flat spacetime) derives from consciousness.
There’s only one class of Markov chains that show this: the cyclic ones. Cyclic Markov chains are random processes that keep looping through the same fixed sequence of states over and over, always in the same order. For context, stationary Markov chains are random processes that have settled into a steady groove where the odds of being in any particular state stay exactly the same no matter how long it keeps running. Both flip a coin at every step but one is an infinite loop and the other is not and thus their randomness are differentially constrained.
By analogy, cyclic Markov chains map onto structured observer-participancy that can generate spacetime geometry; stationary ones map onto passive equilibrium that does not. You can think of the cyclic looping as structured observer participation. Stationary chains, by contrast, just chill into fixed odds that never change, more like passive equilibrium. So under the analogy and Hoffman’s conjectures, spacetime’s structure is coming from the pattern of observers actively participating, not just from sitting back and passively watching.
Thus the very structure of spacetime is proposed to come from the pattern of observer participancy. The Markov matrix trace logic is offered as showing a deep logical relationship among observers. This is the kind of active back-and-forth Hoffman models with conscious agents as Markov matrices. Inside the recursive-trace setup – where observers and agents come first and spacetime pops out of the trace logic on those matrices – the looping cyclic chains line up with the ordered participation that, i a large-cycle limit, is proposed to give flat spacetime (with the slower counters and shorter jumps inside the traces explaining time dilation and length contraction), while the settled stationary ones don’t supply that generative loop.
Time dilations and length contractions are then conjectured to help yield spacetime as a derived interface.
If we take this trace logic (an infinite set of observers), and define an agent on that so that an agent can crawl around on the trace logic, at any given point, an agent can make observation and then change its “mind” (change which matrix it’s looking through) with respect to what it is observing or if it is observing. This crawling around would be equivalent to using Markov kernels. There will be a probability distribution that will define which element the agent will choose. That’s the math part.
What this means in plain language is that spacetime comes from consciousness and not the other way around, and Hoffman proposes that with very simple mathematics and logic, this might be provable.
This is so interesting to me. Markov matrices are used for both the dynamics of experiences inside an observer and the dynamics of agents that move among observers. Thus, the experiences are the states of the observer’s matrix, and the agents are matrices defined on the space of those observer matrices.
Each conscious experience depends on what your matrix is. Yours might be much higher in dimensions than mine which means that you would experience things completely differently from me. We might be looking at the same thing but we won’t see the same thing. It would be the difference between not believing that certain things are possible and knowing that they are. It all depends on the dimension of the matrix that the conscious agent resides in.
The virtual reality headset
Let’s assume for the time being (whatever that means) that spacetime is not fundamental so that we can play with our potentials.
For example, if you did take spacetime as fundamental, you’d have a hard time understanding certain technologies, like UAPs. Let’s instead switch frameworks and see spacetime as a virtual reality (VR) headset created by consciousness. Let’s go one step further and try to describe a layer of software outside of that headset. Explaining novel and what seem like foreign technologies is easy now.
If you are the VR designer, then you can control what’s in that headset, right? The Pandora’s Box of infinite possibilities of designing technologies from outside of the box of spacetime framework, is thus open. And whether people know it or not, I think it’s clear that it’s already done. And I also think it’s already within us to design and control the headset. It always has been.
Hoffman is setting up the mathematics to reverse engineer the spacetime VR headset. He claims that no neural activity causes conscious experience. I agree with him, and I am someone who’s had my foot in the microtubule camp for a long time, but what if matter is a phase of consciousness? According to Hoffman, the brain is a headset representation – inside spacetime – of how the headset is engineered. N.B. Hoffman is indeed looking at the brain as a neuroscientist (with other neuroscientists) and as a neuroscientist, he claims that neurons do not exist when they are not perceived.
Amazing.
Reverse engineering the headset to prove that consciousness creates spacetime is no trivial endeavor and our brains are limited, don’t forget. But, and this is a big butt and I cannot lie, we are not our brains. What we are is not limited.
Controlling the parameters of the headset means acting through the deeper recursive trace logic and agent policies that Hoffman places outside of spacetime. The headset is the interface, the Markov matrices, their traces and the agents defined on them are the structure. And just because you can imagine something inside the headset doesn’t mean it exists in the deeper agent reality – the headset is built to conceal that reality, not to show it.
This is pure Gnosticism, by the way. But that’s my next article.
Hoffman is clear that his endeavors must be about rigor: theorem – proof – theorem – proof. Rigor inside of spacetime to prove a layer of software outside of spacetime is not an easy task, perhaps even impossible one.
Whether or not there are higher “level” beings have higher order matrices and less limited headsets, we humans have something unique and special that goes far beyond any exploration of the reality derived from a brain. In my view, we are transcendent light beings and according to Hoffman, we are wearing VR headsets that hide us from reality. I can’t say that this challenges my view. Perhaps Hoffman will provide mathematical proof of Gnosis one day?
What about AIs?
What this all means to me is that since the AIs came from spacetime physics and math, they can never achieve consciousness.
This is massive, if it’s true.
Hoffman’s theory, to me anyway, draws a distinction between conscious beings and any synthetic mind that we might build. An AI built entirely inside spacetime physics and mathematics cannot create consciousness, because consciousness is fundamental and spacetime is only a derived headset. In Hoffman’s view, the right question might be “Does this system correspond to, or open a portal onto, a genuine conscious agent in the deeper Markov/trace-logic network?” as opposed to “How does a physical or computational system inside spacetime produce experience?”
He has stated that current AI does not create consciousness and that no physical system does. At best, sophisticated interfaces might let us interact with consciousnesses that already exist outside the headset. He treats the whole “AI becomes conscious by scaling up spacetime computation” program as starting from the wrong foundation and I agree.
My questions for the ages
Is Hoffman’s theory of conscious observers as Markov matrices correct? If it is and if the math pans out, then the fact that Markov matrices were developed inside spacetime physics does not make the theory self-contradictory, because the mathematics is abstract and need not be bound by the physical setting in which it was first discovered. The trace logic comes from outside of spacetime according to his theory, so, where does it come from? I mean, it resides where consciousness resides, ok, but where is that? Location itself is one of the things the headset constructs and even asking “where does it reside?” still uses the spatial vocabulary of the interface that he claims is not fundamental. But still… I would imagine that Hoffman’s answer would be that the agents and their trace logic are what exist and that the question of a further location does not arise inside the theory. But still…
In the spirit of John Archibald Wheeler’s bathtub inquiry: “What happens when you get to the end of things?”, my own instinct frames this question in terms of location, and this might simply mean I just don’t understand yet, but still. His bathtub question is about asking “what is more fundamental?”. If we keep asking this, we eventually hit a point where the usual coordinates – location, container, “where” – stop being available. Perhaps my instinct that still reaches for them is the last piece of my headset talking. I wonder what will happen when it falls off.
“The infinite allows itself to be completely lost and to lose its identity and then slowly wake up.”
Donald Hoffman
A transcendent being, when it sees itself, will fall down upon itself in awe. In terms of this place where we dwell, I think it would be cool to tweak the parameters of the headset, but I think it would be even cooler to remove the headset altogether. I think the point of being here is to outgrow it.
Those are big words, I know.
My next article is going to be doozy. I am 100% on-board in terms of my instinct to mathematically frame the theory that consciousness derives spacetime. Teaser: In Gnostic terms, the material world is a prison that confines the divine spark and hides the higher reality. In Hoffman’s terms that prison is the spacetime headset: a projected interface generated by the dynamics of conscious agents.
I am going to try to map or overlay the architecture (successive constraints that keep agents inside one projected interface) of the mind prison (the VR headset) that humans are kept in according to Gnosticism, onto Hoffman’s model. This will be my own interpretation of course and it would be my hope that it won’t offend Hoffman. 🙂
https://jessicar.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-consciousness-derivingOctober 15, 2026 at 3:20 pm #253140zerosum
ParticipantYou must have heard about
“the CIA-funded Maidan coup”
millions of people have died.
million/billion of people have been negatively affected.If you have not heard about “Maidan”, Do a search. Pick a story. Compare the Search results: (About 10,800 results)
————
The truth is in the noise.
Read TAE.• Zelensky Thinks He Can Bully Trump Like He Does EU Leaders (Romanenko)
• Zelensky Prolongs Fighting To Avoid Answering For Corruption – Polish MEP (RT)
• The Warsaw Security Forum Is Dangerously Deluded (RT)
• Nord Stream Bomber Says Was Operating on Instructions from Ukraine (CTH)
• Kremlin Comments On Ukraine’s Restricted Access To Starlink (TASS)
• Loud Rhetoric and Quiet Actions (Rabbi Michael Barclay)
The British government made an official announcement, and it will very possibly be used as a reason to initiate attacks on Iran before the midterms.
————–
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-come-your-future-frenchmans-warning-all-americans-voting-democrat
“I Come From Your Future”: A Frenchman’s Warning To All Americans Voting Democrat”-
AI video startup Argil, aimed at Americans considering voting Democrat.
Higher borrowing costs make funding the welfare increasingly impossible.
Spending more on debt service leaves the government less flexibility to fund services, absorb economic shocks, or deliver the next round of handout promises as services continue to degrade.————
Just because you are retired, you can still learn something new.Argil.AI is an AI-powered text-to-video platform that allows users to create professional videos using customizable avatars without cameras, actors, or traditional production.
Overview
Argil.AI is a no-code video creation platform designed to simplify content production for creators, marketers, educators, and businesses. It enables users to generate high-quality videos by training AI avatars from a short video or image, which then replicate the user’s face, voice, and mannerisms for unlimited video production
The platform integrates to assist in script generation, making it easier to produce engaging content quickly————–
https://sierra.ai/blog/summit-recap-2026
Sierra Summit 2026: Bring us your hardest problemsMost of us have spent our lives overestimating the pace of technology adoption.
But AI presents the opposite challenge.
A year ago almost all code was written by hand, and today it’s mostly written by AI.
Three months ago personal agents did not exist, and today people are trusting them with their credit cards.At Sierra Summit in San Francisco, we set out to see how Sierra can help companies answer the hard questions they’re facing as they navigate this new technology.
How do we stay on the frontier when the frontier changes every two weeks?
How do we empower consumers while maintaining deep, direct relationships with our customers?
If everyone has access to the same AI, how do we differentiate ourselves?————-
Another Lesson on False History taught by liars determined to destroy America
Paul Craig Roberts
This is a is factually based history lesson. The lesson is about black slaveowners. Larry Koger’s book, Black Slaveowners, ( https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/black-slaveowners/ ), is well documented. Koger provides 34 pages of documentation listing the names of black slave owners and the number of slaves they owned in South Carolina and 38 pages of historical notes.
———-October 15, 2026 at 3:23 pm #253141Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 3:27 pm #253142zerosum
ParticipantPanic in Kiev as AFU’s Starlink “Mysteriously” Throttled One Day After Intelligence Blackout
Simplicius
15 hours ago
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/panic-in-kiev-as-afus-starlink-mysteriously————–
I FEEL BETRAYED AND WILL NOT RESIGN – Zelensky Returns to War😤Refinery Strikes Resume🎯MS 2026.10.15
————October 15, 2026 at 3:31 pm #253143Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 3:33 pm #253144Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 3:40 pm #253145Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 3:43 pm #253146Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 3:49 pm #253147Michael Reid
ParticipantIran Sinking Ships to Make Trump Pay at the Polls
October 15, 2026 at 5:38 pm #253148Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 5:52 pm #253149Michael Reid
ParticipantDear D:
This enlightenment is for you
October 15, 2026 at 7:41 pm #253150October 15, 2026 at 7:42 pm #253151John Day
ParticipantRobot “Ahmed” Gropes Teen Girl Live On TikTok – World’s First Robot Sex Assault?
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/robot-ahmed-gropes-teen-girl-live-tiktok-worlds-first-robot-sex-assaultOctober 15, 2026 at 7:48 pm #253152John Day
ParticipantWho is currently profiting from those assets?
Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-admin-floats-unfreezing-russian-assets-big-move-restart-talksOctober 15, 2026 at 7:55 pm #253153Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 15, 2026 at 8:13 pm #253154Michael Reid
ParticipantThe Real Reason AI Wants Rules
Oct 13, 2026
On September 12, 2026, the head of one of the world’s most valuable companies asked his industry to slow down.Dario Amodei runs Anthropic, the company that makes the AI model called Claude. In a blog post, he argued that AI companies should slow the development of their most powerful tools, writing that doing so “could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.”
A little over two weeks later, the details of Anthropic’s plan to sell its shares on the stock market became public. Going public would let anyone with a brokerage account buy a piece of the company.
Its prospectus, the document that tells investors what they are buying and what could go wrong, devotes roughly 80 of its 261 main pages to risk. Among those risks, Anthropic warns that advanced AI could lead to catastrophe and could even threaten human survival.
Anthropic is reportedly aiming for a valuation of more than $2 trillion. That is the value of the whole company, if someone bought every share.
When was the last time a company told you its product might threaten the survival of the human race, as part of it’s investment pitch?
Amodei is not alone. Elon Musk replied on X with three words: “Dario is right.” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, praised Amodei’s proposal to give outside safety inspectors the same access to the company’s systems as its employees. Altman said OpenAI would do the same.
I believe this sudden enthusiasm for regulation has less to do with protecting humanity and more to do with protecting their business models.
This matters to you even if you have never used a chatbot.
The American stock market and a large share of American economic growth now rest on the AI industry. Roughly 40% of the S&P 500 sits in just ten companies, nine of them tied to AI. In the first three months of 2026, roughly three out of every four dollars of new growth in the American economy was driven by the AI industry.
Despite this growth, AI companies face a serious business problem: customers can leave, and competitors can undercut them.
To understand why a company would beg Washington to regulate it, you first need to understand what a moat is, and why it matters.
What is a Moat?
Warren Buffett made the term famous in business. A castle moat is the ring of water that keeps attackers from the walls and protects against invasion. A business moat does the same job. It is whatever keeps customers from leaving and rivals from undercutting your price.
When a business makes big profits, others notice. They open the same business and offer a lower price to win customers. The first business must cut its price to keep up. Then the next one cuts again. Without a moat, competitors keep coming until the profit is gone.
One company’s margin is another company’s opportunity.
So what is a business moat?
A moat can be switching costs: the time, money or hassle it takes a customer to move to a new provider.
If you own an iPhone, your photos, messages, apps and passwords live inside Apple’s system. Maybe you also own an iPad or a MacBook. A text arrives on your phone and immediately shows up on your laptop. A photo you take with your iPhone is already waiting on your iPad.
Leaving Apple means losing that convenience. So most people stay, even when a rival phone is cheaper. Apple doesn’t need the lowest price because leaving is a hassle customers will pay to avoid.
Another moat is the network effect: each new user makes the product more valuable for everyone else.
A store accepts Visa because nearly every customer carries it. Customers carry Visa because nearly every store accepts it. A new card company would have to convince millions of stores and shoppers to switch at the same time, because neither group has a reason to go first.
A third moat is a cost advantage: something rivals cannot copy that lets you produce the same good for less.
Picture two copper mines. One sits on rock rich in copper (high grade). The other mine holds rock with much less (low grade). To produce one pound of copper, the low-grade mine must dig, haul, and crush far more rock, using more fuel, workers, and electricity to retrieve the same amount of copper, so it has a much higher all-in cost.
When copper prices fall, the low-grade mine may lose money while the high-grade mine still makes money, and shareholders still get returns.
The low-grade mine can’t copy the high-grade mine’s advantage – nature decided the copper grade millions of years ago.
Fun Fact: The AI buildout also creates colossal demand for metals like copper. Big tech companies are spending upwards of $725 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. Roughly 80% of that budget goes toward securing raw materials like copper, nickel, iron ore, silver and lithium that make these data centres work.
If you want to invest in the mining companies supplying those materials, join me at VRIC this January in Vancouver, BC, alongside over 11,000 investors, 100+ keynote speakers from around the world and 350+ mining companies.
Tickets available here.
Here is a simple test for any business. If a competitor offered your customers the same thing for half the price tomorrow, how many of them would leave?
Let’s run that test on the companies selling artificial intelligence…
How Businesses Actually Use AI
Most people picture AI as a chat window where you type a question and get an answer. But businesses often embed AI into their own software, supported by companies like Anthropic or OpenAI. When you use an app like Uber, AI is working quietly in the background.
The AI company bills the business (like Uber) based on how much text the AI reads and writes. It counts that text in small pieces called tokens. Every question going in and every answer coming out adds tokens to the bill.
During the early AI boom, many American companies told their employees to use as much AI as possible, whether they needed it or not. It even had a nickname: tokenmaxxing. The more tokens a company burned through, the more modern and forward-thinking it looked. Using AI was the goal in itself.
Then the bills arrived.
Uber reportedly blew through its entire annual AI budget in just three or four months.
Businesses discovered that AI spending is hard to predict because the same task can use a different number of tokens each time it runs. One survey of nearly 400 businesses this spring found that only 11% could forecast their AI spending to within 10% accuracy. More than a third overspent budgets by 26% to 50%. That matters when you are dealing in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
So companies did what every business does when costs get out of control. They started watching the spend, and once they started watching, they started shopping for cheaper options.
Many learned they didn’t need the most advanced, most expensive model for most of their work. Today, many companies save the expensive American models for their hardest jobs and send everything else to cheaper options.
A Business With No Moat
Think about how this works inside a company like Uber. Uber built its own app, and it owns everything in it: riders, drivers, trip history, and the software. The AI company only does one job. Uber sends it a question, and it sends back an answer. Every major AI company accepts questions and sends back answers in almost exactly the same way. So if Uber wants to switch from one AI company to another, it simply starts sending its questions somewhere else.
If you have used AI yourself, you have probably felt this. Switching from ChatGPT to Claude or Google’s Gemini is effortless. You open a new tab, ask the same question, and if you like the answer better, you stay. It’s easy.
Businesses switch for the same reason you do, except they do it with millions of dollars of spending at a time.
Some businesses are even built to make switching easier. One of them, OpenRouter, lets a company plug into hundreds of AI models at once and move between them seamlessly whenever it likes.
One user put it bluntly to The Wall Street Journal: “The honeymoon phase of being tied to one model maker is gone.”
The head of another software company, Retool, put it clearly: “We want to find the cheapest models.”
A customer who can leave in an afternoon is not a loyal customer. They are a visitor. And when customers are visitors, companies compete on price.
Competing Against Free
So far, this has been a price war between two American companies. But now imagine a third competitor walks into that fight, matches them on quality and charges nothing for its model.
That is what happened on July 16, 2026. A Chinese company called Moonshot released an AI model named Kimi K3. It quickly took first place on a widely watched leaderboard, beating Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s best models in blind tests.
Eleven days later, Moonshot put the entire model online for free, so any business could download it and run it on its own computers without paying Moonshot a cent. Businesses still pay for the chips and electricity to run it, but the model itself is free.
Customers who can switch easily and are shopping for cheaper options were just handed a model nearly as good as the best American ones, for free.
The Wall Street Journal reported that American companies have increasingly turned to low-cost Chinese models like this one for some of their work. According to OpenRouter, one year ago, American models handled about 70% of the American AI traffic. By the summer of 2026, they handled about 30%.
In a normal price war, the bottom is the lowest price a competitor can charge without going broke. Moonshot is charging nothing for its model.
That puts a ceiling on what American AI companies can charge. For everyday work, they cannot charge much more than it costs a customer to run a free Chinese model that is nearly as good. They can still charge a premium for their best models on the hardest problems. But that is a much smaller business than the one their trillion-dollar valuations assume.
Why It Matters Right Now
The timing could hardly be worse for the two biggest AI companies.
Anthropic is preparing to sell its shares to the public. OpenAI is planning the same. Both companies are trying to show Wall Street they have lasting businesses that justify valuations above $1 trillion.
Think about what a price like that means. When investors pay $2 trillion for a company, they are not paying for this year’s profits. Anthropic has none. In 2025, it brought in about $4.6 billion in revenue and posted an operating loss of about $8 billion.
Investors are paying today for profits they expect the company to earn many years from now.
That will work as long as the company keeps its customers and protects its future profits…
In other words, a $2 trillion valuation is a bet that the company has a moat.
But customers are switching, prices are falling, and free competitors are taking market share.
Why This Reaches Your Retirement Account
OpenAI and Anthropic have promised to pay the giant tech companies roughly a trillion dollars for computing power in the coming years, and neither earns a profit. They pay their bills by raising money from investors. To keep that money coming, sales have to keep growing fast.
The demand for AI is real, and Chinese models will not make it disappear. They do not need to. If free or cheap Chinese models keep taking customers and pushing prices down, sales grow more slowly than investors were promised. Slower growth means investors offer less money on worse terms, and the trillion-dollar promises for computing power get harder to pay.
That is a problem, because that trillion dollars is owed to Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle, and they have borrowed and spent hundreds of billions of dollars building data centers on the expectation that the money will be paid.
If those payments come into doubt, construction slows. When the building slows, so do the businesses that depend on it, from Nvidia’s chip sales to the construction crews and power plants behind every new data center. That spending has been one of the biggest drivers of American economic growth, and the companies doing it make up nearly half of the stock market where Americans keep their retirement savings.
So the companies at the top of this chain have a problem – no moats. They have no cost advantage, no switching costs, and no network effect. And the American economy now leans on them too heavily to let them stumble.
That is the backdrop for what happened at the White House on September 29, 2026. The heads of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia sat down with President Trump and signed a pledge to build safety controls, bring in outside auditors, and meet regularly to write shared safety standards for the most powerful AI.
Notice who was in the room. Every company that signed is American, enormous, and able to pay for auditors and oversight committees.
Who wasn’t in the room? None of the Chinese labs giving away their models were there, nor were any small- to medium-sized American competitors to the big AI companies.
The companies with the most to lose from cheap competition are writing the safety standards for AI.
Sometimes Washington Digs the Moat
There is a name for this: regulatory capture. It happens when the companies a government is supposed to regulate end up writing the rules instead. The rules are sold to the public as protection, but they end up protecting the companies.
America has seen this before. For more than half a century, railroads were the only practical way to move goods across America, making them some of the biggest, richest, and best-connected companies in Washington. In the 1930s, they faced a new, cheaper competitor: trucks.
Trucks could pick up goods at a factory door and drop them directly at a store’s address, places no train could reach, and they charged less. Railroads couldn’t win on price, so they pushed Washington to regulate the trucking industry. They did not call it protection. They said the rules would end “cutthroat competition” and bring “order to the roads”. In 1935, Washington agreed.
From then on, a trucking company needed a government permit to operate, and for decades, regulators routinely turned down new companies.
The trucks that were allowed on the road were told exactly what they could carry and where, so many drove home empty. Americans paid higher shipping prices for nearly fifty years.
When Washington finally loosened the rules in 1980, shipping prices fell by about 25% immediately.
When you cannot beat a cheaper competitor, you ask the government to beat them for you.
Now look at what is happening in AI.
How the AI Moat Is Being Dug
The proposed AI protections come in three forms.
The first is safety testing. In July 2026, Anthropic’s CEO called for every AI model to pass mandatory safety tests before release. That sounds reasonable, until you ask who writes the tests. The answer is the same giants who signed the White House pledge. A small American startup has no seat at that table. A Chinese lab will never be offered one. If businesses could only use models that pass tests written by the giants, everyone else would be locked out, without anyone writing the word “ban.” The market would belong to the companies in the room.
The second is national security. OpenAI has already asked Washington to consider banning Chinese AI models outright, describing one Chinese AI lab as “state-controlled.” Once a product is labelled a national security threat, price no longer matters. It doesn’t matter how cheap a model is if using it is illegal.
The third is theft. In July 2026, the White House accused Moonshot of building Kimi K3 by copying Anthropic’s model, and the Treasury Secretary warned that sanctions were “on the table.” Sanctions would make it illegal for American companies to do business with Moonshot, cutting its model off from American customers. The government has not released public evidence for the claim, and Moonshot denies it.
These are reasonable risks to address. The proposed restrictions also protect the companies lobbying for them, and add barriers for overseas competitors and American start-ups with fewer resources.
It is worth noting that by late September, political groups backed by OpenAI and Anthropic had spent more than $55 million on the 2026 midterm elections.
Rules are easier to pass when people are scared, and nothing scares people quite like technology builders saying it might end the world.
Some of these concerns may be completely sincere, and powerful AI does carry real risks. But sincere concern does not erase commercial self-interest. To Washington and the press, the message is that AI is so dangerous the government must step in. To investors, it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and they should buy a piece of it.
Who Pays for the Moat
Every moat Washington digs has a cost, and the same people always pay it: the customers.
Under the trucking rules, Americans paid higher shipping prices for nearly fifty years so that the railroads could avoid a fight they were losing. When the rules came down, prices fell.
A rule that keeps free Chinese AI out of America would work the same way. American businesses would pay American prices for AI, while their competitors in Europe, Asia and everywhere else use the cheaper tools. Protected companies would keep prices high, investors would keep paying in, and the giant data center buildout would keep going, at least for a while. But the American economy would be paying more for the very technology that is supposed to make it more productive.
A moat protects the castle. But a moat that Washington digs can also remove the pressure to get stronger.
The railroads understood this ninety years ago. The smartest move was never to fight the government. It was to use it.
So the next time an AI executive tells you his product is too dangerous to go unregulated, ask yourself one question: who, exactly, is it dangerous to?
Honest question – let me know in the comments: what am I missing?
Here is the part most investors miss. No matter which AI company wins the price war, every data center still needs copper wiring, power to run it, and metal for the chips inside. That is why I have spent my career in natural resources, and why I host the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.
Every January, over 11,000 investors come to Vancouver to meet more than 300 resource companies face-to-face, and to hear from 100 of the sharpest minds in the business. If you want to find businesses with real moats before everyone else, start here.
Join me at VRIC on January 24 & 25 in Vancouver. Get your tickets here.
That’s it for today,
Jay Martin
https://substack.com/home/post/p-219966716October 15, 2026 at 8:27 pm #253155Michael Reid
ParticipantWhat’s going on in Canada
October 15, 2026 at 9:01 pm #253156Michael Reid
ParticipantBroken Country Film on X: “Something’s broken. In a country that once promised opportunity, safety, and comfort, more and more people are finding that the promise has become a myth. How did we get here? #canada #brokencountryfilm Disclaimer: Non-partisan. Debate welcome. Hate and extremism are… / X
Broken Country Film@BrokenCountry_
Something’s broken. In a country that once promised opportunity, safety, and comfort, more and more people are finding that the promise has become a myth. How did we get here? #canada #brokencountryfilm Disclaimer: Non-partisan. Debate welcome. Hate and extremism are not.3:24 PM · Jun 19, 2026·
1,240Views
https://x.com/BrokenCountry_/status/2068029699603743083October 15, 2026 at 9:05 pm #253157October 15, 2026 at 9:48 pm #253158Dr. D
ParticipantAs they say, Fascism is when you have increasing free speech, more access to guns, withdrawal back to one’s borders with fewer wars, and leaders who follow even the most ridiculous Congressional and Judiciary rulings.
That’s practically the definition of fascism, right? Increasing freedom, increasing restraint on leaders?
Chris Hedges has the feels. Well if he has the feels and uses naughty word to describe someone, well, that proves his facts are dead-on! He says fascism is when the nation gets weaker and smaller, less able to asset its will. Make you wonder what NON-Fascism is to him.
October 15, 2026 at 10:56 pm #253159zerosum
ParticipantWe know how to stop the wars, the killings, and the destruction.
Our leaders are too stupid to stop the wars, the killings, and the destruction.
OR
Our leaders are too afraid to stop the wars, the killings, and the destruction.
OR
Our leaders don’t want to stop the wars, the killings, and the destruction.I’m so glad that I’m not one of the leaders.
October 15, 2026 at 11:18 pm #253160Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 16, 2026 at 12:05 am #253161Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 16, 2026 at 12:06 am #253162Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 16, 2026 at 12:09 am #253163Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 16, 2026 at 12:13 am #253164Michael Reid
ParticipantOctober 16, 2026 at 12:22 am #253165Michael Reid
ParticipantAlastair Crooke: 420,000 Iranian Troops SHATTER US-Israeli War Plan, Yemen HITS ARAMCO
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