Mostly Updates On The Last Few Days

We’ve been discussing a variety of topics, but let’s start with China’s pressure to enforce peace against the Anglo-Zionist push for war. China’s pressure has been to a great extent—but not only—out of public view: intel, monetary pressure, and export controls on rare earths, without which the Anglo-Zionist war on the world cannot continue.

Patarames @Pataramesh

9h

With MizarVision satellite-images, China is signaling its non-kinetic military power to the U.S.

The implications?

* If the dozens of Iranian Missile-Cities maintain a satellite communication link to China, they could get near-realtime target reconnaissance

* Even if contact is lost to the central  military leadership

The deterrence this creates against the US & Israel is massive and very underestimated.

Its in China’s national interest to enable such a backup communication-link and reconnaissance capability

* both for deterring a war and to allow Iran to swiftly end a war if attacked

(World oil supply/economy)

All through soft, plausibly deniable power

Now that the world knows that the latest model F-35s aren’t actually fully functional, will that make a difference in the real world when that’s what’s threatening the world?

HealthRanger @HealthRanger

10h

I literally detailed this exact scenario in my podcast last week, breaking down the elements that China controls (gallium, neodymium, dysprosium, etc.) and why the U.S. can’t build fully-functioning fighter jets and bombers because it’s missing critical elements such as gallium, used in radar arrays. And now, it turns out that the F-35s being delivered by Lockheed-Martin HAVE NO RADAR.

I guess the Pentagon just found out you can’t print gallium like you can print dollars. And if you don’t have gallium, you don’t have radar and all sorts of other things.

You can read my detailed article right here: Unobtainium and Hopium: How China’s Rare Earth Siege Has Neutered U.S. Military Might

The United States stands on the precipice of an irreversible decline. It is an empire in collapse, strangled not by a foreign invasion but by its own internal rot—catastrophic debt, a hollowed-out industrial base, and a fatal dependency on its greatest strategic rival for the very materials that power its military might. ^[1] This is not a distant future scenario; it is the unfolding present of 2026.

Armchair Warlord @ArmchairW

So apparently Lockheed-Martin just proposes to deliver F-35s with no radars to the USAF for the next three production lots over the next two years and then just fix it in post.

Is USS HWBush deploying to the Middle East? Nothing says scramble like this:

MenchOsint @MenchOsint

9m

If true, Trump is deploying a second aircraft carrier which hasn’t performed its COMPUTEX yet. (Composite Training Unit Exercise: rehearsal each US Navy Carrier Strike Group performs before departing for deployment)

Let’s not leave war without a nod to Russia. Warlord has a long post, his theory of what Putin is up to, how to explain it. It’s a worthwhile read as a reminder:

Armchair Warlord @ArmchairW

A theory for the evening.

The most basic way to learn who someone is and what their goals are is to listen to them when they’re talking. The Russians have said, again and again, to the highest levels of their government, that they want a permanent solution in Ukraine - preferably one that is not just a permanent solution to their Ukrainian problem but to their NATO problem as well. They have also stated, ad nauseum, that the goals of the Special Military Operation will be achieved, come hell or high water, by force or by negotiation - but they will be achieved. They have been remarkably consistent about all of this for the entire duration of the war.

Once you internalize that a permanent solution to their western problem is the actual goal of the Russian government, and they are prepared to fight a major war over this for as long as it takes because it’s an existential matter for them, murky Russian foreign policy goals and actions suddenly become clear. In particular this explains Putin’s oft-criticized obsession for negotiations with Western powers that often seem to go nowhere or even harm Russian interests, because incorporating NATO interests into a Russian-dictated postwar framework in Ukraine is the one way by which the Russians can realistically achieve all of their war goals and create a new security paradigm in Europe rather than a new Cold War.

To put it differently, conquering Ukraine is actually Putin’s last option, not his first - a brute force solution to the post-Soviet crisis that will lead directly to renewed and direct military confrontation with NATO. Lest we forget, the first Cold War didn’t turn out well for Russia and Putin is almost certainly keen to avoid a second round of large-scale frozen conflict in Europe. This requires a subtle combination of diplomacy and hard power to engineer a long-term solution by which NATO ceases to be a threat - the exact opposite of Stalin’s communist hammer and direct confrontation.

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We’ve also been discussing economic matters, mostly focusing on King Dollar. We’ll start with PP’s very brief post, preceded by two useful definitions. PP is repeating what Sean Foo and others have shouting from the rooftops—Trump’s “solution” to the debt crisis is via hyperinflation. First the definitions:

Debt monetization or monetary financing is the practice of a government borrowing money from the central bank to finance public spending instead of selling bonds to private investors or raising taxes. The central banks who buy government debt, are essentially creating new money in the process to do so. This practice is often informally and pejoratively called printing money or (net) money creation. It is prohibited in many countries, because it is considered dangerous due to the risk of creating runaway inflation.

Yield curve control (YCC) is a monetary policy action whereby a central bank purchases variable amounts of government bonds or other financial assets in order to target yield curve or interest rates at a certain level. It generally means buying bonds at a slower rate than would occur under a Quantitative Easing policy. It affects long term interest rates, whereas QE is more impactful on shorter term interest rates. Where QE focuses on quantities of bonds, YCC is concerned with the price. It can be thought of as a more effective form of QE: In QE the central bank buys bonds, but does not have a target for what interest rate those purchases will bring. In YCC, the central bank intentionally buys enough bonds to reach a certain interest rate target.

Don’t look for purity in the real world. Trump has also unilaterally raised taxes, through his tariffs. But note what PP is saying—the shorter the term of borrowing to finance the debt (and this really took hold under Yellen), the closer the policy approximates to debt monetization. In other words, dollar debasement. The rest of the world will take note and react accordingly, by dumping dollar denominated assets in favor of real assets—which is exactly what’s going on (cf. China’s announced policy) and also explains skyrocketing prices for precious metals.

Philip Pilkington @philippilk

7h

This is why the Fed is moving toward yield curve control. They must shorten the maturity length of the debt being issued - de facto monetisation. It will work domestically but USD is going to take a vicious beating and living standards will adjust harshly.

Lisa Desjardins @LisaDNews

23h

Replying to @LisaDNews and @USCBO

U.S. DEBT SURGE in CBO’s charts.

Discretionary spending slides down, thanks to Congress. (That is most agency spending.)

Ed Dowd puts it even more briefly, referencing the AI bubble:

Edward Dowd @DowdEdward

8h

Few understand this but true.

Quote

Whitney Baker @TotemMacro

11h

It’s gotten to the point where you can keep the country, *or* you can keep the bubble, but you can’t keep both.

Remember that when those who front for the Trump regime gaslight you with stuff like this:

Rudy Havenstein, Senior Markets Commentator. @RudyHavenstein

21h

OMG the level of sociopathy from this Administration is mind-blowing.

Who CARES about elite child molesters??

The top 10% who own over 90% of stocks are killing it (and coincidentally tend to be the same people in the Epstein files molesting kids.)

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𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐒 @Antunes1

22h

Pam Blondi LOSES HER MIND when asked why she has not indicted any of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients.

“The Dow is over 50k right now, the Nasdaq smashing records, that’s what we should be talking about!!”

Let me just add, all you need do is read Blondi’s bio to understand that this is One Weird Woman. She knows this.

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More news. Re Agent AI:

Dustin Burnham @ModernDad

My wife calls me, panicked.

The call is from her number, and her voice is unmistakable- that’s my wife.

‘Babe, our son is hurt. He got in a bike wreck. I’m at the emergency room but they won’t take our insurance and I need cash to get him help. Please send me 3000 dollars as soon as you can, he’s really not doing well.’

Me- ‘Wow, that’s scary. Tell me our passphrase and then I’ll send the money.’

Her (it) - ‘What? What passphrase? This is your wife, our son is hurt. Send the money now!!’

Me- ‘I’ll call you back. I don’t believe that this is my wife. If it is, I’m sorry, but we discussed this.’

The number? Spoofed. Easy to do and there’s no way to tell if a phone number is being spoofed aside from hanging up and calling back to confirm.

The voice? AI generated. Easily done. A few seconds of audio is all it takes to create a realistic audio deepfake.

What can you do?

1) Create a family safe word or passphrase. Ours is definitely not ‘Keep Going’ although we considered it. Discuss the passphrase far away from phones or any recording device. This is as analog as possible. Don’t forget that the trigger for the passphrase is just as important as the phrase itself. So instead of asking ‘what’s the safe word?’ have a separate triggering question. For example, you could say ‘I’m eating banana cream pie’ and this would trigger your spouse to respond ‘purple velvet pillows’ if that’s the safe word.

Make it fun, silly, and easy to remember. And DON’T WRITE IT DOWN.

2) Cognitive security is an essential skill in 2026. Assume every image and video you see online is fake until proven otherwise. Expect scams and spammers, and be pleasantly surprised when it’s not.

3) Figure out a backup communication option with people who you absolutely need to be able to reach. Don’t just rely on a phone number for communication. Have redundant, ideally encrypted methods of communication with family.

What did I miss? I think (hope) Nikita is wrong on the timeframe- agentic bots like Claude bot are impressive but not quite ready to flood the phone lines in just 90 days. But I think it’s going to be a huge problem by the end of the year. I already get dozens of increasingly realistic spam calls and texts daily- it’s only going to get more annoying. Have a plan to keep your family and your finances safe!

Venezuela has fallen.

MenchOsint @MenchOsint

 Chris Wright, US energy secretary and a former oil and gas CEO, has landed in Caracas, Venezuela, reportedly to assess oil industry overhaul.

It marks the highest-level U.S. visit focused on energy policy to Venezuela in nearly 30 years — The Economist.

Li Zexin 李泽欣 @XH_Lee23·

12h

Being neighbors of the United States is lethal:

Cuba: Starvation

Venezuela: Invasion

Canada: Annexation

Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton

Feb 10

The barbaric, criminal US blockade of Cuba has forced the country to shut down its free public universities, because Cuba needs to conserve its limited oil to power hospitals and water treatment facilities.

The US is trying to do to Cuba what it did to Gaza.

Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE

ISRAELI SOCIETY CAN’T HIDE IT’S GENOCIDE IN GAZA ANYMORE

More and more IDF whistleblowers are talking now, they are psychologically damaged and spiritually annihilated by what they have done to the native Palestinian population in Gaza. Zandland docs did a very good job getting some these on record. This is small tip of iceberg…