Authored by Milan Adams via Prepp Group / WordPress,

Walk through the financial districts of London, New York, or Singapore at six in the evening, and you’ll catch the last act of a performance that grows harder to maintain by the quarter. The tailored suits still stream from glass towers into black cars. The conversations still touch on market adjustments and projections. But watch closely, and you’ll notice the strain. There’s a tightness around the eyes now, a rehearsed quality to the optimism. The numbers on their screens say one thing. The price of milk, rent, and diesel say another.

We’ve built an elaborate choreography around the idea that currency holds its value. Yet somewhere between 2019 and now, that assumption quietly fractured. A dollar doesn’t travel as far as it once did. It buys less bread, less time, less security. Central bankers have their explanations ready – inflation is transitory, supply chains are healing, the economy is resilient. But walk through a supermarket in Stuttgart, a gas station in Phoenix, a pharmacy in Manchester, and you’ll feel the truth your paycheck already knows. The purchasing power hasn’t just eroded; it’s evaporated, and official metrics barely capture the half of it.

The arithmetic is brutal when you look at it directly. Global debt has climbed to roughly $315 trillion. That’s not a percentage point on a chart. That’s a claim on future labor so vast it would take several generations working at full capacity just to service the interest, never mind the principal. In Washington, the federal government now borrows about $5 billion every twenty-four hours to keep the lights on. Weekends included. No holidays. The interest alone will swallow roughly $2 trillion this fiscal year. That’s more than the entire defense budget. More than all discretionary spending combined. These figures come from the Treasury Department itself, buried in reports that few bother to read.

Since 2008, and with terrifying acceleration during the pandemic years, monetary expansion has become the silent thief in everyone’s pocket. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet hovered below $1 trillion in 2008. By 2022, it had ballooned to nearly $9 trillion. Even after some reduction, it sits above $7 trillion. This wasn’t money earned or produced. It was conjured through digital ledger entries, diluting every existing dollar in circulation. Official inflation numbers – those seven to nine percent figures you see in headlines – exclude the categories that actually determine whether families make it to the end of the month. Add housing, energy, and food back in, and you’re looking at fifteen to twenty percent erosion of purchasing power over five years. Ask any wage earner. They’ll tell you the official numbers feel like fiction.

Energy tells its own story, and it’s not the one politicians prefer. Despite all the transition rhetoric, the global economy still runs on hydrocarbons. The investment required to maintain current production simply hasn’t materialized. In the United States, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been drawn down to levels not seen since the 1980s – not for emergencies, but to manage political optics and prevent price spikes that might trigger unrest. Meanwhile, the easy oil is gone. What’s left requires more energy to extract, more capital to process. Major fields discovered decades ago are declining faster than new discoveries can replace them. By 2027, conservative estimates suggest demand will outstrip sustainable supply by several million barrels daily. Renewable infrastructure cannot scale fast enough to close that gap. The physics don’t care about our timelines.

The Portrait in Numbers

Let’s try to make $315 trillion concrete. If each dollar were a grain of sand, you’d fill about 120 Olympic swimming pools. That’s the debt sitting on balance sheets worldwide, earning interest, demanding service, compounding while we sleep. Every second, it grows by roughly $350,000 in new obligations. Every minute, $21 million. Every hour, $1.26 billion. The mathematics doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t respond to political will or optimistic speeches.

Velocity matters too. In 1999, a single dollar of monetary base supported about $12 of economic activity. By 2023, that same dollar supported barely $3. Currency has grown sluggish, accumulating in asset markets where it inflates real estate and equity prices without building actual productive capacity. The wealth effect central banks tried to engineer – rising asset prices stimulating consumption – instead produced a split economy. Asset holders watch their portfolios swell while wage earners watch their real incomes shrink. In the United States, the top one percent now holds more wealth than the bottom ninety percent combined. We haven’t seen concentration like this since 1929. Economies need circulation. When capital pools at the apex, it stops moving. It stops working.

Look at the banking sector, supposedly fortified after 2008. Regional banks in the United States carry massive exposure to commercial real estate, a sector facing structural decline as remote work permanently reduces office demand. Estimated losses exceed $400 billion, concentrated in institutions without reserves deep enough to absorb them. The Federal Reserve’s emergency lending facilities see increasing use – not for routine liquidity management, but for solvency support that masks deeper problems. Liquidity issues are cash flow mismatches; time and bridging can fix them. Solvency issues mean your assets are worth less than your obligations. That’s permanent impairment. And we’ve been papering over it with accounting flexibility and regulatory forbearance.

Energy requires looking through thermodynamics, not just economics. A barrel of oil extracted in 1950 yielded about 100 barrels of equivalent energy for every barrel spent getting it out of the ground. Today, conventional oil manages perhaps 20-to-1. Shale and tar sands run below 5-to-1. That surplus energy – the energy available beyond mere subsistence – is what built modern complexity. As that ratio declines, the complexity it supports becomes harder to maintain. Renewables help, but they cannot replicate fossil fuel energy density and storage at the scale our economy demands. Transition, if it happens, means less energy available. Less energy means less economic activity. The conversation rarely acknowledges this trade-off.

When the Margins Vanish

Historical analogies for what’s coming often miss the mark because they focus on financial mechanisms rather than material constraints. The 1930s Depression occurred when energy availability was growing and industrial capacity expanding. The crisis was financial and organizational; the physical substrate could support recovery. What’s approaching now differs in kind. We’re facing not just a financial crisis requiring monetary adjustment, but a transition between energy regimes that will reshape economic geography, trade patterns, and the very possibility of growth.

Germany offers a real-time lesson. Europe’s industrial engine, with manufacturing at roughly 23% of GDP, has contracted for five consecutive quarters. Energy costs – driven by the loss of cheap Russian gas and inadequate replacement sources – have made German industry uncompetitive globally. Chemical plants producing fertilizer and pharmaceuticals have shuttered or relocated to jurisdictions with cheaper energy. This isn’t cyclical downturn. This is structural hollowing-out, the dismantling of industrial capacity that took decades to build. By 2026, projections suggest German manufacturing will contract to levels last seen in the early 1990s. The employment, tax revenues, and social stability that industrial work supported will follow.

China’s trajectory presents different warning signs. Property and construction account for roughly 25% of GDP when you include materials and related services. That sector is unraveling in slow motion that accelerates as it goes. Major developers have defaulted on obligations rippling through shadow banking networks opaque even to domestic regulators. Local governments, dependent on land sales for revenue, face insolvency as property values fall and transactions collapse. The demographic dividend that powered four decades of growth has reversed; the working-age population peaked in 2014 and declines by millions annually. The infrastructure built for growth – high-speed rail, airports, highways – now requires maintenance that strained budgets cannot afford, while utilization fails to justify operational costs. The model that lifted hundreds of millions from poverty has hit thermodynamic and demographic walls.

Japan may be the clearest preview. Three decades of monetary stimulus, government spending, and demographic aging produced a society where the central bank owns most government debt and significant equity positions, where interest rates cannot rise without bankrupting the government, where the yen has depreciated 40% against the dollar in two years despite these measures. The yen carry trade – borrowing cheap yen to invest elsewhere – has sustained global liquidity for decades but now threatens systemic disruption as the Bank of Japan attempts modest normalization. Japan demonstrates what happens when monetary policy reaches its limits: additional stimulus produces only currency depreciation without growth. The United States and Europe are approaching that threshold.

The global financial architecture, designed in 1944 for American industrial dominance and commodity-backed currency, grows more misaligned with material reality by the year. The dollar’s reserve status lets the United States borrow in its own currency and export inflation to trading partners. That status depends on confidence that American obligations will be honored in real terms. As debt-to-GDP ratios climb and political dysfunction prevents fiscal consolidation, that confidence erodes. Central banks worldwide have accelerated gold purchases, diversifying reserves away from dollar dependence at rates unseen since the 1970s. Bilateral trade agreements in yuan, rupees, and regional currencies multiply, creating parallel financial infrastructures that bypass the dollar system. These shifts happen gradually, then suddenly, as confidence thresholds breach.

The Reckoning Approaches

By 2028, the convergence of these pressures will likely produce discontinuities that current models cannot capture. The sovereign debt crisis that manifested at the periphery – Argentina, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Ghana – will migrate to the core. Currency instability in smaller economies will trigger capital flight to the dollar, temporarily strengthening it before American obligations overwhelm even that haven. The euro, already fractured by divergent conditions between north and south, will face existential pressure as energy costs and demographic decline render southern European debt unsustainable. The Bretton Woods institutions, designed for American hegemony and expanding trade, will lack the resources and legitimacy to coordinate response to simultaneous crises across multiple jurisdictions.

Consider a few possibilities that sound shocking now but may seem obvious in retrospect.

By late 2027, a major developed economy – possibly Italy or Japan – could impose emergency banking holidays, restricting withdrawals to prevent collapse. Not for days. For weeks. The ATMs would run dry. The queues would form at dawn. Governments would promise restoration of access while quietly negotiating behind closed doors with the IMF for emergency liquidity that comes with sovereignty-shredding conditions.

Around the same timeframe, we might see the first sovereign default by a G7 nation on domestically-held debt. Not external debt – that’s already happened to smaller nations. But a major economy informing its own pension funds, its own banks, its own citizens, that obligations will not be met in nominal terms. The “guaranteed” would prove unguaranteed. Retirement accounts would be converted to longer-dated instruments at below-market rates, a soft default dressed as restructuring.

Energy markets could deliver their own surprises. By 2028, we might witness coordinated rationing in developed European economies – not through price mechanisms, which would exclude the poor entirely, but through direct allocation. Three days of heating per week. Rolling industrial blackouts prioritized by sector. The infrastructure exists to implement this; the smart meters are already installed. What’s missing is the political will to admit necessity until crisis forces the hand.

The psychology of this moment unsettles more than the numbers. We’ve been conditioned to believe economic systems self-correct, that markets find equilibrium, that intervention prevents catastrophe. These beliefs rest on assumptions of rationality and information symmetry that algorithmic trading, information asymmetry, and political capture of regulatory function have rendered obsolete. The denial isn’t conspiracy. It’s consensus – a shared unwillingness to acknowledge that the prosperity of recent decades was largely borrowed against a future that has arrived.

Those observing these patterns without ideological commitment to their reversal recognize we’re not approaching a single catastrophic event but a reconfiguration. The global economy of 2030 will not resemble that of 2020. Trade will regionalize as shipping costs and geopolitical friction make globalized production uneconomical for all but the highest-value goods. Living standards in developed nations will decline in absolute terms for the first time since the Second World War. This won’t appear as uniform deprivation but as chronic insecurity – housing instability, medical debt, the disappearance of retirement security for all but the wealthiest. Currency instability will necessitate capital controls, price controls, and gradual nationalization of financial systems that cannot function under market discipline.

This isn’t prophecy. It’s projection based on data that is publicly available and widely acknowledged among those who examine primary sources rather than prepared summaries. The debt curves, energy reserves, demographic pyramids, and monetary velocity measurements describe physical and social reality. That public discourse ignores them doesn’t invalidate them. It merely ensures the adjustment, when it arrives, will prove more disruptive than necessary because preparation was dismissed as pessimism.

The Ledger Closes

The question that remains isn’t whether the current trajectory alters, but who possesses flexibility to adapt when it does. Institutions designed for continuity – central banks, treasuries, international bodies – are not equipped for phase transitions, for moments when old rules cease to apply and new configurations emerge from disorder. Those who understand this distinction, who have studied historical precedent and recognize symptoms of systemic fragility, are already positioning themselves outside conventional structures. Not because they desire collapse. Because they see its inevitability.

Somewhere, in offices that will soon stand empty, analysts prepare reports that will never reach the decision-makers who need them. Spreadsheets calculate probabilities approaching certainty. The machinery of collapse operates slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, through erosion of trust and quiet abandonment of assumptions that once seemed permanent.

By the time the general population recognizes what has occurred, preparation will no longer be possible. The garage doors will be down. The signs will be posted. And the permanence of the closure will be undeniable.

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Democracy invites despotism. When understood as majority rule, democracy means that fifty-one of every hundred citizens can have their way with the other forty-nine.

“But I want to keep my possessions, weapons, and children.” Too bad, the majority have decided to redistribute your property to those lazy bums over there, disarm you before you can do anything about it, and indoctrinate your children in public schools, so that they learn to resent you and love the State.

Democracy is dangerous without guardrails. Unless a society has a strong sense of moral virtue that fosters personal discipline, duty, and honor, base selfishness becomes the driving motivation behind all political action. Unless certain constitutional protections exist to safeguard each individual’s inviolable rights, democratic majorities devour those rights whenever expedient.

This should surprise no-one. Political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke described humans’ pre-government “state of nature” as a chaotic, violent clash of self-interest. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” regards self-interest as the engine of free markets. Consequently, it is easy to understand why forms of democracy that are unshackled from both moral and constitutional restraints prompt a society to descend back into a state of nature in which humanity’s worst impulses are again indulged.

When Western leaders speak adoringly of “our democracy,” citizens should prepare to guard their freedoms. My goodness, there is nothing inherently virtuous about democracy. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un runs the most repressive regime on the planet, but his country is known officially as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! China’s Xi Jinping is the general secretary of the oppressive Chinese Communist Party, but his nation remains officially the People’s Republic of China! Dictatorships around the globe claim to govern in the name of the people.

One might think that the blurry line between democracy and despotism would make Western leaders wary of singing democracy’s praises. Defenses of majoritarianism embrace the notion that the votes of a hundred people will lead to a more prudent outcome than we could reasonably expect from the decision-making of a single person. But that doesn’t make any sense. Would you rather live in a kingdom with a benevolent king or in a democracy filled with rapists, thieves, and murderers? If there is a 50/50 chance that any single dictator is good or bad, would there not be a 50/50 chance that a majority of citizens are good or bad, too? If one communist would take everything you have, wouldn’t fifty communists do the same thing? Democracy is a coin toss. It is the veneer of legitimacy that makes authoritarianism look shiny and sparkly. That hardly feels like something worth celebrating.

Democracy is just a process. It shouldn’t be idolized for its own sake. It can lead to just or unjust outcomes depending upon the moral virtue, shared culture, and general wisdom of the voters. Aside from these cultural attributes of a society, there is nothing more essential to a nation’s long-term peace and happiness than the recognition of and protections for inviolable, natural, God-given rights.

Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, the right to self-defense – these rights and other natural liberties do not come into existence because of majority rule. Our natural rights exist despite majority rule. As the Founding Fathers articulated in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We aren’t equal because of democracy; we are equal despite any democratic vote that might claim otherwise. Our lives, personal liberties, and connections to God exist because of His will, not the government’s.

The idea that rights and liberties exist separately from the promulgations of government forms the foundation of our constitutional system and, more generally, of human rights.

The U.S. Constitution spells out quite succinctly what powers each of the three branches of government – Legislative, Executive, and Judicial – shall have. From where do our three branches of government get these powers? The Preamble to the Constitution lays out the source of government power plainly: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” In other words, the government’s legitimacy comes directly from the people.

Every power that one of the three branches exercises is a power that arises from and is borrowed from the individual citizens of the United States. Any power not specifically delegated to the U.S. government remains with either the individual state governments or individual American citizens. This is profoundly important. The Constitution is not a document that empowers the federal government to do whatever it wants. It is a document that says, “You get to do only these discrete things. Everything else is off-limits!”

During the Constitutional Convention, there was significant debate among the Founding Fathers about the need for a Bill of Rights explicitly defending the inalienable liberties of American citizens. Since the text of the Constitution clearly limits the delegated powers of each branch of government, some Founders resisted the inclusion of a Bill of Rights because they feared that later generations might incorrectly interpret Americans’ inviolable freedoms to include only those rights specifically listed. Other delegates feared that, without a Bill of Rights, later generations might incorrectly reimagine the Constitution’s limited delegation of powers to include additional authorities that directly infringe upon Americans’ personal rights. Both fears proved prescient.

In order to clearly state their intentions to maximize the size of Americans’ personal liberty and to minimize the powers of the federal government, the Founding Fathers gave us the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as part of the Bill of Rights:

Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Taken together, these two amendments provide a redundancy within the U.S. Constitution that is meant to preserve human liberty. First, the text of the Constitution restricts the authority of the federal government to a small number of specifically delegated powers. Second, the Bill of Rights repeats the framers’ intent to reserve all other powers for the people or their individual state governments.

With this understanding in mind, a reasonable person should ask: How is it possible that the federal government is now so large and powerful that it encroaches upon nearly every aspect of our private lives? How is it possible that tens of millions of Americans either work directly for government agencies or receive taxpayer dollars in some form? How is it possible that there are too many administrative agencies, committees, and bureaucratic groups for any one person to name? How is it possible that three federal branches with a small number of delegated authorities have been replaced with a growing number of government programs with seemingly unlimited authorities?

The answer to each of these questions is the same: The generations between the Founding Fathers and our own progressively traded freedom for democracy. In the name of the people, lawmakers, presidents, and judges ignored the plain text of the Constitution – including the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights – to steal our inalienable rights and liberties.

In order to reject democracy’s despotism, the American people will have to demand their rights and liberties back.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

The U.S. military is expanding routine health checks to include hormone-related testing, with new Pentagon rules requiring testosterone screening for a large portion of the force. The requirements apply to both active-duty personnel and reservists and took effect immediately, according to CBC.

The biggest change affects men beginning at age 30. They will now have testosterone levels checked through bloodwork as part of the military’s broader effort to identify health conditions that could interfere with physical performance, energy or readiness. Younger men will not automatically receive the same testing, although doctors can order it when symptoms raise concerns or a service member asks to be evaluated.

Female service members will be assessed under a separate protocol rather than receiving universal testosterone tests. Medical providers will look for symptoms such as persistent fatigue or changes in menstrual cycles that could signal inadequate energy intake, hormonal disruption or related health problems.

CBC writes that the Pentagon’s framework also gives military physicians direction on what to do when potential problems are discovered. That includes further evaluation and possible treatment rather than simply measuring hormone levels and leaving the results without follow-up.

Testosterone treatment for women is addressed as well, although in much narrower circumstances. The guidance allows doctors to consider off-label testosterone for certain postmenopausal women experiencing abnormally low sexual desire rather than recommending the hormone broadly.

The initiative follows a push by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who announced plans for expanded testosterone testing in July and has spoken favorably about the hormone. Pentagon officials are framing the program as another tool for maintaining a healthier and more capable fighting force.

Not everyone in the medical community is convinced. Some doctors have questioned whether routinely testing large numbers of otherwise healthy troops will produce meaningful improvements in military performance. They have also warned that finding borderline or naturally fluctuating hormone levels could encourage treatment that provides little benefit while carrying potential side effects.

The debate is unfolding as federal regulators separately examine testosterone therapy more broadly. The Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to bring together medical experts in mid-September to discuss the appropriate use of testosterone and the evidence surrounding its treatment applications.

Authored by Dr. Robert W. Malone via Malone.news,

Back in 2020, Pew Research Center surveyed more than 11,000 Americans. Political scientist Zach Goldberg subsequently examined the underlying data and broke the results down by age, sex, race, and political ideology.

What he found was rather remarkable.

Among white women ages 18 to 29 who identified as liberal, 56.3% reported that a doctor or other health-care provider had diagnosed them with a mental health condition.

• Not 15%.

• Not 25%.

• Fifty-six percent.

• For white moderate women of the same age, the number was 28.4%.

• For white conservative women, 27.3%.

In other words, young white liberal women were more than twice as likely as their conservative counterparts to report having received a mental health diagnosis.

Now, correlation is not causation. Perhaps liberals are simply more willing to seek psychiatric care. Perhaps conservatives are less willing to admit that they have a problem. Perhaps political ideology attracts people with particular personality traits rather than creating those traits. All perfectly reasonable possibilities.

But here is where it gets interesting.

Five years later, the numbers have not exactly moved in a reassuring direction.

Gallup found that only 15% of American women ages 18-29 surveyed from 2020 through 2024 described their mental health as excellent. In 2010-2014, that number had been 48%.

That is not a small decline. That is a collapse.

And the ideological divide is still there.

The 2024 American Family Survey found that only 12% of liberal women ages 18-40 described themselves as “completely satisfied” with their lives.

• Among moderate women: 28%.
• Among conservative women: 37%.

Liberal women were also nearly three times as likely as conservative women to report feeling lonely several times a week or more: 29% versus 11%.

So perhaps endlessly telling young women that they live in an oppressive society, that the world is on the verge of climate catastrophe, that words are violence, that disagreement is dangerous, that our President is evil, that the patriarchy is lurking behind every corner, that Western civilization is fundamentally corrupt, and that their personal unhappiness is caused by vast structural forces over which they have virtually no control is not actually a recipe for human flourishing.

Who could have guessed?

There is an important caveat. A 2025 study found that some of the apparent liberal-conservative mental-health divide may reflect differences in how people think and talk about “mental health.” When researchers simply asked people about their mood, rather than their mental health, much of the ideological difference disappeared.

Fair enough.

But that doesn’t explain away the extraordinary collapse in reported well-being among young women generally, nor does it make the life-satisfaction and loneliness data disappear. Maybe the question isn’t whether liberalism causes mental illness.

Maybe the more interesting question is whether a culture built around grievance, victimhood, fear and powerlessness is particularly attractive to unhappy people, makes unhappy people unhappier, or both. That seems like a question worth asking. Even if asking it makes someone very, very upset.

There is, however, an uncomfortable counterpoint to all this discussion of female unhappiness and mental illness. Men are far more likely to actually die by suicide. In the United States, the male suicide rate is nearly four times the female rate, and men account for roughly four out of every five suicide deaths. The disparity exists globally as well. Perhaps that exposes a deeper truth about the modern cult of victimhood. We have created a culture extraordinarily skilled at teaching certain groups to name every grievance, diagnose every distress, identify every oppressor and demand that society recognize their pain, while other forms of suffering remain remarkably easy to ignore. Young women may be reporting extraordinary levels of anxiety, depression and psychiatric diagnosis, but men are quietly killing themselves at vastly higher rates.

That does not diminish women’s suffering. It suggests that our entire framework for understanding suffering may be badly distorted. A society obsessed with determining who is the victim and who is the oppressor can become remarkably blind to the human being who doesn’t fit the approved narrative, particularly when that human being is male.

There is another possibility here that deserves far more attention: the diagnosis itself has become part of the epidemic. When more than half of young women in a political demographic report having been diagnosed with a mental health condition, the appropriate response is not simply to declare that half the population is mentally ill. It is to ask what the hell the health-care system is doing. Psychiatry has steadily expanded the boundaries of pathology, medicalizing distress, grief, anxiety, loneliness, adolescent turmoil, and ordinary difficulty as diagnosable disease. A system that can convert normal human suffering into a billing code, a prescription, and a lifelong medical identity should not be treated as a neutral observer of this crisis. At some point, an exploding diagnosis rate stops being proof of exploding disease and starts becoming evidence that the diagnostic machinery itself may be broken.

Consider what we are now being asked to accept as normal. The 2026 Lancet Global Burden of Disease study estimates that 1.17 billion human beings, roughly one person in seven on Earth, are living with a mental disorder, and mental disorders now account for 17.3 percent of all years lived with disability worldwide, making them the single largest source of nonfatal disability. Women carry an even greater burden than men, with the female age-standardized mental-disorder burden about 18 percent higher. This is insane, not because hundreds of millions of people do not genuinely suffer from serious psychiatric illness, but because at some point a civilization has to ask what these numbers actually mean. Did humanity suddenly become catastrophically mentally ill, or have we built a medical system that increasingly converts sadness, fear, loneliness, grief, adolescent turmoil and difficulty coping with life into psychiatric pathology? When one in seven people on the planet fits into the modeled category of mental disorder, the diagnostic framework itself deserves scrutiny. A medical system cannot simply keep expanding the definition of sickness and then point to the resulting mountain of sickness as proof that it was right.

Toxic Feminism

There was a feminism that told women they should have choices. Then there is the more modern version of feminism that increasingly seems to tell women which choices an enlightened woman is supposed to make. Career is achievement. Marriage is dependence. Motherhood is unpaid labor. Men are potential oppressors. Traditional families are suspect. Finances should always be kept separate, plan for a divorce, financial independence is a must. Independence is liberation, and needing another human being is somehow weakness. Delay marriage. Delay children. Establish the career. Find yourself. Become independent. Never settle. Put yourself first.

There is just one rather awkward problem with this prescription for female happiness: human beings are profoundly social animals, and the scientific literature keeps rediscovering the importance of precisely the relationships that modern culture has spent decades teaching women not to need.

Femininity is Real

There is also an uncomfortable biological reality that modern ideology would prefer to treat as an inconvenience: women are not simply smaller men with different reproductive organs. Progesterone is central to female reproduction, but its effects extend into the brain and behavior. Human research has associated higher progesterone with affiliation, social bonding, sensitivity to relationships and even greater willingness to sacrifice for another person.

Estrogen, particularly estradiol, does far more than regulate reproduction. It acts throughout the female brain, interacting with oxytocin and other neuroendocrine systems involved in mood, sexuality, emotional processing, social attachment, and stress. Together with progesterone and oxytocin, estrogen contributes to the biological systems underlying bonding, maternal behavior, and caregiving. And that capacity for nurturing does not suddenly switch off when there is no baby in the room.

Women show stronger tendencies toward caregiving, empathy, and relational investment, although there is enormous individual variation. Biology is not destiny, but neither is it imaginary. To dismiss these deeply rooted female tendencies as merely products of the patriarchy, or to teach women that caring for and depending upon others is somehow incompatible with independence, comes at a real psychological cost, and we are witnessing this worldwide. A feminism that requires women to deny important parts of their own biology is a strange definition of female liberation.

The female impulse toward attachment, relationship and nurturing cannot simply be dismissed as a patriarchal social construct. There is biology underneath it. A culture that tells women that caring for others is servitude, that motherhood is an impediment to achievement, and that putting another human being ahead of oneself represents oppression may therefore be fighting something considerably older than the patriarchy. It may be fighting female biology itself.

Psychology even has a validated instrument called the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory, developed specifically to measure hostile prejudices and stereotypes about men. And the hostility is measurable. In a subsequent study of 488 college students, women scored significantly higher than men on the instrument’s Hostility Toward Men scale, 2.76 versus 2.25 on a 0-to-5 scale.

How a broader culture came to normalize the sweeping negative generalizations about men, male sexuality, male power and masculinity that would immediately be recognized as prejudice if the sexes were reversed is an interesting question. Hostility between the sexes is not liberation. It poisons precisely the trust, affection and intimacy upon which successful relationships depend.

The evidence surrounding work, family and mental health should make us reconsider what women have been sold as liberation. In one nationally representative study of 4,714 working women, high work-family conflict was associated with 2.29 times the odds of depressive symptoms, with some of the strongest associations occurring among younger, highly educated, higher-income and never-married women. Studies of female physicians and longitudinal studies of working women tell much the same story: when professional life and family life are placed into sustained conflict, mental health suffers.

The mistake was never telling women that they could become physicians, scientists, executives, farmers, entrepreneurs or anything else they were capable of becoming. Of course they could, and they should have been free to do so.

The mistake was turning independence itself into the objective, as though dependence upon people who love us were some sort of character defect. A husband and wife depend upon one another. Children depend upon parents. Parents eventually depend upon their children. Families are elaborate networks of mutual obligation. That isn’t oppression. It is much of what gives human life meaning.

And perhaps most poisonous of all is the idea that relations between men and women should be understood primarily as a contest for power. Teach a generation of women to approach half of humanity with suspicion, to interpret ordinary disagreement through the language of oppression, and to view compromise as surrender, and then act surprised when relationships become difficult. Whatever one chooses to call that worldview, it is a miserable foundation upon which to build intimacy.

Girls do not generally sit through a classroom lesson entitled Marriage Is Bad. The message is subtler than that. From school through college, the language surrounding female success increasingly emphasizes independence, autonomy, empowerment, career, individual rights and self-realization. What is striking is what receives far less emphasis: interdependence, marriage, sacrifice, obligation, motherhood, building a household, choosing a good husband and creating a stable family.

Dependence itself has acquired an almost pathological meaning, as though needing a husband, wife, children or extended family represents personal failure rather than the normal condition of human beings. A girl is repeatedly asked what career she wants when she grows up. How often is she asked what kind of marriage she hopes to build, what kind of mother she hopes to become, or what sacrifices a lasting relationship will require? The lesson does not have to be written on the blackboard to be learned: success is something you achieve individually; family is something you fit around it later, and you would be stupid not to be financially independent before having children, cause men generally aren’t to be trusted to hang around long enough to raise a family.

There is an enormous difference between telling a woman you do not have to marry or have children and telling her, explicitly or implicitly, that marriage and motherhood represent lesser ambitions than professional status. Biology also imposes a deadline that corporate advancement does not. A promotion can arrive at 42. A first child may not. Women deserve to know that when they are 22, not discover it when they are 39.

In our lives, we know two women in their thirties who are in the process of freezing their eggs; evidently, they believe that when they are forty or fifty, they will be in a better position to have a child? And we have another single friend, who at fifty, has decided she has aged out of ever being a mother. All of these women are college-educated professionals, never married, and are coming to terms with their biological clocks running out.

A culture that encourages women to postpone permanent relationships, prioritize professional status, regard dependence as weakness, and treat men principally as a source of danger or oppression should at least be willing to examine the results. If the promised liberation ends with unprecedented numbers of young women anxious, depressed, medicated, lonely and unable to form the families they later discover they wanted, declaring the experiment an unquestionable success is not feminism.

It is marketing.

The Big Lie

And then there is the part nobody is supposed to mention: this arrangement is extraordinarily good for industry. The intact family is an economic institution as well as a social one. Husbands and wives share labor. Grandparents care for grandchildren. Families cook meals, repair things, care for the sick and elderly, grow food, teach children, share houses, lend money, pass down skills and provide an enormous amount of economic activity that never appears on a corporate balance sheet. Break those bonds apart and suddenly nearly everything has to be purchased. Two adults maintaining two households need two rents or mortgages, two sets of utilities, two kitchens and twice the household goods.

Put both parents into full-time employment and families purchase more childcare, prepared food, transportation and other substitutes for work once performed within the home. Send rural children hundreds of miles away to college and then into metropolitan corporate employment, and another generation is separated from grandparents, land, community, and the informal economy of extended family. None of this requires a conspiracy. It requires only incentives. And corporations benefit enormously from this arrangement.

Corporations benefit when people become workers first, consumers second, and family members somewhere farther down the list. The Big Lie was convincing women (and men) that exchanging dependence upon people who loved them for dependence upon employers, banks, universities, childcare companies, and the consumer economy was somehow independence. The destruction of family and community did not make people independent. It merely changed whom they depended upon, and unlike a family, the corporation collected the dividends.

The Result is “Mental Illness”

Going back to those numbers at the beginning of this essay, perhaps we have been asking the wrong question. When 56.3 percent of young white liberal women report having been diagnosed with a mental health condition, the immediate assumption is that something must be terribly wrong with these women. Maybe instead, something is terribly wrong with the culture they have been raised in.

For decades, young people, and young women in particular, have been sold a remarkably destructive definition of success. Leave home. Go deeply into debt for college. Build the career. Delay marriage. Delay children. Treat dependence upon another person as weakness. Treat compromise as surrender. Regard traditional institutions with suspicion. Learn to identify grievances. Put yourself first. And when the loneliness, anxiety, purposelessness and unhappiness arrive, there is an enormous medical industry waiting to provide the diagnosis and, frequently, the prescription.

Then we marvel at the epidemic of mental illness.

Perhaps a significant portion of what we are calling a mental-health crisis is actually a crisis of meaning, belonging and human connection. A pill cannot provide a husband or wife. Therapy cannot manufacture grandchildren around the Thanksgiving table. A diagnosis cannot replace friendship, faith, family, community, useful work, children who need you, parents who depend upon you, or the knowledge that one’s life matters to people other than oneself. Medicine can treat disease. It is considerably less capable of treating a culture that has systematically stripped away many of the institutions that once gave ordinary people purpose.

And men have hardly escaped this experiment. While women report extraordinary levels of anxiety, depression and psychiatric diagnosis, men are killing themselves at vastly higher rates. That should be the flashing red warning light. The ideology of victimhood may teach women to describe their suffering endlessly while feminist teachings overlook the suffering of those assigned the role of “oppressor.”

None of this means returning women to some imaginary 1950s existence or denying anyone education, independence or a career. It means admitting something considerably more radical in 2026: human beings need one another. Men need women. Women need men. Children need parents. Parents need children. Families need communities, and communities need people who remain invested in them. Independence was never the highest human good.

That may be the real Big Lie. We were told that liberation meant needing fewer people, carrying fewer obligations and being free to put ourselves first.

Instead, we became more dependent upon employers, corporations, universities, government programs, therapists, pharmaceutical companies and the marketplace to provide things that families and communities once provided for one another.

And now 1.17 billion people are estimated to be living with a mental disorder.

Perhaps the strangest response imaginable is to look at that number and conclude that the problem is simply that humanity needs more mental-health treatment.

Maybe people need more life.

More family. More marriage. More children. More friendship. More community. More responsibility. More people depending upon them, and more people upon whom they can depend.

That isn’t oppression.

It is called being human.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Via Middle East Eye

Iranian academic Mohammad Marandi has warned that Tehran would consider South Korea an enemy and could strike its economic and military interests across the Persian Gulf if Seoul joins the US-led war on Iran.

Speaking on Al Mayadeen’s The Grand Standoff, Marandi said South Korea’s involvement in efforts to secure freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz would expose its interests in the region to Iranian retaliation.

“If the South Koreans participate in this war against Iran, Iran will see it as the enemy,” Marandi said, adding that Tehran would seek to “destroy whatever assets South Korea has in this region”.

Those targets would not necessarily be military installations, he said, and Iranian strikes could include South Korean assets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

“So the Koreans are very vulnerable to Iran,” said Marandi. “Iran can hurt them very badly.”

His comments came as South Korea considers potential naval contributions to efforts to restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global energy supplies.Various options are under consideration, but no decision has been mad e, South Korea’s presidential office said on Friday. 

The office said general options had been discussed on possible military contributions, including combat participation, noncombat roles and search operations, Al Jazeera reported. “Please be advised that nothing has been decided yet concerning actual contributions,” the presidential office said.

Seoul was considering sending military assets to the region and seeking approval from parliament, South Korean media reported.  Options under consideration included a P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and a naval logistics support ship, a report by The Guardian said. 

South Korean broadcasters also reported that a navy explosive ordnance disposal team could be included. Any new deployment of military personnel would have to be reviewed by South Korea’s National Security Council, passed by a resolution of the cabinet and approved by the National Assembly, the presidential office said.

The debate comes as South Korea faces mounting pressure from Washington to join efforts around the Strait of Hormuz. US President Donald Trump has blasted Seoul for not backing the US war on Iran and tied the spat to wider strains in the US-South Korea alliance. South Korea also depends heavily on the waterway for its energy supplies. 

Last year, the country depended on shipments traversing Hormuz for 61 percent of its crude oil imports and 54 percent of its naphtha imports.

Marandi said the potential contribution was not likely to be a game-changer in the conflict and said South Korea had little military capability to contribute to the US. “What is a ship or two from South Korea going to do? It’s foolish,” he said.

Trump blasts South Korea:

I called the president of South Korea. I said, “Would you help with Iran? If you would like, we don’t need help.” He said, “No thanks.”

I said, “What do you mean? We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, and you are not going… pic.twitter.com/xD1dZ1AANQ

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 17, 2026

But he warned that any participation could have economic implications far beyond military assets. “Iran will not only target the South Korean military assets, but Iran could easily destroy their economic assets across the Persian Gulf region,” Marandi said.

Under pressure from Washington, South Korea expanded the deployment of an anti-piracy naval unit from Somalia to waters around the Strait of Hormuz in 2019. 

However, South Korea’s defense minister said in March that any substantially different mission in the strait would require parliamentary consent.

Independent investigative journalist Nick Shirley spent the better part of a year investigating alleged fraud at nonprofits accused of diverting taxpayer funds meant for immigrant services. California responded by passing a law that makes it harder to look at those nonprofits at all. Now he is suing to have that law thrown out. 

Shirley filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California on September 4, arguing that Assembly Bill 2624, nicknamed the Stop Nick Shirley Act, violates his First Amendment rights by restricting his ability to investigate and report on immigration-related service organizations. Critics gave the bill a blunter name months ago. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2624 last month. The law, which doesn’t take effect until October 1, 2027, expands California’s existing Safe at Home program, a shield the state originally built for domestic violence survivors, to cover nonprofit employees who help people navigate the immigration system.

Anyone who distributes information or images of a covered worker under circumstances the law defines as inciting violence or threats faces a penalty of $4,000. 

“Now, in a world where we all want more transparency and not less, it is more critical than ever that we do not just sit back and do nothing,” Shirley asked in a video posted to X announcing the lawsuit.

“That is why I am filing this lawsuit against the State of California. Because why would they create a law that pushes for less transparency when all we want is more transparency, especially when it comes to our tax dollars being defrauded? And why specifically make immigration support service providers a protected class inside of California?”

Under the law, a worker at a covered organization, or an entity acting on their behalf, can submit a written demand blocking publication of certain identifying information about them.

Shirley and other critics say that provision hands anyone under scrutiny a built-in kill switch for the story, and thus any accountability for fraud.

According to the bill’s language, “A program participant or an individual entity or organization authorized to act on their behalf may make a written demand to a person, business or association to not publicly post or publicly display, disclose, or distribute on the internet the personal information or image of the program participant,” he said, reading from the statute.

“California has decided to push for less transparency and create laws that penalize citizens and journalists for looking into potential fraud inside ‘immigration support services providers,'” Shirley wrote in the X post announcing the suit.

Shirley traces the bill’s origin to January 31, when he announced that he was in California investigating alleged fraud.

Days later, Newsom said the San Diego Somali community felt “under siege” from what he called “right-wing provocateurs,” a comment Shirley says was about him. On February 5, California Attorney General Rob Bonta held a news conference dismissing the fraud allegations, calling them “reckless, false, outrageous, and ridiculous.”

Fifteen days later, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, who happens to be married to the attorney general, introduced AB 2624.

“They needed the Stop Nick Shirley Act, AB 2624, to protect the fraud and stop people from exposing these locations inside of immigration support providers,” he said.

The bill’s text defines immigration support service providers broadly enough to include legal services, healthcare, and nonprofits generally, and one of the organizations that helped push the legislation has itself pulled in tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for immigration legal work in the state. Shirley’s history with this beat predates the California fight. 

Shirley’s lawsuit does not seek monetary damages.

“We’re not suing for a single dollar,” he explained. “We’re suing simply on the fact that they’re taking away your First Amendment, right with this new law. In fact, I might spend months, I might spend years fighting this lawsuit for so long, think about it for so long. These corrupt politicians have been able to push and shove us around and receive no consequences for their actions.”

I’m suing California…

California has decided to push for less transparency and create laws that penalize citizens and journalists for looking into potential fraud inside “immigration support services providers.” A written demand is all it takes to stop the publishing of a… pic.twitter.com/nFnfDUff0h

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) September 4, 2026

A three-month investigation into widespread catalytic converter thefts in Southern California culminated Thursday with five arrests and the recovery of an enormous cache of allegedly stolen auto parts, according to KTLA.

Law enforcement agencies executed several search warrants across Los Angeles and Orange counties, uncovering roughly 2,400 catalytic converters with an estimated value of $4.3 million. Images released after the raids show converters packed into large containers and stacked throughout a warehouse allegedly connected to the operation.

Investigators believe the suspects were part of a broader system for handling stolen converters rather than simply carrying out individual thefts. Authorities say the investigation connected thefts reported across several northern Orange County communities to an organized operation that collected, stripped, transferred and purchased the stolen equipment.

KTLA writes that the searches also turned up more than $105,000 in cash, two firearms that authorities said were not registered and several boxes containing precious metals. Catalytic converters are attractive to thieves because they contain valuable metals that can be extracted and resold.

The operation brought together several agencies, including the Orange and Los Angeles county sheriff’s departments, California DMV investigators, state insurance investigators and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. Authorities said the scale of the seizure was the product of months of coordinated investigative work.

Following the arrests, officials encouraged vehicle owners to make their cars harder targets by parking in garages or well-lit locations when possible. They also recommended catalytic converter protection devices and having identifying information etched onto vulnerable vehicle components to make stolen parts more difficult to resell.

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

A certain pattern is emerging on the far left. Political figures spend years currying the favor of other extremists with outrageous commentary, proudly proclaiming their commitment to eliminating the Senate, opening the border, and other measures. Then, they delete all of the comments and declare themselves mainstream. The idea is to run in the center but govern from the far left, the so-called Spanberger strategy. The latest example is William Lawrence, who is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. However, Lawrence’s prior self reveals just how radical this movement could prove.

Like many professors, pundits, and politicians on the left, Lawrence has called for sweeping changes in our constitutional system. Lawrence reportedly has demanded a “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution while calling for the elimination of the Senate, police, prisons, and borders.

He has even denounced the nuclear family as an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society.”

Notably, he is the latest radical to show that the “Big Tent” party has little room for moderates. While establishment figures like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries seek to use this mob, radicals have made clear that they will be next. Darializa Avila Chevalier is the latest Democratic Socialist to mock the establishment’s pitch of a Big Tent party: “A big tent doesn’t pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does.”

In Lawrence’s case, he even put this feelings to music, writing a song a few years ago that calls for the death of moderate former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, declaring, “Our generation says f**k you for everything…Hurry up and die so that we can get started.”

He has also denounced capitalism and the very concept of the nation-state.

Lawrence was previously arrested for resisting police officers while protesting a pipeline.

As discussed earlier, candidates like James Talarico in Texas have scrubbed their social media accounts or dismissed their earlier radical claims, including attacks on capitalism. Supporters view these candidates as already proving their bona fides and understanding that they are just sanitizing their records for voters who want the illusion of a moderate. Accordingly, many applaud figures such as Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, dismissing her own extremist statements just a few years ago as “Woke 1.” like some distant childhood stage.

These radical figures are learning that their views are distinctly unpopular with American voters so they are perfecting stealth socialist candidates who can run a type of Spanberger campaign while later pursuing a socialist agenda.

Lawrence’s past positions show little nuance and closely track the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. Destroying the constitutional system, rejecting the nation-state, eliminating prisons, and other radical positions propelled these candidates through the primaries. The effort to now scrub the records shows the utter contempt that many have for average voters.

Lawrence shows the delusion of establishment figures such as Gavin Newsom that they can use a mob to gain power without being eventually devoured by it. In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. What became known as “The Terror” was started not by the working class, but by educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement.

These are hardcore revolutionaries with an agenda that would destroy the world’s oldest and most successful democratic system in history. Party leaders facilitate them because they can only think about the next election, not the next generation. Lawrence is a cautionary tale that Benjamin Franklin remains correct, this is our Republic but only if we can keep it.

An Amazon-branded Boeing 767 cargo jet overran a runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, leaving five people dead and five others injured.

Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 said the Boeing 767-300 cargo aircraft, operated as 21 Air Flight 7598, was arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, shortly before 2 p.m. when it overran Runway 30, struck several vehicles, and came to rest in a parking lot. 

A 21 Air Boeing 767 operating for Amazon overran Miami’s Runway 30 this afternoon. Flightradar24 data shows a ground speed of 112 knots as it left the usable runway.

Downloadable flight data and updates available at https://t.co/uHIF4KdM17 pic.twitter.com/dnfX0uWjxt

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 6, 2026

Footage from the scene shows the 767 cargo jet colliding with multiple vehicles before coming to rest in a parking lot filled with Tesla Cybercabs, Cybertrucks, and other vehicles.

The first Cybercab accident is not what I expected https://t.co/9KknfA7tRp pic.twitter.com/YFvz9HfsJS

— Robin (@xdNiBoR) September 6, 2026

NBC News quoted Miami-Dade Fire Chief Raied Jadallah as saying that five people died in the incident and five others were injured. Three of the injured were transported to a trauma center in critical condition, while two others were taken to a local hospital.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told the outlet, “This is a fast-moving situation and we’re still gathering details. We’re working closely with local authorities and officials to understand exactly what happened,” adding, “Right now, our absolute priority is the safety, well-being, and care of everyone involved.”

Flightradar24 said that, as of 1700 ET, departures at MIA had resumed.

Departures have now resumed at Miami as well. https://t.co/HNHCeSA6z1 pic.twitter.com/8oOJUdTBJB

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 6, 2026

The National Transportation Safety Board said it is gathering data and working with the FAA to determine the cause of the crash.

Authored by Jeff Schogol via Task & Purpose,

The Army has awarded a $464.8 million contract for a laser weapon designed to destroy the type of drones that Iran has launched against U.S. troops and partner nations in the Middle East for more than five months.

The service has selected the LOCUST X3 laser made by AeroVironment, Inc. for its Enduring-High Energy Laser program, according to a company news release.

The 30-kilowatt laser is specifically designed to counter mid-sized drones that the U.S. military refers to as Group 3 unmanned aerial systems, said John Garrity, vice president of directed energy systems at AeroVironment, Inc. One such unmanned aerial system that has frequently been used against U.S. troops in the Middle East is Iran’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drone.

“LOCUST X3 is intended to be the Group 3 killer,” Garrity told reporters on Aug. 7. “When we talk about Group 3, that’s just one of the more prevalent threats that you see in warfare today, seen in conflicts in Iran and in Ukraine with Shahed drones.”

The laser allows U.S. troops to destroy drones at greater ranges than other types of weapons, and the LOCUST X3 can bring down targets in seconds, Garrity said. Those attributes allow the weapon to rapidly destroy drone swarms.

“When you talk about a LOCUST laser weapon system, you’re able to put effects on target at wide ranges at the speed of light,” Garrity said. “If you’re able to kill off drones in single-digit seconds or less, depending on the range and the type of material, you’re able to jump between targets quite effectively and efficiently.”

The laser is also meant to destroy smaller drones, which the military calls Group 1 and 2 unmanned aerial systems, he said.

“Unfortunately, all three classes of those drones can do a tremendous amount of harm to our assets and our servicemen and women,” Garrity said.

The LOCUST X3 is meant to be “the apex predator” of the Army’s layered defenses against small to mid-level drones, said Aaron Westman, senior director for business development at AeroVironment, Inc.

“It can really kill a lot of threats,” Westman said during the media roundtable. “Its job is to really, let’s say, thin the herd to be able to kill high volumes of threats.”

That allows the military to save its more expensive interceptors for specific threats so that its system of layered defenses “doesn’t run out of bullets,” Westman said.

Currently, the U.S. military’s inventory of ground-based air defense missiles has been so depleted during the Iran war that experts estimate it will take years to replenish all the interceptors that have been fired.

Westman added that a missile can miss its target, but with a laser, “as long as you can see something, you can hit it.”

AeroVironment, Inc. will deliver dozens of LOCUST X3 lasers to the Army over the next few years as part of the contract, a company news release says. The laser is designed to be mounted on vehicles, such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Efforts are ongoing to determine if the laser can also be mounted on the Infantry Squad Vehicle.

An Army spokesperson previously told Task & Purpose that if the laser were approved and fielded as planned, it would become the service’s first directed-energy program of record.

Over time, the company expects to field higher power versions of the lasers, Garrity said.

Earlier versions of the LOCUST laser have already been fielded, with some laser systems deployed within the continental United States, Garrity said. One feature common to the company’s lasers is that they use an Xbox controller.

“To a young soldier, sailor, airman, guardian that’s using these systems, it’s not unlike what they’re using at their own house for video games,” Garrity said.