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"Absolutely Breathtaking" - Exposing The Censorship Industrial Complex's Power Grip In Germany Authored by Greg Collard via Racket.news, New liber-net report maps an expansive network of government and private censors across Germany... Many organizations and federal agencies involved in censoring Americans under the guise of mis/disinformation have shut down in the last couple years. Racket’s Twitter Files exposed the level of censorship slime oozing from organizations such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Project, and the Virality Project. On the government side of things, there was the Global Engagement Center, the Foreign Influence Task Force, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which still exists but is no longer involved in mis/disnfo work. That’s not to say America is perfect when it comes to free speech, but as Sen. Rand Paul said in September, “throughout government, the censorship apparatus that Biden had put in place is gone.” However, if you look to Germany, the strongest economic power in the European Union, it’s easy to see where America was going. It has about 330 organizations working with federal and state levels of government to suppress speech and about 425 grants — mostly from the government — that fund this work, according to research from liber-net, a free speech group that tracks censorship. The most high-profile cases of German censorship, at least in America, have been raids of people who authorities determined had engaged in “digital violence” for offenses that include insulting someone. These raids were the subject of a high-Zprofile “60 Minutes” segment last February. Prosecutors and police largely depend on a system of government-certified and government-funded “flaggers.” While these incidents understandably get the most attention, the censorship apparatus is much more deeply ingrained in German society, says Andrew Lowenthal, the CEO of liber-net. “Germany is the most important country doing this type of content controls work in the entirety of the EU and I would argue has a significant influence on the EU. There’s not really any light between civil society and the government.” As a result, there’s a constant “atmosphere of intimidation,” says Thomas Geisel, a former mayor of Dusseldorf and now a member of the European Parliament. “People are afraid to speak their mind. That people always have to find some sort of way of expressing their mind in a politically correct way has created a narrower space for discourse, and I think that is really threatening our democracy.” Liber-net’s report includes a searchable database of organizations involved in content control and the grants that fund their work, categorized from 1-5 flags, with five being the worst for its censorship advocacy. The report indicates that government funding for content controls peaked in 2023 at about $36 million (converted from euros, as all dollar amounts in this article are) among the German federal and state governments as well as the EU. While the combined funding among the three has decreased to around $23 million, the amount from the German federal government remains roughly the same and has increased since last year. Source: liber-net. Amounts in euros. The “subtle instruments” In some cases, government money goes to private organizations that act as a middleman for the government. For example, all of the money the private German Research Foundation distributes is provided by the German federal and state governments, and the EU (1%). The foundation awards money to various mis/disinfo causes. In June, it even requested proposals to expand “the term ‘disinformation’ to include claims that may be factually true,” according to liber-net. The report says the German government has certified four organizations as flaggers, or in the government’s framing, organizations with “specialized expertise and experience in identifying and reporting illegal content.” The Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), which enforces the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act, awards grants to these flaggers. Among them is a group called REspect!. It’s been a government-certified “trusted flagger” since October 2024, which means “deletion requests submitted by REspect! to the platforms must be given priority and processed within a shorter time,” according to a REspect! report. The group received funding directly from a government grant program called “Demokratie leben!,” which translates to Live Democracy! REspect! has an online portal for people to submit their complaints, which are then forwarded to the proper authorities such as the Bavarian Police. That was the case for one person who had the audacity to call a German politician a “Dummschwätzer” on Facebook — which roughly translates to “blowhard” — as documented by the Bundestag in a list of attacks against politicians and political parties. Translation via ChatGPT: “Report of an offense via the online portal of the Bavarian Police through the reporting office REspect! Reporting an online insult. The GS (Green Party member of the state parliament) was called a ‘Dummschwätzer’ (‘blabbermouth’ / ‘loud-mouthed idiot’) on Facebook.” Another “trusted flagger” is HateAid, which received its certification in June after proving its bona fides in other aspects of Germany’s censorship apparatus since its founding in 2018, garnering at least $5.2 million in government funding, according to liber-net. HateAid purports to be a defender of free speech. From its homepage: However, HateAid, armed with public funding, will go after people who express the wrong opinion. Take the Russia-Ukraine war, according to liber-net: HateAid has also notably pursued the censorship of those protesting Berlin’s backing of Kiev; it has classified the hashtag “Kriegstreiber” (or “Warmonger”) as “pro-Kremlin propaganda” whose effect is to “undermine the credibility of politicians” supporting Berlin’s war efforts. HateAid even warns that the “warmonger” hashtag from “small pro-Kremlin accounts” can shape public debate because they respond to channels with large audiences, such as those of politicians and journalists (bold emphasis is HateAid): These are retweeted or commented on preferentially in order to spread the narrative of the “warmonger”. In this way, even small accounts can share propaganda with enormous reach. As a result, they enter the centre of society, where they are also perceived and taken up by citizens who are reading along. In effect, they are free riders on the reach of these accounts and can thus shape the public debate. The CEO of HateAid, Josephine Ballon, was part of the 60 Minutes piece mentioned above. She declared that “free speech needs boundaries.” “Free speech needs boundaries… Without boundaries, a very small group of people can rely on endless freedom to say anything that they want, while everyone else is scared and intimidated,” says Josephine Ballon, CEO of HateAid. https://t.co/YjlBa7YJ3s pic.twitter.com/xqI88oiiO2 — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025 Without speech boundaries, Ballon argued that people will be afraid to participate in political discussions. “This is not only a fear, it’s already taking place. Already half of the Internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion, and they rarely participate in public debates online anymore.” There lies the rub: is that because people are afraid of being criticized or attacked online, or because people are afraid of being turned over to authorities by the government’s “trusted flaggers” such as HateAid and REspect!? Geisel says Germany’s censorship apparatus is having a similar effect as anti-speech laws in Russia, which, after invading Ukraine, made “discrediting the armed forces” a crime. “It’s a lot more subtle [in Germany], but the result is very similar in that you simply don’t speak your mind anymore because there are more subtle instruments preventing you from speaking your mind.” He points to the highly publicized case of political scientist Ulrike Guerot as an example. Guerot was a political science professor at the University of Bonn until she was fired in 2023 after outrage over a book she co-authored, “Endspiel Europa,” which translates to “Endgame Europe.” Guerot argued that “Ukraine had the role of starting a war with Russia on behalf of the West, which was then to be backed militarily and logistically by NATO member states…” Officially, Guerot was fired for plagiarism, although she maintains there were only minor problems and that the accusations were a pretext for firing her over her views. Guerot said liber-net’s report is eye-opening because it maps out a censorship network that makes clear to her the problem is worse than she realized. “It draws the line between the dots and you say, ‘Ah, this is connected to this and they got the money from there.’ And that’s why it's called a censorship network. It’s like a spider net, and there are the dots and it’s all connected. And in this respect, I must admit it was absolutely breathtaking.” Tyler Durden Tue, 11/25/2025 - 02:00

The Google TPU: The Chip Made For The AI Inference Era By UncoverAlpha As I find the topic of Google TPUs extremely important, I am publishing a comprehensive deep dive, not just a technical overview, but also strategic and financial coverage of the Google TPU. Topics covered: The history of the TPU and why it all even started? The difference between a TPU and a GPU? Performance numbers TPU vs GPU? Where are the problems for the wider adoption of TPUs Google’s TPU is the biggest competitive advantage of its cloud business for the next 10 years How many TPUs does Google produce today, and how big can that get? Gemini 3 and the aftermath of Gemini 3 on the whole chip industry Let’s dive into it. The history of the TPU and why it all even started? The story of the Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) begins not with a breakthrough in chip manufacturing, but with a realization about math and logistics. Around 2013, Google’s leadership—specifically Jeff Dean, Jonathan Ross (the CEO of Groq), and the Google Brain team—ran a projection that alarmed them. They calculated that if every Android user utilized Google’s new voice search feature for just three minutes a day, the company would need to double its global data center capacity just to handle the compute load. At the time, Google was relying on standard CPUs and GPUs for these tasks. While powerful, these general-purpose chips were inefficient for the specific heavy lifting required by Deep Learning: massive matrix multiplications. Scaling up with existing hardware would have been a financial and logistical nightmare. This sparked a new project. Google decided to do something rare for a software company: build its own custom silicon. The goal was to create an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) designed for one job only: running TensorFlow neural networks. Key Historical Milestones: 2013-2014: The project moved really fast as Google both hired a very capable team and, to be honest, had some luck in their first steps. The team went from design concept to deploying silicon in data centers in just 15 months—a very short cycle for hardware engineering. 2015: Before the world knew they existed, TPUs were already powering Google’s most popular products. They were silently accelerating Google Maps navigation, Google Photos, and Google Translate. 2016: Google officially unveiled the TPU at Google I/O 2016. This urgency to solve the “data center doubling” problem is why the TPU exists. It wasn’t built to sell to gamers or render video; it was built to save Google from its own AI success. With that in mind, Google has been thinking about the »costly« AI inference problems for over a decade now. This is also one of the main reasons why the TPU is so good today compared to other ASIC projects. The difference between a TPU and a GPU? To understand the difference, it helps to look at what each chip was originally built to do. A GPU is a “general-purpose” parallel processor, while a TPU is a “domain-specific” architecture. The GPUs were designed for graphics. They excel at parallel processing (doing many things at once), which is great for AI. However, because they are designed to handle everything from video game textures to scientific simulations, they carry “architectural baggage.” They spend significant energy and chip area on complex tasks like caching, branch prediction, and managing independent threads. A TPU, on the other hand, strips away all that baggage. It has no hardware for rasterization or texture mapping. Instead, it uses a unique architecture called a Systolic Array. The “Systolic Array” is the key differentiator. In a standard CPU or GPU, the chip moves data back and forth between the memory and the computing units for every calculation. This constant shuffling creates a bottleneck (the Von Neumann bottleneck). In a TPU’s systolic array, data flows through the chip like blood through a heart (hence “systolic”). It loads data (weights) once. It passes inputs through a massive grid of multipliers. The data is passed directly to the next unit in the array without writing back to memory. What this means, in essence, is that a TPU, because of its systolic array, drastically reduces the number of memory reads and writes required from HBM. As a result, the TPU can spend its cycles computing rather than waiting for data. Google’s new TPU design, also called Ironwood also addressed some of the key areas where a TPU was lacking: They enhanced the SparseCore for efficiently handling large embeddings (good for recommendation systems and LLMs) It increased HBM capacity and bandwidth (up to 192 GB per chip). For a better understanding, Nvidia’s Blackwell B200 has 192GB per chip, while Blackwell Ultra, also known as the B300, has 288 GB per chip. Improved the Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI) for linking thousands of chips into massive clusters, also called TPU Pods (needed for AI training as well as some time test compute inference workloads). When it comes to ICI, it is important to note that it is very performant with a Peak Bandwidth of 1.2 TB/s vs Blackwell NVLink 5 at 1.8 TB/s. But Google’s ICI, together with its specialized compiler and software stack, still delivers superior performance on some specific AI tasks. The key thing to understand is that because the TPU doesn’t need to decode complex instructions or constantly access memory, it can deliver significantly higher Operations Per Joule. For scale-out, Google uses Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) and its 3D torus network, which compete with Nvidia’s InfiniBand and Spectrum-X Ethernet. The main difference is that OCS is extremely cost-effective and power-efficient as it eliminates electrical switches and O-E-O conversions, but because of this, it is not as flexible as the other two. So again, the Google stack is extremely specialized for the task at hand and doesn’t offer the flexibility that GPUs do. Performance numbers TPU vs GPU? As we defined the differences, let’s look at real numbers showing how the TPU performs compared to the GPU. Since Google isn’t revealing these numbers, it is really hard to get details on performance. I studied many articles and alternative data sources, including interviews with industry insiders, and here are some of the key takeaways. The first important thing is that there is very limited information on Google’s newest TPUv7 (Ironwood), as Google introduced it in April 2025 and is just now starting to become available to external clients (internally, it is said that Google has already been using Ironwood since April, possibly even for Gemini 3.0.). And why is this important if we, for example, compare TPUv7 with an older but still widely used version of TPUv5p based on Semianalysis data: TPUv7 produces 4,614 TFLOPS(BF16) vs 459 TFLOPS for TPUv5p TPUv7 has 192GB of memory capacity vs TPUv5p 96GB TPUv7 memory Bandwidth is 7,370 GB/s vs 2,765 for v5p We can see that the performance leaps between v5 and v7 are very significant. To put that in context, most of the comments that we will look at are more focused on TPUv6 or TPUv5 than v7. Based on analyzing a ton of interviews with Former Google employees, customers, and competitors (people from AMD, NVDA & others), the summary of the results is as follows. Most agree that TPUs are more cost-effective compared to Nvidia GPUs, and most agree that the performance per watt for TPUs is better. This view is not applicable across all use cases tho. A Former Google Cloud employee: "If it is the right application, then they can deliver much better performance per dollar compared to GPUs. They also require much lesser energy and produces less heat compared to GPUs. They’re also more energy efficient and have a smaller environmental footprint, which is what makes them a desired outcome. The use cases are slightly limited to a GPU, they’re not as generic, but for a specific application, they can offer as much as 1.4X better performance per dollar, which is pretty significant saving for a customer that might be trying to use GPU versus TPUs." - source: AlphaSense Similarly, a very insightful comment from a Former Unit Head at Google around TPUs materially lowering AI-search cost per query vs GPUs: "TPU v6 is 60-65% more efficient than GPUs, prior generations 40-45%" This interview was in November 2024, so the expert is probably comparing the v6 TPU with the Nvidia Hopper. Today, we already have Blackwell vs V7. Many experts also mention the speed benefit that TPUs offer, with a Former Google Head saying that TPUs are 5x faster than GPUs for training dynamic models (like search-like workloads). There was also a very eye-opening interview with a client who used both Nvidia GPUs and Google TPUs as he describes the economics in great detail: "If I were to use eight H100s versus using one v5e pod, I would spend a lot less money on one v5e pod. In terms of price point money, performance per dollar, you will get more bang for TPU. If I already have a code, because of Google’s help or because of our own work, if I know it already is going to work on a TPU, then at that point it is beneficial for me to just stick with the TPU usage. In the long run, if I am thinking I need to write a new code base, I need to do a lot more work, then it depends on how long I’m going to train. I would say there is still some, for example, of the workload we have already done on TPUs that in the future because as Google will add newer generation of TPU, they make older ones much cheaper. For example, when they came out with v4, I remember the price of v2 came down so low that it was practically free to use compared to any NVIDIA GPUs. Google has got a good promise so they keep supporting older TPUs and they’re making it a lot cheaper. If you don’t really need your model trained right away, if you’re willing to say, “I can wait one week,” even though the training is only three days, then you can reduce your cost 1/5." - source: AlphaSense Another valuable interview was with a current AMD employee, acknowledging the benefits of ASICs: "I would expect that an AI accelerator could do about probably typically what we see in the industry. I’m using my experience at FPGAs. I could see a 30% reduction in size and maybe a 50% reduction in power vs a GPU." We also got some numbers from a Former Google employee who worked in the chip segment: "When I look at the published numbers, they (TPUs) are anywhere from 25%-30% better to close to 2x better, depending on the use cases compared to Nvidia. Essentially, there’s a difference between a very custom design built to do one task perfectly versus a more general purpose design." What is also known is that the real edge of TPUs lies not in the hardware but in the software and in the way Google has optimized its ecosystem for the TPU. A lot of people mention the problem that every Nvidia "competitor" like the TPU faces, which is the fast development of Nvidia and the constant "catching up" to Nvidia problem. This month a former Google Cloud employee addressed that concern head-on as he believes the rate at which TPUs are improving is faster than the rate at Nvidia: "The amount of performance per dollar that a TPU can generate from a new generation versus the old generation is a much significant jump than Nvidia" In addition, the recent data from Google’s presentation at the Hot Chips 2025 event backs that up, as Google stated that the TPUv7 is 100% better in performance per watt than their TPUv6e (Trillium). Even for hard Nvidia advocates, TPUs are not to be shrugged off easily, as even Jensen thinks very highly of Google’s TPUs. In a podcast with Brad Gerstner, he mentioned that when it comes to ASICs, Google with TPUs is a "special case". A few months ago, we also got an article from the WSJ saying that after the news publication The Information published a report that stated that OpenAI had begun renting Google TPUs for ChatGPT, Jensen called Altman, asking him if it was true, and signaled that he was open to getting the talks back on track (investment talks). Also worth noting was that Nvidia’s official X account posted a screenshot of an article in which OpenAI denied plans to use Google’s in-house chips. To say the least, Nvidia is watching TPUs very closely. Ok, but after looking at some of these numbers, one might think, why aren’t more clients using TPUs? Where are the problems for the wider adoption of TPUs The main problem for TPUs adoption is the ecosystem. Nvidia’s CUDA is engraved in the minds of most AI engineers, as they have been learning CUDA in universities. Google has developed its ecosystem internally but not externally, as it has used TPUs only for its internal workloads until now. TPUs use a combination of JAX and TensorFlow, while the industry skews to CUDA and PyTorch (although TPUs also support PyTorch now). While Google is working hard to make its ecosystem more supportive and convertible with other stacks, it is also a matter of libraries and ecosystem formation that takes years to develop. It is also important to note that, until recently, the GenAI industry’s focus has largely been on training workloads. In training workloads, CUDA is very important, but when it comes to inference, even reasoning inference, CUDA is not that important, so the chances of expanding the TPU footprint in inference are much higher than those in training (although TPUs do really well in training as well – Gemini 3 the prime example). The fact that most clients are multi-cloud also poses a challenge for TPU adoption, as AI workloads are closely tied to data and its location (cloud data transfer is costly). Nvidia is accessible via all three hyperscalers, while TPUs are available only at GCP so far. A client who uses TPUs and Nvidia GPUs explains it well: "Right now, the one biggest advantage of NVIDIA, and this has been true for past three companies I worked on is because AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, these are the three major cloud companies. Every company, every corporate, every customer we have will have data in one of these three. All these three clouds have NVIDIA GPUs. Sometimes the data is so big and in a different cloud that it is a lot cheaper to run our workload in whatever cloud the customer has data in. I don’t know if you know about the egress cost that is moving data out of one cloud is one of the bigger cost. In that case, if you have NVIDIA workload, if you have a CUDA workload, we can just go to Microsoft Azure, get a VM that has NVIDIA GPU, same GPU in fact, no code change is required and just run it there. With TPUs, once you are all relied on TPU and Google says, “You know what? Now you have to pay 10X more,” then we would be screwed, because then we’ll have to go back and rewrite everything. That’s why. That’s the only reason people are afraid of committing too much on TPUs. The same reason is for Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia." - source: AlphaSense These problems are well known at Google, so it is no surprise that internally, the debate over keeping TPUs inside Google or starting to sell them externally is a constant topic. When keeping them internally, it enhances the GCP moat, but at the same time, many former Google employees believe that at some point, Google will start offering TPUs externally as well, maybe through some neoclouds, not necessarily with the biggest two competitors, Microsoft and Amazon. Opening up the ecosystem, providing support, etc., and making it more widely usable are the first steps toward making that possible. A former Google employee also mentioned that Google last year formed a more sales-oriented team to push and sell TPUs, so it’s not like they have been pushing hard to sell TPUs for years; it is a fairly new dynamic in the organization. Google’s TPU is the biggest competitive advantage of its cloud business for the next 10 years The most valuable thing for me about TPUs is their impact on GCP. As we witness the transformation of cloud businesses from the pre-AI era to the AI era, the biggest takeaway is that the industry has gone from an oligopoly of AWS, Azure, and GCP to a more commoditized landscape, with Oracle, Coreweave, and many other neoclouds competing for AI workloads. The problem with AI workloads is the competition and Nvidia’s 75% gross margin, which also results in low margins for AI workloads. The cloud industry is moving from a 50-70% gross margin industry to a 20-35% gross margin industry. For cloud investors, this should be concerning, as the future profile of some of these companies is more like that of a utility than an attractive, high-margin business. But there is a solution to avoiding that future and returning to a normal margin: the ASIC. The cloud providers who can control the hardware and are not beholden to Nvidia and its 75% gross margin will be able to return to the world of 50% gross margins. And there is no surprise that all three AWS, Azure, and GCP are developing their own ASICs. The most mature by far is Google’s TPU, followed by Amazon’s Trainum, and lastly Microsoft’s MAIA (although Microsoft owns the full IP of OpenAI’s custom ASICs, which could help them in the future). While even with ASICs you are not 100% independent, as you still have to work with someone like Broadcom or Marvell, whose margins are lower than Nvidia’s but still not negligible, Google is again in a very good position. Over the years of developing TPUs, Google has managed to control much of the chip design process in-house. According to a current AMD employee, Broadcom no longer knows everything about the chip. At this point, Google is the front-end designer (the actual RTL of the design) while Broadcom is only the backend physical design partner. Google, on top of that, also, of course, owns the entire software optimization stack for the chip, which makes it as performant as it is. According to the AMD employee, based on this work split, he thinks Broadcom is lucky if it gets a 50-point gross margin on its part. Without having to pay Nvidia for the accelerator, a cloud provider can either price its compute similarly to others and maintain a better margin profile or lower costs and gain market share. Of course, all of this depends on having a very capable ASIC that can compete with Nvidia. Unfortunately, it looks like Google is the only one that has achieved that, as the number one-performing model is Gemini 3 trained on TPUs. According to some former Google employees, internally, Google is also using TPUs for inference across its entire AI stack, including Gemini and models like Veo. Google buys Nvidia GPUs for GCP, as clients want them because they are familiar with them and the ecosystem, but internally, Google is full-on with TPUs. As the complexity of each generation of ASICs increases, similar to the complexity and pace of Nvidia, I predict that not all ASIC programs will make it. I believe outside of TPUs, the only real hyperscaler shot right now is AWS Trainium, but even that faces much bigger uncertainties than the TPU. With that in mind, Google and its cloud business can come out of this AI era as a major beneficiary and market-share gainer. Recently, we even got comments from the SemiAnalysis team praising the TPU: "Google’s silicon supremacy among hyperscalers is unmatched, with their TPU 7th Gen arguably on par with Nvidia Blackwell. TPU powers the Gemini family of models which are improving in capability and sit close to the pareto frontier of $ per intelligence in some tasks" - source: SemiAnalysis How many TPUs does Google produce today, and how big can that get? Here are the numbers that I researched...  Continue reading at uncoveralpha.com Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 23:00

JP Morgan, Who Had No Issues Banking Epstein, Abruptly Closes Strike CEO Jack Mallers' Account JPMorgan Chase abruptly closed Strike CEO Jack Mallers’ personal accounts last month, giving him no warning and offering only a cryptic explanation, according to Yahoo Finance. Mallers posted on X that “Last month, J.P. Morgan Chase threw me out of the bank,” noting how odd it was given that “My dad has been a private client there for 30+ years.” When he asked why, the bank told him only: “We aren’t allowed to tell you.” Yahoo writes that he even framed the closure letter, which accused him of unspecified “concerning activity” and warned the bank “may not be able to open new accounts for you in the future.” The incident reignited concerns that the alleged Biden-era “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” is still lurking in the background, despite Trump’s new executive order aimed at penalizing firms that debank crypto businesses. Critics online immediately connected the dots, suggesting regulators and banks are still quietly squeezing crypto-aligned companies and founders. JPMorgan’s move sparked a broader backlash from Bitcoin advocates like Grant Cardone, Max Keiser, and others who are already furious over the bank’s perceived hostility toward Bitcoin and its recent push to delist companies with heavy BTC exposure. Many publicly closed their JPMorgan accounts, accusing the bank of targeting the crypto sector while having no trouble maintaining far more questionable clients in the past. (Apparently “concerning activity” was never a problem back when they were happily banking Epstein.) Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino replied to Mallers that the whole ordeal is “for the best,” later adding that organizations trying to undermine Bitcoin “will fail and become dust.” Meanwhile, JPMorgan insists it’s just protecting the “security and integrity of the financial system”—a claim that might land better if the bank’s compliance radar didn’t seem to activate only when the customer is a crypto CEO rather than, say, a notorious sex-trafficking financier. Recall just days ago we wrote that the bank is now under fire from Florida officials over its cooperation with the Biden DOJ's anti-Trump investigation known as “Arctic Frost,” - providing sensitive banking information to Biden prosecutor Jack Smith.  Also we noted US regulators are examining whether JPMorgan Chase has denied customers fair access to banking, as pressure grows over debanking decisions that were made against conservative figures, according to reporting from Financial Times and the company's 10-Q filing. In its quarterly filing, the bank noted it was “responding to requests from government authorities and other external parties regarding, among other things, the firm’s policies and processes and the provision of services to customers and potential customers”. JPMorgan linked the scrutiny to an August executive order from Donald Trump directing regulators to review possible “politicised or unlawful debanking”. The bank said related inquiries include “reviews, investigations and legal proceedings,” without identifying the agencies involved. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 22:10

The Mystery Of Intuition: Where Gut Feelings Really Come From Authored by Makai Allbert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), We’ve all experienced intuition in some form or another. The hunch of knowing without understanding why; the sense that something is right—or terribly wrong—before conscious thought catches up. Or a simple instinct that something is off about a stranger. Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock Intuition goes beyond superstition, serving as a sophisticated form of intelligence operating largely beneath conscious awareness. The phenomenon raises a question that has intrigued scientists, philosophers, and everyday decision makers: Where do gut feelings really come from? Knowing Without Knowing How Studies have found that when chess grandmasters are given just five seconds to evaluate a position, they can make accurate predictions despite lacking time for conscious analysis. Due to the thousands of hours of experience under their belts, their brains can make rapid decisions through pattern recognition, without requiring deliberate thought. This experience, similarly reflected among experts across many fields—doctors, military personnel, and firefighters—points to the possibility that intuition may emerge from a rich substrate of prior experience. Emma Seppälä, psychologist and science director at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, told The Epoch Times that in these instances, intuition is “a fast, instinctive form of intelligence that operates separately from our conscious thoughts.” Yet, this kind of intuitive, rapid processing isn’t limited to professional skills. Going with your gut may be especially true in complex situations in your own life. Research shows that when people face complex decisions, such as selecting a home or making major life choices, those who focus on their feelings rather than painstakingly analyzing every detail often make better decisions and, perhaps even more importantly, are more satisfied with the outcome. Illustration by The Epoch Times Kamila Malewska, who studies intuition in managerial decision-making at Poznań University of Economics and Business, believes intuition is invaluable in situations with multiple alternatives, no clear criteria, insufficient information, and unique problems without precedent. The Biology of Gut Feelings We often say we have a “gut feeling,” and research now shows the phrase carries both a metaphorical and biological truth. The gut has what scientists refer to as a “second brain,” comprising more than 200 million neurons. These neurons send signals back and forth with the brain through the vagus nerve, forming the gut-brain axis. This system creates a feedback loop that affects how we feel physically and emotionally. Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock Moreover, the health of the gut microbiota, which comprises approximately 38 trillion bacteria, can affect feelings of urgency, emotions, and even memory, as it produces chemicals that affect the brain. In mouse experiments, tweaking the gut microbiota balance can alter brain neurochemistry, making mice more bold or anxious. Notably, in humans, approximately 90 percent of serotonin, a key neurotransmitter that influences mood and decision-making, is produced in the gut. This indicates that emotional states and intuitive feelings may be influenced by the gut-brain axis. This connection isn’t new. The vagus nerve may have helped our predecessors find food and avoid danger through gut-based intuitive signals. Today, the gut-brain system still functions, albeit in a different manner. When you feel butterflies in your stomach before a big decision, or a sinking feeling when something seems wrong, you may be experiencing this ancient communication system at work. Unconscious Gestalt Besides the gut-brain axis, neuroscientists have found other brain processes that may explain intuition. One way to understand intuition is to examine how memories form. Don Tucker, a neuroscientist who studies consciousness and memory, explained that memory occurs before you are aware of it. “Memory is organized from an implicit level where general meaning is not fully articulated into conscious access, but is still very powerful in providing a sense of the gist of the information,” Tucker told The Epoch Times. In other words, before we consciously remember or notice something, our brains, especially our limbic system, rapidly sort out experiences, picking up the important bits and giving a holistic level of understanding. This process relates to another psychological concept called gestalt: the brain’s tendency to perceive patterns rather than individual parts, and to create closure to make sense of incomplete information. Consider a manager interviewing a seemingly perfect candidate. Their resume seems impeccable, their answers are satisfactory, but something still feels wrong. Only later does the manager realize subtle inconsistencies in the candidate’s story, a shift in eye contact during discussions of previous employment, and a mismatch between verbal and nonverbal expressions. The cues may not have been noticed in the moment, but the brain assembled them into an intuitive warning—into an unconscious gestalt. Neuroscience supports these ideas. The right hemisphere of the brain is good at spotting patterns and noticing things that don’t fit, even if we’re not aware of it. The hippocampus compares what we see now with past experiences, while the orbitofrontal cortex integrates emotional memories with present sensory input. The result appears as a feeling rather than a thought. The process of unconscious becoming conscious is driven by what is called predictive processing. Rather than passively receiving stimuli and then reacting, predictive processing theory suggests that the brain actively generates predictions about what it should perceive based on its experience. When these predictions detect a mismatch—something that does not fit the expected pattern—the result manifests as intuitive unease or “knowing.” According to Tucker, consciousness develops from this primitive, intuitive level through a process of articulation. A vague feeling—a sense of “no, I shouldn’t do that”—gradually becomes more conscious and explicit as the brain works to understand why the feeling arose. Could intuition also come from somewhere else? Perhaps, instead of merely reacting to the present, intuition offers us a glimpse of the future. Memories From the Future In the mid-1990s, Dean Radin at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, designed an experiment to test whether awareness could transcend time. He had participants connected to an EEG machine and placed in front of a computer screen. The computer randomly selected and displayed pleasant or disturbing images after a brief pause. Radin noticed that people’s brains became more active just before seeing disturbing images, but not before positive ones. It was as if the brain could sense something bad was coming, even seconds before it happened. This effect was called “presentiment.” Replicated results following Radin’s original experiment. Lower heart rate variability in response to disturbing images indicates a stronger fight-or-flight reaction. Illustration by The Epoch Times The results were statistically significant, and other researchers, such as Daryl Bem at Cornell University, found similar effects in their own experiments. A 2012 meta-analysis of 26 studies spanning three decades found that experiments like Radin’s and Bem’s suggest that human physiology can distinguish between randomly delivered emotional and neutral stimuli occurring one to 10 seconds in the future.​ This isn’t precognition in the traditional sense—a psychic power of seeing future events—participants aren’t consciously predicting them. Instead, their autonomic nervous systems—heart rate, skin conductance, and brain activity—show measurable arousal before encountering emotionally significant stimuli. According to the 2012 meta-analysis, the effect size may be small. Still, it’s statistically significant across multiple laboratories and researchers, with the probability of the effect being a coincidence estimated at one in a trillion. That’s the equivalent of flipping a coin and getting heads 40 times in a row. Julia Mossbridge at Northwestern University, who led the meta-analysis, said when the study was released: “The phenomenon is anomalous, some scientists argue, because we can’t explain it using present-day understanding about how biology works.” Read the rest here... Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 20:55

Trump Signs Executive Order To Designate Muslim Brotherhood Chapters As Foreign Terrorist Update (2010ET): A little more than one day after Just The News published John Solomon's exclusive interview in which President Trump confirmed plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the White House formally announced on Monday evening that the president has initiated the process to classify specific chapters and subdivisions of MB as FTOs.  🚨 America will NOT tolerate those who fund & fuel radical terrorism. Today, President Trump took decisive action to secure America from terrorist threats by initiating the process to designate certain Muslim Brotherhood entities as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. pic.twitter.com/Ec4qGbPLkm — The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 24, 2025 Trump's order cites MB's violent activities and support for militant factions, including participation in attacks on Israeli civilians and military targets after October 7, 2023, as well as calls for violence against U.S. allies. These actions, the order says, threaten American citizens and destabilize the Middle East. Here's what Trump ordered: Within 30 days: The Secretaries of State and Treasury must deliver a joint report to the President, recommending which Muslim Brotherhood chapters should be designated under FTO and SDGT authorities. Within 45 days after the report: The Secretary of State or the Treasury must take appropriate legal steps to finalize those designations. On X, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the White House, announced, "History has been made." "Just moments ago, in the presence of my NSC colleague who helped author the Executive Order, President Trump designated multiple chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Egyptian branch which is the progenitor of all modern Jihadists, al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas included," Gorka said, adding, "As we left the Oval, President Trump explicitly instructed us to inform the World of his tectonic act." History has been made. Just moments ago, in the presence of my NSC colleague who helped author the Executive Order, President @realDonaldTrump designated multiple chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Egyptian branch which is the progenitor of all modern Jihadists,… pic.twitter.com/Ql9CcLhJtF — Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) November 24, 2025 Seems like these folks do not want to assimilate...  Muslim brotherhood says they hope to have 50 members of Congress in the next 6 years. He suggests that’s how they dismantle America. WAKE THE HECK UP. pic.twitter.com/kcqQYeGF7E — Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) November 24, 2025 Let's not forget that former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams has warned that the Biden-Harris regime's open southern border allowed an estimated "10,000 foreign Islamist terrorists" to enter the country. *   *   *  John Solomon's Just The News reports, in an exclusive interview with President Trump on Sunday morning, that the president will formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a foreign terrorist organization. Trump explained that the MB's FTO designation will be imminent and drafted "in the strongest and most powerful terms," adding, "Final documents are being drawn." MB was founded in Egypt nearly a century ago with branches across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the U.S. The org has been outlawed or labeled a terrorist group by several governments, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain.  Trump has weighed the FTO designation since his first term, and his comments come days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an FTO and transnational criminal organization. This tells you everything you need to know about the true allegiance of CAIR. “Connected via the Turkey App Store.”@CAIRAction pic.twitter.com/cnu4F5nS1G — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) November 23, 2025 Abbott's proclamation authorized "heightened penalties" against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood and prohibited both entities from acquiring land in Texas, alleging that CAIR had "repeatedly employed, affiliated with, and supported individuals promoting terrorism-related activities." GOP officials, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), have requested that the Treasury Department probe CAIR's financial networks. In August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the FTO designation was being prepared, though the process is complex because of MB's sprawling network of affiliates. We introduced the Muslim Brotherhood Is a T*rrorist Organization Act because it’s time to call it what it is, a jihadist network fueling t*rrorism. While radicals like Zohran Mamdani cozy up to extremists tied to Islamic t*rrorists and Hamas, we’re putting AMERICA FIRST and… pic.twitter.com/5atqKgRqkX — Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 27, 2025 Bipartisan lawmakers in both chambers have urged Rubio and the State Department to move forward with the FTO designations. Sen. Ted Cruz has warned that MB supports terrorist orgs such as Hamas. As we've previously reported: The Shadow Of Terror: Zohran Mamdani's Radical Islam Problem Report Warns "Woke Army" & Dark-Money Funded NGOs Could Take Iran's War "To America's Streets" "To this day, the IRS hasn't stripped Muslim Brotherhood 501 (c) (3) s of their tax-deductible status. Jihadi is getting a tax deduction on U.S. soil," Laura Loomer wrote on X while responding to Solomon's exclusive interview earlier today. Oh boy...  According to Linda Sarsour, the MAJORITY of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign money came from CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. AKA the unindicted co-conspirator named in the FBI’s 2007 terrorism finance case. 'Turn the volume up' on THIS. pic.twitter.com/lE8U4NEAxk — Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) November 5, 2025 Things are about to get very interesting.  Muslim Brotherhood Leader Says They Will Push Sharia Law in America “By Ballot or Bullet.” The organization openly states they will change U.S. law by elections or violence. Elections or violence. Their words. We either take this seriously, or we regret it later. pic.twitter.com/fxRqKCT2vL — David J Harris Jr (@DavidJHarrisJr) November 5, 2025 Muslim Brotherhood Leader: Will Push Sharia Law in America "By Ballot or Bullet" ...  Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 20:10

Bolsonaro & Those Damn Indestructible Ankle Monitors The plot has again thickened, and got a bit weirder, in the arrest and trial saga of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison in September for an alleged coup attempt related to not accepting the results of the last presidential election. We detailed Saturday that federal police rushed to his residence Saturday to take him out of house arrest, and initiated what's being called a 'preventative arrest' - and he was whisked away to police headquarters in Brasilia. The arrest order issued from the country's top court came hours after his ankle monitor was shown to be violated at 12:08am on Saturday. From there, authorities considered Bolsonaro a flight risk, explaining he is in close proximity to foreign embassies where he might try and gain asylum. Bolsonaro's damaged ankle monitor. Source: Federal District’s Secretariat for Penitentiary Administration Bolsonaro was in court Monday for a full day of trial, part of what's likely to be a lengthy appeals process, where he surprisingly confirmed that he did indeed tamper with the ankle monitor. His explanation got strange, telling the court that he suffered a nervous breakdown and hallucinations caused by a change in his medication, after which was fearful of the device as it might be 'wiretapped'. Assistant judge Luciana Sorrentino said following a meeting with Bolsonaro where she inquired of the incident, "he had 'hallucinations' that there was some wire tap in the ankle monitoring, so he tried to uncover it." Sorrentino described further of the conversation that Bolsonaro told her he "did not remember having a breakdown of this magnitude in another occasion" and that it could be linked to a change in medication, but he insisted there was no intention of trying to escape. The former Brazilian leader "said he was with his daughter, his elder brother and an aide at his house and none of them saw what he was doing to the ankle monitoring," according to a court document which has been made public. "He said he started to touch it late at night and stopped around midnight." Photos released by the court show the ankle monitor's cap heavily damaged, after he reportedly at one point took a soldering iron to it. According to The New York Times: At first, Mr. Bolsonaro told the police that he had banged his ankle monitor causing it to malfunction, according to a report from the capital region’s prison authority. But when an agent on the scene asked about the burn marks on the device, Mr. Bolsonaro admitted using a soldering iron to try to melt it. In a video of the exchange released by the authorities, Mr. Bolsonaro can be heard apparently telling the agent that he had started torching the monitor hours earlier. His legal team has since claimed that "Bolsonaro would have no way of escaping" as he is "an elderly man who suffers from serious health problems. However, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has long been a political enemy (the US has even sanctioned him personally) as well as chief overseer of the case, described over the weekend, "He is located about 13 kilometers (8 miles) away from where the United States of America embassy lies, in a distance that can be covered in a 15-minute drive." Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told a judge that medicine-induced paranoia and hallucination caused him to tamper with an electronic ankle monitor, court records showed, a day after police took him into custody out of fear he might flee https://t.co/UDE85hVyXg pic.twitter.com/cmCan0ehnS — Reuters (@Reuters) November 24, 2025 There's also the fear that the Embassy of Argentina would be open to helping him find safe-haven. But his legal team has said that he must serve his prison sentence at home as his severe health problems "makes his safe stay in a prison environment impossible." President Trump has long decried the case as a 'witch hunt' while the Lula government has condemned Washington's 'interference' in the internal affair. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 19:40

Insurrection Chic Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness, Is Jeff Davis the Model? Who is the real, or fictional, inspiration for the new insurrectionary wing of the Democrat Party? The fictitious Hollywood insurrectionist, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “James Mattoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster), who in the 1964 film Seven Days in May attempted to overthrow the presidency? Or perhaps Jefferson Davis? He ultimately ordered the attack by South Carolina state forces against the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, which ignited the Civil War. Or is the better inspiration the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door?” Alabama Governor George Wallace likewise vowed to use his state’s law enforcement to nullify a federal law. Yet how odd that the left, which had lectured us so often about a January 6th “insurrection”—a charge that not even the Javert-like special counsel Jack Smith ever lodged against Donald Trump—now talks frequently about the proud nullification of our nation’s federal laws. The New Confederacy Democrats weirdly boast of the subordination of the Constitution to international statutes. Our governors and mayors in blue states and cities take neo-Confederate vows to oppose the national government’s right to protect its own property, to direct its own employees, and to enforce our shared federal laws. Over a decade ago, some 600 “sanctuary cities” declared that they were immune from the full enforcement of federal law. They further boasted that they would not hand over illegal aliens, detained by state or local authorities, to federal agents. These were strange threats. Not long ago, at the 1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions, liberal grandees like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi had vowed to stop all would-be illegal aliens from unlawfully entering the U.S. Apparently, they all flipped to open borders when spiraling numbers turned the undocumented into a new Democratic constituency. Moreover, being the left, their loud nullificationist vows were, of course, purely political and never principled. Once, an exasperated Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, had beseeched the Obama administration in vain to enforce its own federal laws at the southern border. In frustration, she finally sought ways to use her own state’s resources to do what Obama refused. And the reaction of the Obama administration? It was certainly not gratitude for Brewer’s efforts to enforce federal law. Instead, the Obama crowd sued her. It successfully sought out left-wing judges to stay her state’s efforts. How strange that our current “principled” district judges once ruled that states could not interfere with federal border policing—even in cases where the federal government was illegally refusing to enforce its own laws. But now they’ve become neo-Confederates who routinely favor states blocking the federal government when it is finally fulfilling its constitutional duties. Of course, if any rural red county decided that it could nullify the federal government’s laws governing handgun registration or EPA regulations, the projectionist left would deem them insurrectionary new Confederates and send in the FBI. Coup Bluster In Trump’s first term, some retired four-star admirals and generals—Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice be damned—talked of a sitting U.S. President Trump leaving office, the “sooner the better”—whatever that meant. Others libeled him as a “liar” and “Mussolini,” his policies comparable to those of the executioners at Auschwitz. Some retired lieutenant colonels in 2020 even publicly advocated using military units to confront presidential security details. Did they want an armed showdown to forcibly remove Trump from the Oval Office? And in their madness, they bragged about the purported greater lethality of their army friends to defeat the president’s supporters or security details: “Trump’s little green men, so intimidating to lightly armed federal law enforcement agents, step aside and fade away, realizing they would not constitute a good morning’s work for a brigade of the 82nd Airborne.” Do we remember the Obama-era Pentagon lawyer who, eleven days into the first Trump administration, speculated in print about how to remove an elected President Trump? She offered up the choices of Trump removal by either the 25th Amendment, the impeachment process, or a military coup: “[A] possibility [for removing President Trump] is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup…” We also remember Gen. Mark Milley, the recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He once apparently diagnosed Commander-in-Chief Trump as unhinged. So Milley took it upon himself to warn his communist Chinese counterpart that during any existential crisis, the People’s Liberation Army head would be first contacted by Milley—if Milley ever felt Trump was too erratic to be obeyed (in Milley’s nonprofessional medical judgment). So Milley reported his call as follows: “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” Milley apparently also decided that he was exempt from obeying federal laws. As JCS chair, he also violated laws governing the chain of command. He unlawfully directed regional commanders to report to him first, should they receive a direct presidential order deemed lunatic by Milley. Yet the legal chain of command mandated that subordinate theater commanders report to, and receive presidential orders via, the Secretary of Defense. Later, ex-generals like Milley and John Kelly routinely and emphatically blasted ex-President Trump as a “fascist.” “Fascist” was just the sort of dangerous hyperbole that the left so often has warned us can prompt the unstable—like a Thomas Crooks or Ryan Routh—to emerge from their creepy shadows to “save the republic.” Fort Sumter? Democratic officials are also currently calling for organized and state-sanctioned opposition to the federal government, in near-Bleeding Kansas or Fort Sumter insurrectionary fashion. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson claims he will use his city resources to actively thwart ICE duties. In deranged fashion, he threatens to call in the UN to prevent federal law enforcement. He apparently treats the Constitution as nothing, as if Johnson were elected not by fellow citizens but by global voters from Iran to North Korea. Johnson’s idiocy is no mere boast: when a trapped convoy of ICE vehicles was recently besieged by violent protesters, local Chicago-area police were told to stand down and let ICE fight its own way out. In Portland, the local police sometimes advise violent Antifa-related protesters on strategies for their anti-ICE street activities, presumably to help them avoid arrest. Consider the blather of the increasingly disturbed octogenarian Rep. Nancy Pelosi. She recently boasted that “Trump is ‘a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth.” Then she doubled down and giggled that she “could have done much worse.” But what exact epithet could Pelosi mean that is “much worse” than “vile” and “the worst thing on earth”? The ‘vilest creature in the cosmos’? Pelosi, remember, as Speaker of the House, set an embarrassing historic precedent by tearing up on national television the State of the Union address of the President of the United States when the text, as is customary, was ceremoniously presented to her by Trump. Should that now become a normal part of all SOTU addresses? Recently, in a veritable paean to Jefferson Davis, Pelosi warned that federal agents might be arrested on her home turf if her state officers determine whether their enforcement of federal law violates California statutes. If Pelosi’s confrontation materializes, will they use force? Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani has boasted in the past that he will soon override federal law as mayor of New York and arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he arrive at the UN headquarters in New York. But what if the federal government says, “NO!” Will Mamdani then call in the NYPD? Note, Mamdani did not issue a comparable threat to the communist Chinese UN delegations, whose government oversees a million Uyghurs in work camps, nor to the Nigerians who have allowed Islamic terrorists to kill over 150,000 Christians, nor to Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine, causing over 1.5 million casualties in the greatest European slaughterhouse since World War II. Instead, Mamdani appeals to a superior “international law.” In his unconstitutional mind, world law supersedes his own government’s constitutional authority. As a de facto insurrectionist, Mamdani would claim that international human rights activists, or the International Criminal Court (?), deserve greater legal authority inside the U.S. than do Americans’ own elected federal government. All that nonsense sounds like infamous Confederate Attorney General Judah Benjamin, who often bragged about how insurrectionary states could legally ignore federal authority. Military Resistance? Yet the most recent and dangerous example of insurrectionary nullification is an inflammatory video issued by Democrat and veteran politicos. In it, Democratic lawmakers and veterans Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, Rep. Jason Crow, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, Rep. Chris Deluzio, and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan appeal to U.S. soldiers to “disobey” their superior officers’ orders if, in their own legal opinion, they feel the orders are “illegal” by contravening the Constitution. How or why, they do not say. Are we then to imagine an insurrectionary fantasy of 1.3 million active-duty soldiers, now each acting as his own lawyer, questioning daily orders from their officers? Not one of these elected officials provided a single instance of any past Trump order or Pentagon directive that would serve as an example of their nullificationist dogma. When these Democratic officials also appealed to federal intelligence officers to likewise disobey orders, should we laugh or cry? Did any of these moralists ever issue such a video when the Obama- and Biden-era Directors of the CIA, FBI, and National Intelligence all admittedly lied under oath? How about when “51 intelligence authorities” deliberately lied in an open letter to the American people on the eve of the 2020 election to help elect Joe Biden? Or when the FBI agents worked with private social media to suppress the news? In the video, did these officials mean that soldiers should resist presidential orders to employ federal troops to quell domestic chaos and rioting? Lots of presidents have done just that from the Civil War to the present. Would they have urged U.S. soldiers to disobey any order in pursuance of the use of force without congressional approval? If so, why didn’t they damn past presidents like Harry S. Truman, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, who all directed the military to act abroad without the approval of Congress? How about Barack Obama’s serial use of Predator assassination drones that, on at least one occasion, blew up an American citizen? These sanctimonious Democrat officials did not outline any possible scenarios for their advocacy of insurrectionary disobedience—because they had no example to draw on. Nor did they dare reference in any detail Articles 90 and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which explicitly spell out when, in the rarest of cases, a soldier can disobey an order. The officials had no concern that their video was endangering thousands—if someone might take their advice and, without cause, disobey an order, putting lives at risk, well beyond their own careers. What the Democrats did not say is that they cut the video to implant a false narrative that Trump was on the verge of issuing unconstitutional orders, and they were encouraging mass and politicized disobedience, after the previous failure of the shutdown, mass street protests, attacks on ICE agents, and Tesla dealerships. The New Secessionists Leftists are now back to the same old, same old incendiary conspiracies and paranoias of Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, removing Trump from the ballot, impeaching him twice, indicting him 91 times, raiding his home with armed FBI agents, plotting stealthily to record him to invoke the 25th Amendment— and all the dangerous and often illegal ways it has sought to destroy a political opponent by any means necessary. We certainly are in dangerous times. But the crisis is one of the left’s own making, in overtly inciting the country to a virtual rerun of 1861. What else is urging American soldiers to defy the orders of their superiors without citing a single specific cause? How about claiming by fiat that entire cities and states are immune from federal jurisdiction? What about threatening to use state officers to arrest federal law enforcement officials? Withholding local police help and thus endangering federal agents at the hands of violent protesters? Making a mockery of the Uniform Code of Military Justice? Advising violent protesters on how best to demonstrate against federal officials without being arrested? Subordinating U.S. federal law to global legal authorities? Using city resources to help illegal aliens evade federal law enforcement? Arresting a foreign official with diplomatic immunity and under federal legal protection when he enters a local jurisdiction? Freelancing by sidestepping the legal rights of the Commander-in-Chief and instead phoning to tip off an enemy general? The common theme? The desperate left feels the more insurrectionary tensions they can gin up, the more that the ensuing domestic crises hurt an elected president whom they loathe. They assume they are exempt from following the law because they believe they are our moral and intellectual superiors. And so for the next four years, they will once again insist they can ignore or violate with contempt any federal law they please—as the nation is heading toward widespread civil insurrection of the left’s own neo-Confederate making. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 19:15

Modular Reactor Tide Rising: Nano Nuclear To Study Siting Multiple MMRs To Generate 1GW Energy In Texas One day after we observed that only a boom in onsite, "behind the meter" power supply energizing America's hundreds (soon thousands) of data centers - i.e., small/micro modular reactors or gas tubines not connected to the broader power grid - would allow the US to dominate the AI "arms race" between Washington and Beijing without sending electric bills skyrocketing... ... modular reactor developer Nano Nuclear announced a feasibility study in coordination with California-based industrial conglomerate, BaRupOn, for the deployment of up to 1 GWe of nuclear energy using Nano’s Kronos high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) reactor design, profiled here a month ago. The Kronos design is rated to 15 MWe, which could mean as many as 70 reactors would be deployed at BaRupOn’s Liberty American Multi-Sourced Power (LAMP) and Innovation Hub being developed in Texas. Ongoing construction of BaRupOn LLC.701-acre Liberty American Multi-Sourced Power (“LAMP”) and Innovation Hub in Liberty Texas, USA. The LAMP project is a major data center campus with a multi-source, energy design, very similar to the Matador project being developed by Fermi America. LAMP is a 701-acre manufacturing and AI data-center developement near Houston. It’s being designed as a multi-domain innovation hub focused on AI computing, robotics and autonomous systems, advanced materials engineering, defense technology development, and next-generation industrial research and development “AI and data center growth are outpacing grid expansion nationwide,” said Derek Matthews, Chief Strategy Officer of BaRupOn LLC. “We believe microreactors are the only realistic pathway to protecting our operational continuity while scaling to meet future demand.” Obviously, we agree. As part of the feasibility process, Nano will evaluate the site's projected power demand, reactor integration requirements, and the suitability of available land and site access for deployment of many Kronos units directly on the LAMP property. BaRupOn will in turn compensate NANO Nuclear for completion of the assessment. Echoing concerns that a majority of US regional power markets are already at or below critical capacity levels... ... BaRupOn has forecast that - with rapidly increasing compute demand across the industry - a significant and accelerating power squeeze in Texas and across the U.S. is imminent, particularly as the tech industry’s high-performance computing and digital processing require exponentially larger electricity baseloads. Recognizing the urgency of future power constraints, and the risks they pose to long-term data center uptime, BaRupOn has expressed its willingness to co-invest directly into the construction of NANO Nuclear’s microreactors at its site following successful completion of the feasibility assessment. “This strategic agreement marks the beginning of a broader effort to align ourselves with additional AI and data center projects and position NANO Nuclear to help address the rapidly expanding power needs emerging across the United States,” said Jay Yu, Founder and Chairman of NANO Nuclear. “Completion of this feasibility study would place NANO Nuclear in a strong position to serve the accelerating demand from high-energy-intensive sectors. We expect our collaboration with BaRupOn to help ensure that advanced reactor technologies like our KRONOS MMR will play an essential role in supporting the nation’s evolving energy mix.” It wasn't just good news for publicly traded makers of high temperature gas-cooled reactor reactors: earlier today privately held X-energy completed its latest funding round, lead by cryptocurrency specialist Jane Street (which spawned Sam Bankman Fried and his countless crypto-rigging algos), for $700 million. New investors to the nuclear reactor developer include ARK Invest, Galvanize, Hood River Capital Management, Point 72, Reaves Asset Management and XTX Ventures. X-energy is currently working on three major projects across the US and UK. Their largest project, with Centrica, was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK along with a slew of other nuclear industry coordination efforts. The two companies are exploring the potential for up to 6 GWe of nuclear power using X-energy’s Xe-100 reactor. The high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is rated to 80 MWe and is designed to be deployed individually or in four-packs for a total of 320 MWe. The project with Centrica has the potential for about 75 reactors or 18 four-packs. Their biggest financial backer, Amazon, is coordinating a mega-project with X-energy in Washington state, called the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility. Originally only planned for a single four-pack, Amazon announced last month that they are increasing the power plant to 12 reactors for a total of 960 MWe. Their most progressed project is a four reactor power plant for a Dow Chemical facility in Texas. The construction permit is currently under review by the NRC. X-energy is one of the senior reactor developers in the private sector, where they have developed a supply chain to support construction of their reactors and their TRISO-X fabrication facility. Partnerships have included coordination with Curtiss-Wright, BWXT, and Doosan Energy. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 18:43

FAFO: Pentagon Probes Unhinged Democratic Senator After Video Urging Troops To "Refuse Illegal Orders"  The Pentagon has opened a misconduct investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly following his participation in a video, alongside several other crazed Democratic lawmakers, urging military and intelligence personnel to "refuse illegal orders." The video message, delivered as "You must refuse illegal orders," has been assessed as a direct challenge to lawful command authority and has been described as "sedition at the highest level" by President Trump.  On Monday, the Department of War wrote in an X post that an investigation has been launched into the Arizona lawmaker and former US Navy officer, Mark Kelly, over "serious allegations of misconduct." DoW emphasized that military retirees remain subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and to federal laws that bar efforts to undermine military loyalty or discipline. .@PressSec: "You can't have a functioning military if there is disorder and chaos within the ranks, and that's what these Democrat members were encouraging. It's very clear." pic.twitter.com/2HH2SZ2UQG— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 24, 2025 The department also reiterated that servicemembers must obey lawful orders, which are presumed lawful, and that personal views do not justify disobedience. OFFICIAL STATEMENT: The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations… — Department of War 🇺🇸 (@DeptofWar) November 24, 2025 Here's the video:  We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community. The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution. Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r — Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025 Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich, also featured in the video, was forced to acknowledge after pressuring military and intelligence personnel to "refuse illegal orders" to admit on Monday to ABC's Martha Raddatz that "To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal—but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela."  ‘NOT AWARE’: SLOTKIN PRESSED OVER URGING MILITARY TO DEFY ‘ILLEGAL’ TRUMP ORDERS After urging members of the military to refuse “illegal orders” from the Trump administration, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., admitted she is not aware of any such orders. “Do you believe President… pic.twitter.com/XTqE84c9tq — Rob Bluey (@RobertBluey) November 24, 2025 Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called left-wing lawmakers, including Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chris DeLuzio (D-Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), as well as Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), all featured in the video, the "Seditious Six." He described their actions as "despicable, reckless, and false" in the propaganda video to encourage "our warriors to ignore the orders of their Commanders." The video made by the “Seditious Six” was despicable, reckless, and false. Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their Commanders undermines every aspect of “good order and discipline.” Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in… https://t.co/UvLXChZnmF — Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) November 24, 2025 What's troubling is that the real aim of the video appears to be delegitimization, paralysis, or even an attempt to undermine the Trump administration. It mirrors the broader color-revolution playbook that Democratic operatives and their billionaire-funded dark-money NGO networks have been deploying for years in regime-change style operations against Trump. Calling on the military to "disobey unlawful orders" without identifying a single unlawful order, combined with judicial lawfare, deploying the protest-industrial complex, and a long list of coordinated pressure attacks, makes it increasingly clear that the billionaire power brokers behind the Democrats are manufacturing chaos, and some of these sinister NGOs coordinating chaos are from other countries.  Sigh.   Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 18:00

Venezuela Says Trump Has Designated 'Non-Existent' Drug Cartel As Terrorist Org; US Covert Ops Believed 'Imminent' With talk of anti-Caracas US covert operations set to begin imminently, President Trump's labelling of the so-called "Cartel de los Soles" as a foreign terrorist organization has become official, and taken effect Monday. However, Venezuela has hit back, rejecting the label and going so far as to call the group, which translates to "Cartel of the Suns, as "non-existent". "Venezuela categorically, firmly, and absolutely rejects the new and ridiculous fabrication by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of State, Marco Rubio, which designates the non-existent Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization," said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil on his Telegram account. Caracas is dismissing it as an 'absurd' lie. via AP Gil claimed that this revives "an infamous and vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela, under the classic U.S. regime-change format. This new maneuver will meet the same fate as previous and recurring aggressions against our country: failure." Indeed the Trump administration has admitted that regime change targeting President Maduro is an option which is on the table, amid the unprecedented military build-up in the Caribbean.  Reuters has said that Trump held several meetings with senior advisers last week to explore options for a possible military strike on Venezuela. But then later the commander-in-chief said, "I can’t tell you what it would be, but I’ve kind of made up my mind" while aboard Air Force One. President Maduro has lately compared the situation to the US invasion of Iraq, well-known to have been launched on false claims about weapons of mass destruction. He accused Washington crafting "a bizarre narrative" since it cannot accuse Venezuela of hiding chemical or biological weapons. The US has lately linked Fentanyl trafficking with "chemical weapons" - given the substance is technically classified as dangerous chemical substance.  Meanwhile, on Monday Fox News has issued the following headline: Venezuela 'covert actions' could begin soon, reports say. U.S. MILITARY SURGE TO PUSH RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN OUT OF THE AMERICAS Fox News is reporting that the sweeping U.S. buildup in our own hemisphere shows this is about far more than Maduro. “It’s about getting Russia, China and Iran OUT of the western hemisphere.” “Should… pic.twitter.com/NiwCKqddT1 — Open Source Intel (@Osint613) November 24, 2025 But at this point, nothing about any of this seems so "covert" after all. There's a possibility that power grid disruptions could ensue, or also missile or drone strikes could begin targeting cartel locations by land. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/24/2025 - 17:20