(Update: 2215ET): A third property? 

On Thursday night, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte dropped a second criminal referral against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook based on evidence that she entered into a 15-year mortgage on a third property which she listed as her “Second Home.” 

On an ethics form signed with the government, however, Cook noted it as an “investment/rental property.”

Why is this bad and not simply a ‘clerical error’? As Pulte notes, “Representing the property as a second home may have allowed Cook to secure a lower “Second Home” mortgage down payment and rates, as investment properties typically carry higher down payments and higher rates due to increased risk.”

3 strikes and you’re out.

Today, U.S. Federal Housing sent a 2nd Criminal Referral in the matter of Lisa D. Cook, related to a mortgage on a 3rd property and alleged misrepresentations about her properties to the United States Government during her time as Governor of the… pic.twitter.com/TAH68Mia23

— Pulte (@pulte) August 29, 2025

This new criminal referral follows an initial referral Pulte made after Cook listed two properties as her ‘primary residence’ in 2021 – ostensibly reaping manifold benefits on tax treatment and interest rates, which Cook hasn’t denied. 

About that Clerical Error…

Earlier Thursday, Cook filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after President Donald Trump fired her on Monday ‘for cause.’ Among the excuses contained in the lawsuit for listing two properties as her primary residence was a possible clerical error. 

Except, Cook described herself in her 2023 nomination hearing as having “significant experience in banking and finance, as is evidenced by my service on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and of a Community Development Financial Institution in Michigan, in addition to my employment at an investment bank and a large commercial bank.” 

“Clerical error” pic.twitter.com/ThnHKeRFS9

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 29, 2025

So she claims to be a banking expert, while anyone in the industry who’s done all the mandatory mind-numbing ‘continuing education’ has had these exact types of scenarios pounded into their heads ad nauseam, for years. 

In short:

*  *  *

Snag a ZeroHedge velcro-backed Patch – part of our new collection… (click pic below)

(Update: 1532ET): A Biden-appointed federal judge who defied a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month has been ‘randomly’ assigned to the (Biden-appointed) Lisa Cook case, after the Federal Reserve Governor filed a lawsuit challenging her Monday firing by President Trump. Her complaint doesn’t deny the underlying allegations of mortgage fraud – and instead argues that she couldn’t have been fired ‘for cause’ over something that happened before she was confirmed to the Fed. 

Cook also argues that claiming two houses as her ‘primary residence’ at the same time may have been a simple ‘clerical error.’

Doesn’t look like any “clerical error” a @Harvard grad and qualified Fed Governor would/should make!

Maybe a 3rd grader, but certainly not someone of her stature. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/279U8joxqS

— G. Buckman (@g_buckman) August 28, 2025

So, we’re supposed to believe that a Harvard graduate and ‘Top leading economist’ – who’s tasked with setting Fed policy – simply missed the ‘primary residence’ designation plastered all over the mortgage papers she signed? 

Anyway, here’s the new judge, Jia Cobb, who will weigh in on the case. 

Cobb recently defied the Supreme Court according to the Trump administration – after she continued to block the “expedited removal” of migrants despite a Supreme Court ruling that upheld the legality of such removals. 

“Will they be summarily removed from a country that — as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges — may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?” Cobb wrote in an 84-page decision against the deportation effort.

Cobb was also the judge in Jan. 6th defendant Ryan Samsel’s case. Samsel was notably the first rioter to charge across police lines. After he was found guilty, prosecutors wanted him to go away for 20 years, however his February sentencing was called off after President Trump issued a blanket pardon to all J6ers. 

Now, the activist judge will decide at least the first step in Cook’s fate – which is sure to be appealed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by the losing party, after which we’re guessing it’s headed to the Supreme Court. 

*  *  *

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has sued the Trump administration, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and the Board of Governors itself – after President Donald Trump fired her on Monday over claims that she lied on mortgage applications – allowing her to double-dip on tax and lending advantages. 

The lawsuit – which doesn’t deny mortgage fraud!! – seeks “A declaration that President Trump’s August 25, 2025 purported firing … is unlawful and void and that Governor Cook remains an active member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve,” and a declaration from the court that “an unsubstantiated allegation of mortgage fraud prior to a Governor’s confirmation is not cause for removal.”

Update: In a statement to CNBC, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte said: “In her filing, Ms. Cook does not deny that these are her mortgage documents, so one has to wonder why she, or Jerome Powell, would want this to be a part of the Federal Reserve, which is supposed to have preeminent integrity and which is critical to the safety and soundness of the U.S. Mortgage Market.”

Cook’s lawsuit claims that Trump violated the Federal Reserve Act, the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and other statutory rights – and that Trump’s action lacks “cause” as required by the FRA. 

Represented by former Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell – who also represents NY Attorney General Letitia James, former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, and a whistleblower – James filed the lawsuit in federal court in Washington DC – where we’re sure the Jury will be interested to hear, per her complaint, that she is the first black woman on the Board. 

And while former members of the Fed have stepped down over alleged improprieties, Cook is digging in.

2021: Dallas Fed president Kaplan busted for suspicious stock trades, resigns

2021: Boston Fed president Rosengren busted for suspicious stock trades, resigns

2022: Fed vice chair Richard Clarida busted for suspicious trades, resigns

2025: Lisa Cook vows to stay on

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 26, 2025

We’re sure Cook’s legal team is counting on a DC jury being sympathetic to Cook’s claims in response to her firing, in which Trump accused her of “deceitful and potentially criminal  conduct in a financial matter.”

The Trump-Cook clash erupted after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte dropped receipts showing that Cook lied on 2021 loan applications for two properties in Michigan and Georgia – claiming that each was her primary residence. 

Read the complaint below:

Cook Trump Comp 082825 by Zerohedge Janitor

Developing…

By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com

Phillips 66 will begin shutting down its 139,000 bpd Los Angeles-area refinery as soon as next week, sources told Reuters, moving forward on a closure plan announced last year. Units at the plant will idle in phases through Q4 2025, with the facility permanently offline by year-end.

The decision isn’t a surprise—Phillips 66 said in October it would exit the site, citing “market dynamics.” But it comes with fallout: about 600 employees and 300 contractors will lose their jobs by December, with only a handful reassigned to the company’s marine terminal. The company insists it will support workers through the transition, though local officials remain worried about the economic hit.

California, meanwhile, is staring at a bigger problem. Between Phillips 66’s LA facility and Valero’s Benicia refinery, scheduled to close in 2026, the state is set to lose roughly 17% of its refining capacity. That’s a dangerous haircut in a state already paying the nation’s highest pump prices. Analysts warn that by late 2026, California gasoline could top $8 a gallon if supply disruptions collide with fewer in-state refineries.

Lawmakers appear caught flat-footed. California has prided itself on leading the clean energy charge, but the state has no system-wide transition plan to manage a shrinking refinery fleet. Imports will plug some of the gap, but relying on tankers means higher costs and more emissions at the ports. For now, policymakers are scrambling to balance climate ambition with the political pain of $6-plus fuel.

The closure also lands as Phillips 66 wrestles with other headaches. Earlier this month, a California court hit the refiner with an $800 million judgment in a biofuels trade secrets case, and earlier this year, activist hedge fund Elliott Management pressed the company to spin off assets to boost shareholder value.

In the end, the LA refinery shutdown is part of a larger trend. Refining is being squeezed worldwide by overcapacity, shifting demand, and environmental rules. But in California, the lack of a clear bridge plan means refinery retirements risk sparking exactly the kind of fuel crunch the state wanted to avoid.

The job market for new graduates is sluggish. In June, unemployment for recent college grads was 4.8%, compared with 4% for all workers, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

But there’s one big exception: AI talent. Young professionals in their early 20s with machine-learning skills are commanding extraordinary pay. Some are earning $1 million a year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A report from AI staffing firm Burtch Works found that base salaries for nonmanagerial AI professionals with zero to three years’ experience rose about 12% from 2024 to 2025—the fastest growth of any group. These workers are also being promoted to management roles roughly twice as quickly as peers in other tech fields, thanks to skills and impact rather than tenure.

“There is a significant salary difference between a machine-learning engineer job and a software-engineer job,” says Anil K. Gupta, professor at the University of Maryland.

At Databricks, entry-level AI hires now receive base salaries of $190,000–$260,000, with stock pushing total compensation far higher. “Under 25, you can be making a million,” says CEO Ali Ghodsi, who calls them “AI-native” workers. “We can’t for the life of us get the more senior people to adopt it.”

The Journal writes that other companies are chasing similar talent. Scale AI says about 15% of its employees are under 25, with starting salaries near $200,000. “We’re eager to hire AI-native professionals, and many of those candidates are early in their careers,” says Ashli Shiftan, the company’s head of people.

Levels.fyi has tracked 42 AI offers exceeding $1 million, including nine given to candidates with less than a decade of workplace experience. Even Roblox has offered entry-level ML engineers packages above $200,000.

The demand is so fierce that some firms are threatening legal action against rivals trying to poach their youngest talent.

Meanwhile, students are jumping straight from academia into lucrative roles. Jure Leskovec of Stanford notes Ph.D. candidates leaving early after being “snatched up by companies with large offers before they have any industry experience.” As he puts it: “The number of zeros is quite large.”

Others without advanced degrees but strong AI skills are also pulling ahead of traditional programmers. “It’s almost like a next generation of a software engineer,” says Leskovec.

The startup CTGT, co-founded by Cyril Gorlla, has an average employee age of 21. Some staff now hold equity valued at $500,000. Gorlla, 23, says he’s even received applications from 16-year-olds with published AI research. “I definitely did not see that a few years ago.”

One recent graduate, Lily Ma of Carnegie Mellon, applied for 30–40 jobs and interviewed at a dozen companies before choosing Scale AI. “I did notice that having research experience helps a lot,” she says.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

China has poured cold water on President Donald Trump’s suggestion that it join the United States and Russia in talks to downsize their nuclear arsenals, dismissing the idea as unrealistic.

The Chinese regime rejected the proposal on Aug. 27, two days after Trump told reporters that Washington and Moscow were discussing ways to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and that he hoped Beijing would also take part.

Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun signaled at a press conference that China won’t join the disarmament negotiations, adding that the primary responsibility lies with the United States.

Trump raised the subject earlier this week while fielding questions in the Oval Office alongside South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

Trump said nuclear arms control had been discussed at his Aug. 15 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and that he wanted China brought into the process.

“One of the things we’re trying to do with Russia and with China is denuclearization, and it’s very important. … Denuclearization is a very big game, but Russia is willing to do it, and I think China is going to be willing to do it too,” he said.

“We cannot let nuclear weapons proliferate. We have to stop nuclear weapons.”

The push for expanded talks comes as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, better known as New START, is set to expire on Feb. 5, 2026. With the collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, New START is the only remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow.

The 10-year treaty, which began in 2011 and was extended by five years in 2021, limits each side to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. It also caps the total number of missile launchers and bombers at 800 and provides for extensive on-site inspections.

Negotiations for a successor treaty are expected to be difficult, as Russia has indicated it wants NATO’s other nuclear-armed members, namely the United Kingdom and France, included in future talks.

The United States and Russia each hold more than 5,000 warheads, while China is estimated to have at least 600 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute—up from around 500 in 2024. France maintains a stockpile of about 290 warheads, while the UK holds around 225.

“Depending on how it decides to structure its forces, China could potentially have at least as many ICBMs as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade,” the Institute said in an analysis, noting that even if China reaches the upper projection of 1,500 warheads by 2035, that figure would still represent only about one-third of each of the current U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles.

The first Trump administration had sought to bring China into nuclear arms reduction talks, but that effort was also rejected by the Chinese regime.

In June 2020, Marshall Billingslea, then the U.S. special presidential envoy for arms control, clashed with Chinese officials online when he posted a photo on social media platform Twitter—now X—of empty seats that appeared to be reserved for China at a negotiating table, after Beijing did not send any representative to Vienna to join U.S.-Russia discussions on extending or replacing New START.

The post prompted a furious response from Fu Cong, head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Arms Control Department, who said that the United States had no right to mark the seats with Chinese flags without Beijing’s consent. The Russian ambassador to Austria later posted photos of the event, showing that seats were filled and no Chinese flags were displayed during the talks.

The speed at which progressive indoctrination was introduced into the US public school system was a disturbing reminder of the fragility of western education.  The process has been ongoing for many years, primarily in universities, but the real leftist blitz on grades K-12 started around ten years ago when a quiet conspiracy of LGBT and CRT indoctrination was implemented by teachers unions, NGOs and the Department of Education.

At first, the fallback policy was denial.  Democrats and leftist teachers groups accused critics of “conspiracy theory” when propaganda lessons were uncovered.  School officials actively protected teachers from parent scrutiny, even going so far as to argue that parents had “no right” to know what their children were being taught in class.  This madness continued until the dam broke in 2022-2023 and the agenda was fully exposed. 

Teacher Tells Meeting, If you don’t become an “antiracist” teacher you could be fired.

“Either evolve or dissolve.” pic.twitter.com/e1gGP6izeY

— UnWokable (@UnWokablePod) April 28, 2022

At that point, leftists admitted to the indoctrination campaign but asserted that it was their job to socially engineer the next generation to be “more inclusive” in their thinking.  In other words, children must be conditioned to accept woke degeneracy as normal, for the greater good.

Woke programming was not limited to blue states; blue cities within red states had the same problem.  It wasn’t until parents and red state leaders intervened that things began to change and verbal warnings were not enough.  Many activist teachers had to be fired – They believed their ideology was more important than the wishes of parents. 

This teacher filmed herself instructing students to use her preferred they/them pronouns.

She posted this video the day after President Trump’s executive order on “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.”

She works for Chicago Public Schools. pic.twitter.com/QzcLjT7cUm

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) February 16, 2025

Many states have now passed legislation to remove woke messaging from public schools, but the danger of subversive activism remains.  Leftist teachers can easily revert back to the old methods of subtlety and denial, brainwashing young minds while pretending as if they are following basic lesson plans. 

🧵Accuracy in Media released a video Friday exposing how topics like CRT are secretly being taught in Utah schools. I have additional proof that Michelle Love-Day, JSD Director of Culture & Diversity in that video, is teaching educators to use SEL as a cover for activism. pic.twitter.com/xWi2Ey5lR0

— Lisa Logan (@iamlisalogan) January 30, 2023

The state of Oklahoma has devised a way to prevent future leftist infiltration:  A certification test for incoming teachers designed to weed out woke devotees and lay the ground rules for what does and does not cross the line.  The test may be applied to all new teachers, or specifically to teachers trained in blue states like California and New York that require progressive indoctrination.  The state Department of Education, headed by Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, will implement the new certifications

The “America First Test” was designed with the help of Prager University, a conservative organization which produces educational videos and other materials debunking far-left arguments.

Oklahoma is offering teaching bonuses that go up to $50,000 to attract educators from across the nation and has seen a dramatic increase in applicants wanting to come to the state. The new test is meant to ensure they identify teachers with activist views before they end up in the system. Oklahoma, like many others in the US, has a persisting teacher shortage.

The bottom line is that the teachers are the contact point for most American children when it comes to academia and they determine if a student learns writing, history, math, science, or ideology.  Leftists have understood the value of exploiting the teacher dynamic for a long time.  Controlling the point of contact is essential for ensuring that young minds are not damaged by insane cultism. So, either the teachers need to be vetted, or the kids must be home schooled.  There is no other way.

Some critics suggest that leftist teachers could simply lie on the test, though, the certification could also act as a kind of employee agreement showing that they were legally informed of what subjects are not acceptable in the classroom.  In other words, if they violate those restrictions they can’t claim ignorance and it may be easier to fire them. 

Other critics argue that filtering teachers in this manner is not legal and not congruent with Oklahoma educational policies.  State legislators argue that they should have a say before any testing is finalized.  However, as parents become more involved these school districts have less of a choice; ultimately the parents decide, whether state officials like it or not. 

Furthermore, with the conspiracy of horrors witnessed in public schools during the Biden Administration, one has to consider what it will take to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.  Middle of the road solutions are not enough. 

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being weaponized to conduct increasingly sophisticated cybercrimes, according to a new report from Anthropic, which warns of an “unprecedented” evolution in malicious operations that makes defense far more difficult.

In its Aug. 27 Threat Intelligence Report, the AI safety company described how criminals are embedding advanced models like “Claude” into every stage of attacks—from reconnaissance and credential theft to ransomware and fraud. Researchers said AI tools are now acting not just as advisers but as active operators in real-time campaigns.

This “represents a fundamental shift in how cybercriminals can scale their operations,” the report said.

“Agentic AI systems are being weaponized” to perform sophisticated cyberattacks, not simply provide guidance, the researchers warned.

Cases in Point

The report highlighted several examples, including a large-scale extortion campaign, fraudulent employment scams run by North Korea, and ransomware sold on dark-web forums.

In one operation, for example, a hacker used Anthropic’s coding assistant Claude Code to infiltrate at least 17 organizations—including hospitals, emergency services, and government agencies. “Claude” was deployed to automate reconnaissance, penetrate networks, analyze stolen financial data, and generate persuasive, psychologically targeted ransom notes. Demands sometimes exceeded $500,000.

Rather than encrypting files, the attacker threatened to publicly expose exfiltrated data, ranging from health care records to government credentials. The report stated that this “vibe hacking” method shows how a single operator can now achieve the impact of an entire cybercrime team.

“It says, ‘here’s how much we think we should send the ransom note for,’ and then it actually helps write the ransom note to be as persuasive as possible,” one of the researchers said during a podcast discussing the operation. “So really, every step, end-to-end, AI is able to help with an attack like this,” including analyzing people’s financial details “to work out how much they can realistically be extorted for as well.”

Another case involved North Korean operatives who used Claude to pose as software engineers at U.S. Fortune 500 companies. The AI-generated resumes, passed coding assessments, and even performed technical tasks, allowing unskilled workers to work remotely and earn salaries that investigators say help fund the North Korean regime and its weapons programs.

In a third case, a UK-based actor leveraged Claude to build and market ransomware-as-a-service, selling malware packages for $400 to $1,200. Despite lacking advanced coding ability, the actor used AI to implement encryption, anti-detection techniques, and command-and-control infrastructure.

Growing Threat

Anthropic said these examples illustrate a broader pattern where criminals with little training can now use AI to scale attacks once reserved for sophisticated groups. “Traditional assumptions about the link between actor skill and attack complexity no longer hold when AI can provide instant expertise,” the report warned.

The company said it has banned accounts involved in the abuses, deployed new detection tools, and shared technical indicators with authorities. But it acknowledged that similar misuse is occurring with other commercial and open-source models.

“There are actually open source models out there now that are fine-tuned for this,” an Anthropic researcher warned during a podcast discussing the new phenomenon. “Cyber-criminals are developing weaponized LLMs [large language models] to conduct attacks.”

The implications of what the researchers described as an “evolution in AI-assisted cybercrime” are that defense and enforcement are becoming increasingly difficult, while crimes conducted with the aid of weaponized AI are becoming more common.

National Security

Anthropic also announced the creation of a National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council, composed of former senators and senior officials from the Pentagon and intelligence community, to guide the company on high-impact defense applications of AI.

The move comes as Washington sharpens its focus on autonomous systems. President Donald Trump said on Aug. 25 that drones represent “the biggest thing that’s happened in terms of warfare” since World War II, citing Ukraine as proof that unmanned platforms are reshaping modern combat.

Some analysts and insiders, including autonomous drone company Airrow co-founder David Kaye, say pairing drones with AI could accelerate a shift toward “bots before boots” battlefields, where AI-assisted drones operate without humans nearby and carry out around-the-clock missions “with no risk, no fatigue, and no hesitation.”

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Hinton—the Nobel Prize-winning scientist known as the “godfather of AI”—has issued stark warnings that humanity risks being displaced by machines “much smarter than us.”

In a recent interview, Hinton said the danger of AI extends far beyond job losses, cautioning that if intelligent machines are not programmed to care for humans, they will “just take over” and replace us.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Mitsubishi Corporation is dropping plans to develop three offshore wind projects in Japan amid unexpected changes and rising challenges in the market, the Japanese conglomerate said on Wednesday. 

In February this year, Mitsubishi said it is reviewing its business plans for Japanese offshore wind power generation projects “due to material changes in the macroeconomic environment.” 

In December 2021, Mitsubishi won in a Japanese auction projects in three Japanese sea areas. 

“However, in the wake of the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis, the business environment for offshore wind power has significantly changed and is continuing to change worldwide due to factors such as inflation, the depreciation of the yen, tight supply chains, and rising interest rates,” the Japanese corporation said in February 2025. 

As a result of the review of the business plans for these projects due to unexpected changes in the business environment, Mitsubishi today announced it had decided not to proceed with their development. 

Since Mitsubishi was selected as the operator of the projects in December 2021, the business environment for offshore wind power “has significantly changed worldwide due to factors such as tight supply chains, inflation, exchange rates, and rising interest rates.” 

Mitsubishi sought to adapt to these changes by examining various options including reassessment of costs, project schedule, and revenue. 

“However, after discussions among the partners, we have determined that establishing a viable business plan is not feasible given the current conditions,” the corporation said. 

Mitsubishi’s decision to abandon the projects in Japan comes amid rising headwinds to offshore wind development worldwide. 

Ørsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind project developer, warned in May of a continued challenging environment for the industry with mounting near-term headwinds globally. 

The challenges piled for Ørsted last week after the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued on Friday a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind project offshore the U.S. East Coast. 

The project is 80% complete with all offshore foundations installed and 45 out of 65 wind turbines installed. But the Revolution Wind joint venture of Ørsted and Global Infrastructure Partner’s Skyborn Renewables is complying with the order and is taking appropriate steps to stop offshore activities, the Danish company said.  

Federal and local authorities have been bombarded with a series of hoax active-shooter incidents at a dozen U.S. universities in recent weeks, even as a horrific shooting unfolded in Minneapolis yesterday, where a crazed transgender shooter, with “kill Trump” on his weapon, killed two children and injured 17 others at a Catholic school.

A new report from Wired claims that one of its journalists made contact with the self-proclaimed leader of an extremist online hacker group called Purgatory, which operates on a Telegram channel and is responsible for the surge in swatting hoaxes at major universities nationwide.

Wired’s David Gilbert said Purgatory is linked with extremist network The Com and subgroup 764 that markets a menue of harassment services on its Telegram channel, including swatting schools for $20 (now $95), attacking hospitals, businesses, and airports for up to $50, and even offering “slashings” or “brickings” for as little as $10–$35. 

Transgender shooter linked to 764?

The Minnesota shooter wrote satanic symbolism on his firearms and magazines that are very similar to the symbolism used by violent global satanic cults called Order of 9 Angles and 764. There are thousands of members worldwide bent on hastening the collapse of the western world. pic.twitter.com/J9DLrTTXkx

— Yoshi The Patriot (@yoshithepatriot) August 27, 2025

The swatting spree has already impacted a dozen universities, including the University of Colorado Boulder, Villanova, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, leading to lockdowns and widespread chaos. 

Gilbert spoke with Gores, an anonymous online person who co-leads Purgatory. Gores explained that since offering its menu of chaos on Telegram, his group has generated substantial revenue, upwards of $100,000 in just a few weeks. The journalist cautions readers, however: “WIRED has not independently confirmed that figure.”

“In recent days, however, as the incidents were reported in the media, the prices have skyrocketed, with a school swatting now costing $95 and brickings costing $35,” Gilbert noted. 

The FBI confirmed a surge in swatting incidents nationwide, warning that false reports drain resources and put innocent lives at risk.

So far, there has been no indication from the federal government that this rogue group is working on behalf of a foreign terror organization or nation-state to sow chaos in the U.S.

Or perhaps there is “Nihilistic Accelerationism”… 

I was at an FBI briefing just 6 months ago where “Nihilistic Accelerationism” was a hot topic as an emerging threat. That meant groups like The Com, 764, O9A…

Not sure what happened to that priority but they were very much surveilled at the time. We failed w/ Robin Westman. pic.twitter.com/QHmhCnXYIA

— Brad Maloney 🌿 (@br4dm4l0n3y) August 28, 2025

. . . 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

What nobody seems to notice is all the incentives for deploying AI are perverse…

The real story of the US economy isn’t about AI, it’s about an economy that’s run out of rope. AI is being hyped not just by promoters reaping billions of dollars in stock market gains, it’s being hyped by the entire status quo because it’s understood to be the last chance of saving an economy doomed by the consequences of decades of artifice.

The real story of the US economy is that decades of “financial innovations” finally caught up with us in 2008, when the subprime mortgage scam–a classic example of “financial innovations” being the cover story for greed and fraud running amok–pulled a block from the global financial Jenga Tower that nearly collapsed the entire rickety, rotten structure.

Our political leadership had a choice: clean house or save the scam. They chose to save the scam, and that required not just institutionalizing moral hazard (transferring the risks of fraud and leveraged speculation from the gamblers to the public / Federal Reserve) but pursuing policies–zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), quantitative easing, increasing the money supply, and so on–that had only one possible outcome:

An economy permanently dependent on inflating asset-bubbles that enriched the top 10% while the bottom 90% who depend on earned income fell behind.

The desired goal of permanent asset-bubbles is the “wealth effect,” the cover story for transferring all the gains into the hands of the top 10%, who can then go on a spending spree which ‘trickles down” to the bottom 90%, who are now a neofeudal class of workers serving the top 10% who account for 50% of all consumer spending and collect 90% of the unearned income and capital gains.

This arrangement is inherently unstable, as “financial innovations” suffer from diminishing returns. Eventually the debt-serfs can no longer borrow more or service the debt they already have, and every bubble being bigger than the previous bubble guarantees the next implosion will be larger and more devastating than the previous bubble-pop.

So what does a system that’s run out of rope do? Seek a savior. The rope has frayed, and the rocks are far below. The impact is going to be life-changing, and not for the better.

The choice remains: clean house, end the bubble-dependent frauds and scams, or find a way to inflate yet another credit-asset bubble. Clean house and lose all our bubble-wealth? You’re joking. The solution is to blow an even bigger bubble. Hey, it’s worked great for 17 years.

Never mind that the precarity of the bottom 90% is accelerating as both the state and Corporate America have offloaded risks onto households and workers; they have OnlyFans, 24% interest credit cards, zero-day-expiration options and side hustles to get by. Never mind that for many Americans, basic services are on the same level as impoverished developing-world economies. What matters is maintaining the wealth of the few at the expense of the many, by any means available.

Enter the savior of our asset-bubble-dependent elites: AI. AI is going to change the world, we’ll all be watched over by machines of loving grace, profits and capital gains will be in the trillions of dollars, yowza, because we’ll fire half of you and give you enough Universal Basic Income (UBI) to scrape by, and some of you can join our security teams protecting us from the impoverished rabble.

There’s just one teeny little problem: AI is a false savior. It doesn’t work as advertised, it has multiple inherent limits that can’t be overcome by scaling up processors, and the dystopian consequences of even this first wave are already uncontrollably destructive:

AI psychosis and addiction to AI chatbots is making users even lonelier and more isolated than they were before embracing AI, AI Slop is overwhelming legitimate content, AI agents are just good enough to degrade already pathetically deficient corporate services, LLM models are Swiss-cheese security risks, and 95% of all corporate AI projects founder.

What nobody seems to notice is all the incentives for deploying AI are perverse. Those seeking nickels from Big Tech platform engagement / views win big by flooding the web with AI slop, scammers and fraudsters now have much more powerful tools to deceive and defraud (deepfake videos and voiceovers), and rather than watch over us with loving grace, the AI systems are scraping their own inaccuracies and hallucinations and deceptively presenting this slop as accurate.

The status quo is counting on AI to be the savior of a hollowed-out economy, but it’s a false savior. The frenzy has inflated another credit-asset bubble as planned, but another bubble that enriches the few isn’t going to fix what’s broken. Rather, unleashing AI tools in a system of perverse incentives is accelerating the decay and collapse of the entire system by replacing authentic value with illusions of value–what I call Ultra-Processed Life.

I hate to be the bearer of unwelcome news, but enriching the few at the expense of the many is the problem, not the solution. So the AI bubble mints more billionaires, well that’s swell, but the process of inflating bubbles that enrich the few is what’s destabilizing our economy and society.

This chart presents the consequences of 17 years of bubble-inflation “wealth effect”: wealth for the few and “effects” for the many:

Asset bubbles have been good to the top .01%:

And it’s been good for the top 10%, too: $107 trillion in net worth, and of course, “I earned every penny of it.” The bottom 50% with $4 trillion–well, better launch your OnlyFans site, even though there are already millions of other desperate people hoping to scrape up a few bucks by selling themselves online.

Contrary to the hype, AI isn’t the savior of the bubble economy–it’s the hype-heavy straw that breaks it for good.

Before we bow down and worship a false savior, it’s probably a good idea to learn about the limits of our AI savior and the self-serving hype, and the banquet of consequences being laid for true believers.

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

Two weeks ago an illegal alien truck driver of Indian origin reportedly killed three people after making an illegal U-turn on a Florida turnpike.  It’s not the first time such negligence has occurred on the part of migrant drivers but this particular event struck a nerve, causing a public uproar and bringing all foreign trucker visas into question.

After the incident the United States is immediately pausing the issuance of all worker visas for commercial truck drivers, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday.

“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio said. The Trump Administration has taken a series of steps to address concerns about foreign truck drivers, specifically those who do not speak English.

Harjinder Singh, 28, faces three charges of vehicular homicide and up to 45 years in prison.  Since his arrest, 2.2 million people have signed a Change.org petition calling for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to commute Singh’s sentence if he gets convicted.  The majority of the signatures appear to come from Indian nationals.  There are approximately 3.2 million Indian migrants in the US today.

In response to the federal halt on trucker visas, political officials in India have suddenly taken great interest in the situation.  Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Saturday appealed to Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to challenge the visa issue.  They took particular offense to the requirement that migrant truck drivers be required to speak English.

Indian politician Harsimrat Kaur Badal asks the country’s foreign minister to intervene in U.S. politics to protect Sikh truck drivers in America after Harjinder Singh’s arrest. She is particularly incensed by the requirement that truckers speak English pic.twitter.com/xizAhf1zou

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 26, 2025

Writing to the external affairs minister, Harsimrat said due to this decision, there was an apprehension that a large number of Punjabis, who were in the trucking industry, may be forced to leave the United States.

“Around 1.5 lakh Punjabi and Sikh drivers make up 20% of the US trucking industry. Any mass level action against them would have a detrimental effect on trucking families and would be discriminatory in nature, considering the fact that Punjabis have built and sustained trucking logistics and trucking networks over decades.” 

The politician appears to greatly overestimate her country’s migrant contributions to the US trucking industry.  All foreign born drivers together make up around 18% of the US trucking fleet.  Only 4% of drivers are from India.  The situation changes in California, where mass immigration is subsidized and migrant truckers make up nearly half of all those employed in the state.  

The claim is that California is suffering from a labor shortage.  In reality, California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the US with over 1.07 million people looking for jobs. The reason trucking companies search for migrant workers is because they take up to 20%- 30% less pay, not because the companies can’t find native born drivers. 

Why are Indian migrants willing to work for less?  Because US dollars are a purchasing powerhouse back in India.  For $600 US per month an Indian can live the high life anywhere outside of Mumbai or Delhi.  A “luxury lifestyle” costs upwards of $1000 per month.

Just as we have seen with illegal migrants coming from south of the border, a vast amount of cash is transferred by workers back to their home countries.  Remember when Mexico’s socialist president, Claudia Sheinbaum, made threats over a possible increase in US taxes on remittances?  Remittances in US dollars are the largest source of foreign income pouring into Mexico. 

It’s a scam that has been running for decades, with numerous foreign governments encouraging illegal immigration as a means to siphon money from the US and transfer it into third world economies.  India, for example, is the largest recipient of remittances from the US in the world.  Without feeding on remittances from America, India loses out on over $140 billion (around 30% of their annual tax revenues).  Without this cash, India’s economy would implode. 

This is the real reason why foreign governments are so insistent when intruding on US immigration policy.

In the case of US work visas, all American jobs should be offered to Americans first.  Only when it is confirmed that there aren’t enough unemployed native born workers to support a particular industry should those jobs be offered to foreigners.  And, speaking English should be a bare minimum requirement.

There is simply no point in taking a risk on a single migrant if these jobs can be filled by Americans.