The woke “girl boss” trope is back and despite failing over and over again at the box office and in streaming numbers, Hollywood is still desperate to push the narrative that women “kick ass” and are just as strong and effective as their male counterparts.

In their latest foray into fantasy land, STARZ has brought back its acclaimed Spartacus show with a new mini-series called Spartacus: House Of Ashur.  The production doesn’t focus on Spartacus, but another tired feminist DEI Mary Sue stand-in. 

To understand this trope its important to understand the progressive relationship to history.  They believe that history is a tool for furthering agenda and must be adjusted to serve the greater movement.  Facts are an inconvenience and evidence is stretched to support ridiculous conclusions.

You might recall a hilarious film released back in 2022 called “The Woman King” that was widely heralded by the media as the next evolution in Hollywood action cinema.  The movie claimed to be “based on true events” involving the women warriors of the Dahomey tribe in West Africa. 

The Dahomey ruled the region in the 18th and 19th centuries using an army of around 6000 warriors.  The majority of these soldiers were men with a small contingent of women attached to the King’s personal guard (they were considered the “third class” wives of the King – women who were far too ugly to share his bed and bear children).

The Woman King depicts the Dahomey as freedom fighters battling French slave traders.  The truth was actually the opposite:  The Dahomey were a vicious slaver tribe that terrorized West Africa, killing other tribes as they pillaged and selling the survivors to various traders (European, Arab and African).  It was, in fact, the French and the British who ultimately defeated the Dahomey in the 1890s and shut down their slavery networks in 1905. 

In other words, they got their asses kicked by the white man and everyone in West Africa was better off.

Most of The Woman King was factually inept or completely fabricated, filled with DEI lies and designed to push multiple woke propaganda messages at once.  The movie was heavily protected by the media and they claimed it was a “success” despite the fact that it lost at least $50 million at the box office when marketing costs and theater percentages were included.  It was a flop.

The movie was the epitome of woke “girl boss” delusion.  Women cannot be “kings”, and the warrior prowess of the male King’s female harem guards is thinly supported by any legitimate evidence.  But this is what leftist Hollywood does – They scrape the bottom of the historical barrel to find even one instance of women acting in men’s roles or minorities battling “white colonists” and then ignore all the historical indicators in order to add their own modern spin.

Progressive activists pretend that the “real history” of the “marginalized” has been suppressed by the patriarchy, but if that were true then they would not have to consistently lie or exaggerate in order to showcase the supposedly great accomplishments of these people. 

Another example of this propaganda dynamic was media reports of a “discovery” of female Vikings with weapons in their graves at a burial area called the Birka site.  Woke ideologues immediately jumped on the story and conjured up tales of women participating in great battles and acting as fierce soldiers.  There was actually no archeological evidence to support the assertion and no legitimate historian agrees that the Birka site proves the existence of women warriors among the Vikings.

In the case of Spartacus: House Of Ashur, the show likely taps into limited evidence of female participation in gladiator events.  One such piece of evidence is a marble relief on a wall depicting two armed women in a fight.  Another is a small statue of a woman with a sword which was “reinterpreted” in 2011 to be a female gladiator (again, all based on theory).  A burial site found in London held a woman next to decorative items that some historians think might be related to gladiators.  

There is no evidence of women being formally trained in gladiator combat at any of the “Ludus” schools in Rome and limited literary accounts suggest that when women did act as “gladiators” it was in the form of “side-show acts” in which women fought other women (foxy boxing), dwarfs and killed animals.  There is no archeological evidence of women battling men in the arena.

The feminist desperation to prove women are as physically capable as men continues.  Though, House Of Ashur is already being widely mocked and is unlikely to convince anyone of anything.  It’s another woke show which will probably bomb and be quickly forgotten.

Authored by Gary Abernathy via RealClearEnergy,

Americans are reclaiming ‘environmentalism’ from the radical left. 

Certain words and phrases take on new meaning as time goes by, often due to the politicization of our language. A clear example of such evolution is in regard to what it means to be an environmentalist.

Decades ago, concern for the environment largely centered on keeping the land free of clutter, the water protected from contamination, and the cities unpolluted by soot and smog. One of the major environmentalist movements of the 1960s was fronted by then-First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson, who initiated a campaign to “Keep America Beautiful.” Johnson explained that her passion for beautification was in perfect concert with other important objectives.

“Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool,” she wrote in a 1965 diary entry. “All the threads are interwoven – recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks – national, state and local. It is hard to hitch the conversation into one straight line, because everything leads to something else.”

The campaign to clean up the national landscape was bolstered by a heavy rotation of public service television ads showing litter along highways, waterways and parks, and imploring people to “Keep America Beautiful.” Most famous in the long-running campaign was an early 1970s ad ending with a closeup of actor Iron Eyes Cody, a teardrop falling from one eye as he surveyed a polluted environment. (Cody turned out to be an Italian American, not a Native American as portrayed, but that’s another story.)

But as the “global warming” movement came into vogue, the definition of environmentalism began to shift. Leftwing media, politicians and organizations began to define environmentalism almost solely on the basis of adherence to its greenhouse gas theories and its demonization of the fossil fuel industry. In their world, anyone supporting our most reliable and dependable energy sources – natural gas, fuel oil and coal – disqualified themselves as environmentalists. In fact, they were accused of being “anti-environment.”

Too often, the left’s political targets played right into their hands, struggling to defend themselves and sometimes even downplaying or ridiculing the importance of a clean environment. By allowing “environmentalism” to be redefined and coopted by the radical left, true environmentalism was lost. Fortunately, a recent action by President Trump will help reverse course.

While the passage and signing of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” grabbed most of the attention over the Independence Day weekend, an executive order signed by Trump on July 3 may have an even more lasting impact. The president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” order, “establish(ed) a council tasked with conserving public lands, protecting wildlife populations and ensuring clean drinking water,” as the Washington Post described it, while adding that the order remained “silent on climate change.”

While the Post and other leftwing news outlets cling to the “climate change” definition of environmentalism, Trump’s executive order is a first step toward reclaiming the term and unifying the country around the concept of a cleaner world.

Trump’s order decrees that all federal land management agencies will “promote responsible stewardship of natural resources while driving economic growth, expand access to public lands and waters for recreation, hunting, and fishing, encourage responsible, voluntary conservation efforts, cut bureaucratic delays that hinder effective environmental management, and recover America’s fish and wildlife populations through proactive, voluntary, on-the-ground collaborative conservation efforts.”

Trump’s order was inspired by the years-long efforts of 27-year-old Benji Backer, a “conservative environmentalist” who leads a group called, “Nature is Nonpartisan.”

“This issue needs to get out of the culture wars,” Backer told the Post. “People just are so divided over President Trump, right? But if he could do one thing that brings people together, and it’s protecting the environment, it would change the course of the issue forever.”

By returning “environmentalism” to its original purpose of protecting the air, land and water, the Trump administration will open the doors for those targeted by the left as environmental villains, welcoming everyone – right, left, middle – to actively engage in real environmentalism.

Those who provide America and the world with our most affordable and reliable energy sources have long cared about preserving the environment, in particular by investing in new technologies that make traditional energy cleaner than ever.

For example, advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies used to extract natural gas have allowed the United States to lead all major industrialized countries in carbon reductions. Home heating oil burner emissions have been reduced to near zero levels, while the sulfur content has been reduced from 1% to about 0.5%. And rapidly evolving coal plant technology means that modern pollution controls reduce nitrogen oxides by 83%, sulfur dioxide by 98%, and particulate matter by 99.8%.

As Benji Backer says, it’s time to move environmentalism out of the realm of the culture wars. Americans across the political spectrum love the environment and understand the need to protect it. Led by the president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” commission, the day is here when we can once again declare in unison that we are all environmentalists.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!

The big geopolitical headline this week was President Trump on Monday and Tuesday making clear that if Russia can’t reach a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine within 10 days, secondary sanctions will follow, which takes the new deadline to Friday, Aug. 8.

The Kremlin has again responded in follow-up, boasting that Russia has developed immunity to sanctions, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing an economy which has been functioning successfully for a long time under huge, unprecedented sanctions.

“We have been living under a huge number of sanctions for quite a long time. Our economy operates under a huge number of restrictions. Therefore, of course, we have already developed a certain immunity to this,” Peskov told reporters.

Indeed this is consistent with recent observations of Western travelers, including Tucker Carlson, who say that grocery and clothing stores are stocked full, and life is going along as usual in all major cities.

Still, not all is rosy – especially in southern border areas impacted by regular Ukrainian drone strikes. Russian forces are busy trying to create sizeable buffer zones within Ukraine.

Also, unexplained internet outages are happening with increased frequency across multiple parts of Russia. One fresh report points to a mobile internet shut down which happened in 62 regions simultaneously on Monday.

This has prompted calls for Russians to ‘be prepared’ – with state sources citing security measures resulting in occasional service disruptions: 

A senior Russian lawmaker is urging citizens to adjust to the growing likelihood of widespread internet disruptions by relying more on cash and preparing for reduced access to digital services.

Vladimir Gutenev, head of the State Duma’s Industry and Trade Committee, told the pro-Kremlin news outlet Life that Russians should be ready for “regular and necessary” internet shutdowns and recommended withdrawing cash in advance to avoid being caught off guard.

“Restricting or shutting down the internet is a necessary measure,” Gutenev said. “There are critical infrastructure facilities whose failure could have serious consequences.”

Essentially, all of this points to the Kremlin’s planning not to comply with Trump’s ultimatum. Likely, the White House knows that it can’t force Russia to the negotiating table, especially when Ukraine’s Zelensky is refusing to agree to territorial concessions.

But the Trump administration likely wants to be seen as “doing something” and so the usual sanctions playbook can create that appearance, and perhaps satisfy the hawks as well as some European allies. But it is tantamount to kicking the can down the road, and once again risking direct confrontation with Russia militarily – all the while the policy is unlikely to achieve the intended results.

Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

While patients have long known that antibiotics can disrupt gut health, researchers have now discovered that seemingly harmless medications—including common allergy pills, antidepressants, and hormone treatments—may also pose a threat to the protective bacteria that keep dangerous pathogens at bay.

“This can be dangerous to frail or elderly people,” senior study author Lisa Maier, said in a press statement.

Scale of Problem ‘Utterly Unexpected’

The study, recently published in Nature, found that 28 percent of 53 tested nonantibiotic medications promoted the growth of harmful pathogens like Salmonella in laboratory models, potentially leaving millions of patients vulnerable to serious intestinal infections.

“The scale of it was utterly unexpected,“ said Maier. ”Many of these non-antibiotics inhibit useful gut bacteria, while pathogenic microbes such as Salmonella Typhimurium are impervious,” she noted. “This gives rise to an imbalance in the microbiome, which gives an advantage to the pathogens.”

While researchers didn’t specify all medications tested, they highlighted concerning findings about widely prescribed drugs, including clomiphene (a fertility drug), simvastatin (a statin), floxuridine (a chemotherapy drug), and an allergy medicine—all increased infection risk. The antihistamine terfenadine was highlighted by researchers as one nonantibiotic found to weaken natural resistance to infection, leading to faster disease development and heightened inflammation from Salmonella in mice.

Very commonly prescribed antacids, such as Pepcid and Prilosec, are also prone to increase a person’s susceptibility to gut infections, noted Dr. David Purow, a gastroenterologist and the eastern regional director for gastrointestinal endoscopy at Northwell Health, who was not involved in the study. He said this is because reduced stomach acid can encourage an environment that allows harmful bacteria to survive and thrive.

Beneficial versus Harmful Bacteria

Researchers found that pathogenic bacteria like Shigella flexneri and Escherichia coli—which are responsible for illnesses such as typhoid fever, diarrhea, and urinary tract infections—were more resistant to some drugs than were the beneficial gut bacteria. The team theorized that these drugs may increase the growth of pathogens by inhibiting or disrupting the beneficial microbes.

For example, drugs including simvastatin, floxuridine, and the antipsychotic chlorpromazine increased the growth of Shigella flexneri and Escherichia coli at certain concentrations. Zafirlukast, an asthma drug, stood out from most of the drugs studied, as it inhibited the growth of Shigella flexneri but promoted the growth of Escherichia coli.

“While the necessity of drugs is unnegotiable, even drugs with supposedly few side-effects can, so to speak, cause the microbial firewall in the intestine to collapse,” Maier said.

This study adds to previous research, also published in Nature, that reported 24 percent of the nonantibiotic drugs, including antivirals, antipsychotics, acid-reducing medications, chemotherapy drugs, and blood-pressure medications, inhibited the growth of at least one strain of gut bacteria commonly found in healthy people.

Certain drugs may interfere with the normal interactions among bacteria, either by blocking nutrient access for harmful germs or by disrupting the beneficial bacteria’s ability to keep pathogens in check.

The findings indicate that some nonantibiotic medications may impair the gut’s defense mechanisms, making people more susceptible to intestinal infections—especially among certain patient groups.

“Older adults, individuals with chronic inflammatory conditions, immunocompromised patients, and those with a history of recurrent antibiotic use already have less microbial diversity, which makes them more susceptible to further disruption,” said Dr. Ruvini Wijetilaka, a board-certified internal medicine physician at Mecca Health, who was not involved in the study.

Probiotic Treatment May Help

Experts emphasize that patients should not stop taking necessary medications. There are “targeted therapies” that could help restore microbiome health, Purow noted.

“Whether you do prebiotics or probiotics, [they] have the potential to help,” he said, though he cautioned that optimal treatments may vary between people since healthy gut bacteria ratios differ from person to person.

Researchers pointed out that the study had several limitations. It was conducted using laboratory-based experiments outside of a living human body, which may not fully capture the complexity of the human gut environment. Additionally, the specific drugs tested and bacterial communities used in the study may not represent the full diversity found in real-world settings.

“Animal and in vitro studies are invaluable for identifying potential mechanisms, but the translation to humans is complex,” Wijetilaka said. “The human microbiome is far more diverse and variable than that of lab animals, and it’s influenced by numerous lifestyle and environmental factors.”

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

On Friday, the “Age Verification” clause of the UK’s Online Safety Act officially came into force. The result was a sudden surge in discussion, and a lot of people realising – finally – what the law really means.

People have been googling “VPN” a lot. That’s a good thing; we’ll get to why later.

Unfortunately, much of this is stable doors and bolted horses. We’ve been warning about the OSA since it was first mooted (by the Conservatives, just to remind you that “sides” are an illusion), and we’re rather past the point where awareness would have mattered.

The new law essentially forces companies to put any even potentially “adult content” behind an ID wall – meaning a user must prove their age before they access it. The ways of doing that vary; you can use a credit card or let an AI-powered system scan your face via webcam to guess your age.

Don’t worry, it won’t store the data, and it’s only guessing your age, not scanning your face and uploading it to some data storage centre. They promised they wouldn’t do that.

The really vital part here is what exactly “adult content” means. It evokes – and is indeed intended to evoke – pornography. The act was sold as a tool to prevent children from accessing the near-infinite amounts of porn scattered across the web, but pornography is the least of it.

“Adult content” can also mean violence, suicide, animal cruelty, war, drugs…or any news coverage and/or discussion of the same. It could also mean “conspiracy theories”, especially those which could “expose children to harm”, like anti-vaccine sentiment, or cause “radicalization”.

In fact, it can potentially mean anything it is required to mean, which is exactly the kind of thing they LOVE to put in new laws.

But I don’t want to rehash these points here. You can read our previous coverage of it HERE HERE HERE and HERE.

Today I want to talk about how the OSA is going to spread, and why it might not matter if it does.

Over the weekend, it was widely noted on Twitter/X that Elon Musk’s platform was putting EU-based users behind the age restriction, not just British ones. People made jokes that the US-based platform couldn’t differentiate between the UK and Europe.

Far more likely, they are preparing for when the EU launches its own age verification scheme in the near future.

Australia, as they so often do, started this totalitarian ball rolling back in the Spring (we covered that here). Ireland followed suit earlier this month. Canada and Mexico aren’t far behind. The US’s “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA) is moving forward more slowly, but only the most optimistic would bet against it passing eventually.

The trend is as predictable as it was inevitable.

We must ask, yet again, what is the functional difference between a one-world government and 197 near-identical national governments? The answer is as close to “nothing” as makes no difference.

That is the current model for global rule.

A hundred hydra heads pretending the body they’re all attached to doesn’t exist.

And this hydra really, REALLY wants to control the internet.

The good news, at least in my opinion, is that I don’t think they can. I don’t think it will work.

Well…in one way it will.

It will normalize people handing over IDs and asking permission. It will further accustom people to the idea that the government is looking over their shoulder, and further ingrain all the habits of self-moderation and internal censorship that dictates.

There’s nothing you can do about that, except to nudge people and remind them “this is not normal”. Whatever the counter of “normalization” is (Anti-normalization? Weirdening?)

But that’s only half of it, the psycho-social half. The other half – actually controlling the internet – I don’t think they’re capable of achieving it. I’m not even sure it’s possible.

I don’t believe the internet is capable of being controlled in the way they are seeking to control it, I don’t think the establishment knew, for one second, what they were unleashing when they made access to it so widely available, and I don’t think they would ever have birthed this monster if they had known.

And I think they have been playing catch-up ever since.

This lack of understanding of the internet is displayed in comical and trivial terms fairly routinely.

Consider the viral video of a CNN anchor asking “who is this 4chan?” or David Cameron’s solemn pledge to ban encryption (which is almost impossible).

They just don’t get it.

Let’s take these age verification measures as an example. We already mentioned that people are simply using VPNs to get around them. There’s talk of the government banning VPNs in response (unlikely) or making them “register” with the government (more likely), but that typifies the failings of imagination and approach that make it so unlikely they could ever fully succeed.

They are always reacting. Plugging leaks and whacking moles. They lag behind.

People still torrent. Piratebay was shut down fifty thousand times. It’s still there. If one day it isn’t, something else will be.

There will likely be a dozen ways to circumvent the age verification system within a few weeks of it being implemented. It will be only slightly slower than 17-year-olds realizing they can just click the “I’m over 18” button.

The internet evolves. It is dynamic and organic. When one route is blocked, informal armies of thousands of anonymous intelligences cloud-compute workarounds.

I’m not saying everything is fine. I’m not doing the negative panic meme…

…at least, I don’t think I am.

The OSA, and all the other acts like it, are terrible. They enable censorship and demand surveillance. They make the environment more hostile, but not unlivable. While they are clearly a threat…I just can’t see them as existential one.

I might be wrong. I might just be in a good mood and seeing ice cream castles in the air.

For now, I’d download Tor while you can. And then whatever replaces Tor should it get banned or bought or compromised. That’s just the way the internet works. And fortunately for us, this is something the powers that be have never really understood.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The US seeks influence over this region that supplies much of neighboring China’s rare earth industry…

Western media has published a spree of articles raising awareness of the important role that Myanmar’s Kachin State plays in the global rare earth minerals industry.

The latest phase of that country’s long-running civil war, which is more complex than most Western and non-Western accounts alike make it seem as explained here in February 2024, has seen regional separatists take control of sites that produce roughly half of the world’s heavy rare earths.

Here are five of those aforementioned reports about this:

* 28 March: “Insight: Myanmar rebels disrupt China rare earth trade, sparking regional scramble”

* 23 June: “How war-torn Myanmar plays a critical role in China’s rare earth dominance”

* 8 July: “Exclusive: Why China’s ultimatum to Myanmar rebels threatens global supply of heavy rare earths”

* 11 July: “What to Know About the Rush for Rare Earth Metals in War-Torn Myanmar”

* 18 July: “A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China’s Border”

To summarize, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is trying to expand control over its eponymous state, which threatens the ruling military authorities with whom they’ve been at war for decades. China has reportedly demanded that they halt their offensive otherwise it’ll curtail imports of their rare earths. This could in turn destabilize global supply chains if the KIA doesn’t comply and China carries through on its ultimatum since China has a near-monopoly on processing these resources.

It’s within this context that the US just lifted sanctions on some of the ruling junta’s allies. By alleviating some of the pressure that it placed upon them since they reassumed power over the country in early 2021 following disputed parliamentary elections several months prior, which sparked the latest round of what’s by far the world’s longest-running civil war, the US seems to be signaling interest in a deal. All pressure could possibly be removed if Myanmar (con)federalizes and gives the US influence over Kachin.

Myanmar might be tempted to consider this seeing as how the armed forces have been on the backfoot for nearly the past two years. It’s also so concerned about becoming disproportionately dependent on China that it comprehensively expanded ties with Russia as a means of hedging against that scenario. An American-brokered political-resource deal might therefore keep the generals in power and lead to Myanmar diversifying its Chinese balancing act by having the US complement Russia’s role in this regard.

The Sino-US scramble for rare earths, which Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova assessed to be part of the AI-driven ‘tech race’, is a top US foreign policy priority. It’s accordingly more important for the US to obtain control over these resources or at least influence over China’s suppliers, such as what it’s seeking to do through the peace deal that it recently brokered between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda as explained here, than to “spread democracy” in Myanmar.

This grand strategic imperative accounts for the US’ unexpected lifting of sanctions on some of the ruling junta’s allies, which comes amidst Western media’s spree of articles raising wider awareness of the important role that Myanmar’s Kachin State plays in the global rare earth minerals industry. Those reports help precondition the Western public to understand why the US might soon sacrifice the prior administration’s “democracy” goals in Myanmar by cutting a political-resource deal with the generals.

A tsunami triggered by a massive underwater earthquake off the eastern coast of Russia, impacting Hawaii, Alaska, and the U.S. West Coast in the overnight hours, has now led to the eruption of Eurasia’s highest and most active volcano, located on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Russian media Tass News said the 8.7 magnitude earthquake that struck off Russia’s Kamchatka was the “largest earthquake since 1952.” It cited the Russian Academy of Sciences, which now says the Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano has begun to erupt shortly after the quake. 

“Right now, Klyuchevskaya Sopka is erupting,” the Russian federal agency wrote in the post with an accompanying photograph of the volcano’s eruption. 

Key facts about Klyuchevskaya Sopka:

• Height: 4,750 meters (15,580 feet)

• Type: Stratovolcano (steep-sided and symmetrical)

• Location: Eastern Kamchatka, part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”

• Volcanic activity: One of the most active volcanoes in the world, with frequent eruptions recorded since the 17th century

• Last eruption: Ongoing activity is common, with the most recent eruptions typically occurring every few years

• Formation: Estimated to have formed about 7,000 years ago

More footage of the eruption:

🚨🇷🇺 🌋 VOLCANO ERUPTS IN RUSSIA’S KAMCHATKA AFTER STRONGEST EARTHQUAKE

The eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka began shortly after a powerful earthquake hit Kamchatka, with aftershocks still shaking the region. pic.twitter.com/JsSmE4Sa0B

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) July 30, 2025

Following an earthquake in Kamchatka, the Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano began erupting

Klyuchevskaya Sopka is the tallest and one of the most active volcanoes in Eurasia (4,750 m), located in Kamchatka. pic.twitter.com/hwGSwrdPpD

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 30, 2025

Both the tsunami-triggering quake and the volcanic eruption stem from tectonic movements along the Pacific Ring of Fire, particularly the subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Okhotsk Plate. This suggests a major stress release event in the Earth’s crust. 

This kind of event cluster in rapid succession could indicate a larger regional stress redistribution, raising the risk of additional quakes or eruptions in adjacent fault lines or volcanoes (e.g., in the Aleutians, Kuril Islands, or even Japan).

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cadence Design Systems, a leading developer of electronic design automation (EDA) software and hardware, has agreed to pay a $140 million fine to settle claims that it illegally sold semiconductor design technology to a Chinese military university on the U.S. government’s export blacklist.

The San Jose-based technology company admitted wrongdoing as part of a plea agreement announced on July 28 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.

In the agreement, Cadence admitted to selling $45.3 million worth of export-controlled products and services to China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) without a license to do so. The university, established and supervised by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, was added to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List in 2015 for using American-origin components to build supercomputers to simulate nuclear blasts and other military activities.

According to prosecutors, from February 2015 to April 2021, employees of Cadence’s China-based subsidiary sold and installed EDA hardware to NUDT’s campus. University personnel were also able to download EAD software and intellectual property from Cadence’s portals, even though Cadence employees knew NUDT was a blacklisted entity.

Internal company communications revealed that Cadence employees were informed by their export control officer on the day NUDT was added to the Entity List, prosecutors said. Nevertheless, they continued working with a front company known as CSCC, an alias for NUDT.

In one instance, Cadence’s then-head of sales in China instructed colleagues to refer to their customer as CSCC in English and NUDT only in Chinese characters to obscure the nature of the transactions, writing that “the subject [was] too sensitive,” according to prosecutors.

Cadence has agreed to pay nearly $118 million in criminal penalties. In parallel, the Commerce Department resolved a civil enforcement action with Cadence, resulting in an additional $95 million in civil fines.

As part of a coordinated settlement, the Departments of Justice and Commerce agreed to credit a portion of Cadence’s payments toward the other agency’s fines. After accounting for cross-crediting, Cadence will pay more than $140 million in combined criminal and civil penalties and asset forfeitures.

In addition, the company has agreed to a three-year probationary period, during which it must enhance export compliance protocols, cooperate with any ongoing investigations, and submit to government audits every year.

U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian of the Northern District of California called the settlement a “positive step” toward demonstrating “corporate responsibility.”

“Export controls safeguard America’s advanced technological know-how from falling into the wrong hands, which is particularly important in the Silicon Valley as the epicenter of groundbreaking innovation,” Missakian said in a statement.

In a notice filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cadence said it is “pleased to have reached these settlements” and “believes they are in the best interests of Cadence, its customers and its stockholders.”

The plea agreement still needs a federal judge’s approval.

China remains the world’s largest market for semiconductors and related technologies, but rising national security concerns have led to increased scrutiny and restrictions on American firms doing business there.

Some of those restrictions have been relaxed recently. Earlier this month, the Commerce Department told Cadence, Synopsys, and Germany’s Siemens that it was lifting the requirement to obtain a license before exporting EDA tools to China.

The policy change comes as part of the agreement reached during trade talks in London and Geneva, aimed at easing trade tensions and rolling back escalating tariffs. In return, China agreed to resume exports of rare earth elements and the magnets made from them, which are critical to both defense and high-tech manufacturing industries.

In a huge move which the Brazilian government has blasted as rank political interference in its internal affairs, the Trump administration on Wednesday pulled the trigger on previously threatened sweeping tariffs on Brazil, and in addition sanctioned the judge overseeing the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been accused of plotting a coup –  and remains currently on trial – after rejecting the election results which brought President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power.

“Today, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is sanctioning Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Alexandre de Moraes (de Moraes), who has used his position to authorize arbitrary pre-trial detentions and suppress freedom of expression,” the US Treasury statement reads.

“Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against US and Brazilian citizens and companies,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. 

“De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro. Today’s action makes clear that Treasury will continue to hold accountable those who threaten U.S. interests and the freedoms of our citizens.”

It is quite significant that the Treasury statement openly names Bolsonaro as essentially subject of a political witch hunt. Trump himself has previously emphasized these precise words in several statements.

The outspoken former president, who has long been dubbed by some regional media as ‘the Brazilian Donald Trump’ – has even lately been ordered by the court to wear an ankle monitor after declaring him a flight risk. Bolsonaro recently returned from what was essentially political exile in Florida, only to be detained and stand trial once to his home country.

This action is very unique, given that compared to other tariffs recently introduced by Trump, these measures against Brazil are explicitly political, which puts the two countries’ long positive trade relations in jeopardy.

But Moraes is now in the spotlight, and pressure could build for Lula to made a political sacrifice and simply dismiss and make this all go away, to preserve economic status quo with the United States.

The US has sought to present this as more than just political and in protection of Trump-ally Bolsonaro, however, as the Treasury also cited Brazil’s “unusual and extraordinary” actions as harmful to American businesses, free speech, and economic interests.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former president, has defended Trump’s actions, saying it’s not about revenge, but justice.

But certainly revenge and punishment is seems a big motivating factor given the recent history involving MAGA and Moraes, and recent very public clashes…

🚨NEW: Infamous Brazilian “Judge Voldemort” Alexandre de Moraes, who gained notoriety after deliberately targeting Elon Musk and X in Brazil has officially been sanctioned by the US and has had all his assets frozen and barred from doing business. FAFO. pic.twitter.com/u1j2X3C2cJ

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) July 30, 2025

“The time has come for Congress to act. Broad, general, and unrestricted amnesty is urgently needed to restore peace, restore freedom to those persecuted, and show the world that Brazil still believes in democracy,” he said in reaction on X.