Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times,

The world had a moment of clarity during the Israel–Iran conflict.

For years, analysts have noted that China is closing in on the United States as a peer competitor, whether in terms of high-tech industries, naval fleets, or the size of its diplomatic corps.

That power shift seemed to have also played out in the Middle East, a region where the United States has traditionally held significant influence.

Two years ago, Beijing brokered the normalization of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Later the same year, the China-led BRICS bloc, designed to counterbalance the U.S.-led Western democracies, admitted four new members from the region: Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The bloc was formed by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2009 and expanded to include South Africa in 2010.

However, the action of the United States—and the inaction of China—during the 12-day Israel–Iran conflict revealed that the power gap between Beijing and Washington remains sizable.

The United States joined its ally Israel in the conflict on June 21 by attacking key Iranian nuclear sites with 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.

Two days later, President Donald Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. The truce appears to be holding so far.

By contrast, Beijing’s support for Iran remained largely rhetorical.

The Chinese regime condemned Israel and criticized the United States over the strikes on Iran. It also released joint statements with member states of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a China- and Russia-led security grouping, expressing “grave concern” that the attacks on Iran violated international law.

The revelation of the power gap between the United States and China means that countries will move closer into Washington’s orbit, according to Yeh Yao-yuan, a professor of international studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

That means Middle Eastern countries will shift from a pro-Beijing position to a neutral stance in the contest between China and the United States as the world moves into two camps led by the two powers, he told The Epoch Times.

Beijing is keenly aware that the U.S. focus is on Asia, particularly China, according to Christopher Balding, a senior fellow at the UK-based Henry Jackson Society. The Chinese regime deliberately kept a low profile during the Israel–Iran military conflict, he said.

“The more that they can keep the U.S. working on other non-China issues, I think that they see it as better for them,” Balding, also a contributor to The Epoch Times, told the publication.

According to China expert Alexander Liao, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is uncertain about its next steps.

“Beijing has realized that its existing assessment of the world—that the East is rising and the West is declining—doesn’t hold anymore,” Liao told The Epoch Times.

“Should they change the course of their strategic directions? If so, how? They haven’t made up their mind yet.”

Iran’s Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh (C) attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organization defense ministers’ meeting in Qingdao, China, on June 26, 2025. The SCO’s nine official members include China, India, and Russia. China’s support has helped Iran sustain its economy and nuclear program despite decades of U.S. and UN sanctions. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

Iran’s Role in China’s Plan

China’s support is the main reason Iran could sustain its economy and nuclear enrichment program despite decades of sanctions by the United States and the United Nations. The International Atomic Energy Agency verified a few days before the Israel–Iran conflict that Iran had 400 kilograms of enriched uranium.

Iran holds high geopolitical value to China. Its location, linking East and West, has made it an important node for the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative. This foreign policy platform presents itself as a global infrastructure development program.

Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping visited Iran in 2016, during which the two countries formed a so-called comprehensive strategic partnership.

In 2021, Beijing and Tehran signed a 25-year agreement. China committed $400 billion in investments in telecom, banking, ports, and other infrastructure in Iran. In return, Iran agreed to supply China with oil.

Today, China purchases approximately 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil. Last year, the daily volume was about 1.5 million barrels, according to market intelligence company Kpler.

To circumvent sanctions, the oil trade between China and Iran is typically conducted in Chinese yuan or as a barter. This reduces trade volumes transacted in U.S. dollars and aligns with Beijing’s ambition to de-dollarize and increase the importance of the yuan in global trade.

The Rise of NATO

During this year’s NATO summit in The Hague, 32 member states agreed to increase defense spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic products (GDPs) by 2035.

That means the NATO military spending will more than double, given that members on average spent 2 percent of their GDPs in 2024.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, NATO members accounted for about 55 percent of the total $2.7 trillion in global military expenditure. With NATO’s double spending, the ratio is expected to increase to roughly 70 percent.

NATO also reaffirmed its “ironclad” commitment to Article 5, which states that any attack on a member country is an attack on all.

On June 25, the military alliance also released a statement, along with its Indo-Pacific partners, stating that “the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific is interconnected.” The four partners are Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Chinese regime is monitoring NATO developments closely.

NATO heads of state and government pose for an official photo at the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. Among other matters, 32 member states agreed to increase defense spending to 5 percent of their GDPs by 2035. A day later, China’s foreign ministry criticized the move as well as NATO’s increasing focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Omar Havana/Getty Images

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, in a post on social media platform X on June 26, criticized the spending boost and the alliance’s growing interest in the Asia-Pacific region.

Liao considers it “very likely” that democracies will expand their regional security alliances to one that’s global in scope.

“If such a significant expansion happens, it will be lethal to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

The expansion would mean that the Article 5-style commitment would cover Indo-Pacific nations, Liao said. He said he believes that the United States is poised to expand the current security alliance; it’s just waiting for the right time and opportunity.

“Any conflict with South Korea or Japan will evolve to a conflict with a group that accounts for 70 percent of global military spending,” he said. “This will make China’s goal of taking over Taiwan very challenging.”

Amy K. Mitchell, a founding partner at geopolitical consultancy Kilo Alpha Strategies, said that there’s a “very strong potential” that Trump will try to establish a NATO-like security alliance in the Indo-Pacific.

That would be a “very big legacy project for President Trump,” she told The Epoch Times.

For now, she sees the president himself and his unpredictability as the main deterrent to China.

“The Chinese Communist Party is probably rethinking how it’s going to handle the administration,” Mitchell said.

China still faces uncertainty in the ongoing trade war with the United States.

Beijing announced new controls on two fentanyl precursors on June 20, a day after a rare meeting between Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong and U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue. Wang told Perdue that the regime was open to collaboration on curbing narcotics and illegal immigration, according to Chinese state media reports.

The move was aimed at lifting the 20 percent fentanyl-related U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. The current tariff level on China is about 50 percent, which is the cumulative rate composed of fentanyl tariffs, 10 percent reciprocal tariffs, and existing levies from the Biden administration.

A worker moves pieces of steel machinery at a manufacturing company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on June 16, 2025. China’s factory output rose less than expected in May amid continued uncertainty from its trade war with the United States. STR/AFP via Getty Images

China signed an additional trade agreement with the United States last week, detailing the terms negotiated in Geneva in May. For now, the 20 percent U.S. tariff tied to China’s role in fentanyl trafficking will remain.

Beijing’s slow walk on exporting rare earth elements has been a focal point in rounds of negotiations between the two countries.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry on June 27 stated that it would “review and approve eligible export applications for controlled items in accordance with the law” as a part of the framework agreement. While it did not explicitly mention rare earths, the statement was made in response to an unnamed reporter’s question on rare earths exports.

Rare earths are essential for producing permanent magnets, a must-have component of modern manufacturing. They are also critical to military and defense hardware. China’s export licenses only cover civilian purposes and need to be renewed every six months.

Balding said China is likely to hold more tightly onto its near-monopoly control over rare earth supply.

“In addition to demonstrating its power over the global economy, China does not want to be helping the U.S. military prepare when each side is focusing more and more on how to fight each other,” he said.

Cord-cutting — the consumer shift away from traditional cable and satellite TV toward streaming platforms — has been underway for over 15 years and continues to accelerate.

A new report from UBS confirms that streaming has officially surpassed traditional TV in terms of consumption. The era of streaming dominance has arrived ahead of the 2030s. 

Video streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, and others offer consumers a massive array of programming choices at competitive subscription rates compared to the large bundles provided by traditional cable providers. 

Analysts, led by John Hodulik, told clients Monday that traditional TV viewership continues to decline, actually in their words “worsened” in the second quarter:

• Total TV consumption is falling faster: P2+ PUT (Persons 2 and older, Persons Using Television) is down 12% YoY in Q2, steeper than the 9.2% decline in Q1.

• P18–49 demographic viewership fell 17% YoY, with its share of TV consumption dropping to just 17%.

• Fox News (+30% YoY in P2+) kept the cable news category in positive territory, though gains have slowed from Q1.

• Entertainment cable networks improved slightly but still declined 18% YoY.

“Streaming surpasses traditional TV in May,” Hodulik told clients. 

Boomers dominate traditional TV consumption. 

What TV consumption used to be like… 

Watching TV with the Family in 1988 pic.twitter.com/WofkdmhOmQ

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) June 26, 2025

. . .

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

India refused to sign the document since it didn’t condemn late April’s Pahalgam terrorist attack…

India found itself at odds with the SCO once again less than two weeks since it clarified that it didn’t participate in the group’s joint statement on the Iranian-Israeli War.

This time its Defense Minister refused to sign the joint statement that was supposed to conclude last week’s meeting with his peers in Qingdao ahead of the leaders’ summit in Tianjin this autumn.

The reason was that the document didn’t condemn late April’s Pahalgam terrorist attack even though it condemned terrorism in Balochistan.

As this year’s chair, China has extra influence over the SCO’s workings during the events that it hosts, so it therefore follows that this might have been a deliberate provocation meant to signal support for Pakistan while snubbing India.

To add insult to injury, Pakistan blames India for terrorism in Balochistan, which is why it was even more unacceptable from Delhi’s perspective for that issue to be mentioned while no mention was made of the Pahalgam terrorist attack to balance everything out.

India’s conventional retaliation against Pakistan in the aftermath sparked the latest Indo-Pak Conflict between these two SCO members, however, so China or at least its supporters in the media might claim that omitting any mention of Pahalgam was meant to avoid further dividing the group. Be that as it may, it would have been predictable that this would result in India refusing to sign the SCO Defense Ministers’ joint statement, but that might have actually been what China was aiming for all along.

To explain, a perception has taken root among some members of the Alt-Media Community and even some experts that India is the so-called “weak link” in the SCO, with the reason allegedly being its close economic and military ties with the US. Adherents ignore China’s much closer economic ties to the US, the Central Asian Republics’ growing military ones with the West in general (especially NATO member Turkiye), and the US’ attempt to subordinate India, however. It’s therefore an agenda-driven narrative.

Nevertheless, this analysis here from early June argued that it was precisely this perception that accounts for why Russia lent credence to Trump’s claim that he personally stopped the latest Indo-Pak Conflict despite Delhi’s repeated denials, which hyperlinks to related pieces over the preceding month. The gist is that a pro-BRI policymaking faction comprised of anti-Western “hardliners” is rising in the Kremlin at the expense of the establishment’s balancing/pragmatist faction that currently calls the shots.

Although the pro-BRI faction hasn’t been able to effect any tangible shift in policy towards (or rather, away from) India due to Putin being part of the balancing/pragmatist faction, that scenario would be of grand strategic importance for China. Russia and India would no longer jointly accelerate tri-multipolarity processes, thus making it more likely that a form of Sino-US bi-multipolarity could one day be restored. Russia would therefore become China’s “junior partner” while India would become the US’ in that event.

Thus, China might have sought to provoke India into refusing to sign the SCO Defense Ministers’ joint statement so as to craft optics that could lend more credence to the claim of it being the SCO’s “weak link”, hoping that this can strengthen the influence of Russia’s pro-BRI faction. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov effusively praised India during the summit though so no changes are expected under Putin, but if a member of the pro-BRI faction succeeds him, then this can’t be ruled out in the future.

Authored by Kenneth Schrupp via The Center Square,

Six California Republican state lawmakers sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement to avoid “sweeping raids” and create “a path to legal status” for “non-criminal undocumented immigrants.”

“We have heard from employers in our districts that recent ICE raids are not only targeting undocumented workers, but also creating widespread fear among other employees, including those with legal immigration status,” wrote the lawmakers.

“We urge you to direct ICE and DHS to focus their enforcement operations on criminal immigrants, and when possible to avoid the kinds of sweeping raids that instill fear and disrupt the workplace.”

Signatories included state Sen. Minority Leader Brian Jones, R-San Diego. Jones authored a bill that failed in committee that would have required the prisons and jails in California to provide requested release dates to federal immigration officials for individuals convicted of serious or violent felonies or wobblers  — crimes serious enough to be prosecuted as either a felony or a misdemeanor.

Under existing state law, such cooperation is prohibited except in limited cases involving some serious or violent crimes.

“We also call on your leadership to modernize our immigration process to allow non-criminal undocumented immigrants with longstanding ties to our communities a path toward legal status,” the letter continued. “America needs a system that reflects both compassion and lawfulness — one that upholds sovereignty while recognizing the reality on the ground.”

“The last President to successfully tackle this issue was Ronald Reagan nearly 40 years ago, and it is long past time to modernize our immigration policies,” the lawmakers wrote.

Reagan’s 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act allowed approximately three million undocumented immigrants who had continuously resided in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1982, to secure legal status. The last time a Republican presidential candidate won California was 1988 when Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected president.

“Finally, we urge you to expand and reform the H-2A and H-2B visa programs to authorize more legal guest workers across the entire economy, and to streamline the process to make it easier for vital industries to get the workers they need,” wrote the lawmakers.

“From construction to hospitality to food processing, California’s employers are struggling to fill positions.”

According to the American Farm Bureau, the federal government authorized 384,900 H-2A temporary agriculture visas. The H-2B visa program for temporary non-agricultural workers is capped at 66,000 per year.

The state’s latest jobs report found 5.3% of Californians, or 1.1 million, were unemployed in May.

The latest federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data on California found there were 659,000 job openings in March 2025, suggesting there may be nearly two unemployed Californians for every open job.

The letter’s signatories included primary author Sen. Suzette Valladares, R-Santa Clarita, along with Sens. Jones, Rosilicie Ochoa-Bogh, R-Yucaipa, and Assemblymembers Heath Flora, R-Ripon; Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach, and Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel.

How reliant is your state on Uncle Sam’s wallet?

Every year, billions in federal tax dollars are redistributed to the 50 states and the District of Columbia through grants, contracts, and benefit programs.

Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao ranks the states to see who benefits the most from the flows so readers can see the fiscal winners and losers at a glance.

Data for this visualization comes from MoneyGeek, which uses Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis figures.

Their dependency score blends two metrics: the state’s return‐on‐taxes ratio and the share of state revenues coming from federal sources.

ℹ️ Return on taxes measures how much state residents—including businesses—receive in federal payments for every $1 paid in tax to the federal government.

Importantly, this data does not include Medicaid payments.

Finally, a state’s political affiliation is based on its voting history in the past five presidential elections.

Ranked: States That Need the Federal Government the Most

New Mexico tops the 2024 list for states most dependent on the federal government, with a perfect score of 100.

Its residents receive $3.42 for every tax dollar they send to Washington, while the state covers nearly a third of its budget with federal funds.

Note: The tax return ratio was given double-weight in the final score.

West Virginia, Alaska, and Mississippi follow closely, each exceeding $2.60 in returns and relying on federal transfers for more than a quarter of state revenues.

The outlier is the District of Columbia: despite a lower tax return multiple ($1.71), 32% of its revenue comes from the federal government. This is unsurprising given its role as the nation’s administrative hub.

Federal Dependency: Red vs. Blue States

MoneyGeek’s ranking reveals a partisan tilt: seven of the states with the top 10 dependency scores are red, including conservative strongholds such as Alabama, Kentucky, and Montana.

Meanwhile, 11 of the 20 net tax recipient states have voted Republican in at least three of the past five presidential elections.

Yet political color is not destiny. Deep-blue New Mexico and D.C. also sit near the top.

MoneyGeek’s analysis points to economic structure rather than ideology: energy extraction, military installations, and a high share of retirees often correlate with greater federal inflows.

The Big List of Donor States

At the opposite end, New Jersey and Washington score zero, receiving roughly half a dollar back for every dollar paid their residents pay in taxes.

California, New York, and Minnesota also run sizable “deficits,” each collecting less than 75 cents on the dollar.

These donor states tend to have large, diversified economies and higher-than-average household incomes, boosting tax receipts while limiting eligibility for certain federal aid programs.

Their contributions effectively subsidize public services elsewhere—fueling perennial debates over tax fairness and redistribution.

For more insights, cross-reference this post with Visualizing $29 Trillion Economy by State on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

The transgender swimmer who won an NCAA Division I crown in the women’s category in 2022 was stripped of that championship medal and all records as a female competitor at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) under the school’s recent agreement with the Department of Education, officials announced.

The resolution agreement signed by UPenn administrators requires the school to prohibit males from competing in female athletic programs or occupying women’s bathrooms or locker rooms.

It must also make a personal, written apology to every female swimmer who competed against the transgender athlete, Lia Thomas.

“Today is a great victory for women and girls not only at the University of Pennsylvania, but all across our nation,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a July 1 news release.

“The department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law.”

President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year prohibiting males from competing in women’s sports.

He cited the Title IX laws of 1972 that protected women’s sports.

In April, the Trump administration suspended $175 million in federal aid to UPenn and said the school would lose additional federal funding unless Thomas’s titles were relinquished.

The NCAA previously complied with Trump’s executive order and prohibited males from women’s sports.

Thomas won a Division I NCAA women’s swimming championship in the 500-yard freestyle event in 2022 after competing on the men’s team from 2017–2020.

Riley Gaines, a former Kentucky women’s swimmer who competed against Thomas, and Paula Scanlan, a former teammate of Thomas who had to share a locker room with the transgender athlete, have lobbied against male participation in women’s sports.

“From Day 1, President Trump and Secretary McMahon vowed to protect women and girls, and today’s agreement with UPenn is a historic display of that promise being fulfilled,” Gaines said in a press release.

“This administration does not just pay lip service to women’s equality: it vigorously insists on that equality being upheld.”

UPenn released a statement acknowledging the agreement and Title IX obligations.

“Penn remains committed to fostering a community that is welcoming, inclusive, and open to all students, faculty, and staff,” UPenn President J. Larry Jameson said in a July 1 news release.

“I share this commitment, just as I remain dedicated to preserving and advancing the university’s vital and enduring mission.

“We have now brought to a close an investigation that, if unresolved, could have had significant and lasting implications for the University of Pennsylvania.”

A high-resolution Earth-observation satellite designed to monitor and map global methane emissions has been lost after a power failure.

The $88 million satellite, called MethaneSAT, owned by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and backed by Jeff Bezos, was lost ten days ago… 

On Friday, June 20, the MethaneSAT mission operations lost contact with MethaneSAT. After pursuing all options to restore communications, we learned this morning that the satellite has lost power, and that it is likely not recoverable. While this is difficult news, it is not the end of the overall MethaneSAT effort, or of our work to slash methane emissions.

On Friday, June 20 we lost contact with our methane-measuring satellite. Despite considerable efforts we were unable to reestablish contact. This morning we learned that the satellite has lost power, and it is anticipated to be unrecoverable.

The MethaneSAT mission has been a… pic.twitter.com/0mFpDNJCsI

— MethaneSAT (@MethaneSAT) July 1, 2025

MethaneSAT was launched in March 2024 and delivered data on methane emissions, focusing on the “name and shame” operations of global oil and gas assets worldwide. It was built on Blue Canyon Technologies’ X-Sat platform and carried a custom infrared spectrometer from Ball Aerospace, capable of detecting methane sources both large and small.  

Reuters reported that MethaneSAT’s last known position was over Svalbard, Norway, and the EDF has acknowledged it is unlikely to be recovered.

“We’re seeing this as a setback, not a failure,” Amy Middleton, senior vice president at EDF, told Reuters, adding, “We’ve made so much progress and so much has been learned that if we hadn’t taken this risk, we wouldn’t have any of these learnings.”

MethaneSAT stated, “To solve the climate challenge requires bold action and risk-taking and this satellite was at the leading edge of science, technology and advocacy.” 

Oil and gas companies can breathe a sigh of relief that the name-and-shame satellite used by climate activists is now out of commission. As the US grapples with self-imposed de-growth far-left climate policies, one has to wonder: did MethaneSAT ever turn its lens on China’s coal-powered power grid?”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Tuesday the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been rapidly dismantled earlier this year by the Trump administration.

In a blog post on the State Department’s website, Rubio wrote that foreign assistance provided by USAID had failed to deliver results for Americans and also said that the agency was part of the “globe-spanning NGO [non-governmental organizations] industrial complex” that was funded by taxpayers.

“USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio said.

“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown. On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate.”

Rubio wrote that as of July 1, the agency “will officially cease to implement foreign assistance” and that only assistance programs that align with the Trump administration’s priorities will be facilitated.

Democrats and a union representing foreign service workers have strongly pushed back against the dismantling of USAID, claiming that cuts to the agency would lead to a reduction in aid to poor countries and would ultimately put lives in danger.

But Rubio said in the blog post that USAID pushed anti-American ideas across the world along with “censorship and regime change operations” overseas and that it collaborated with NGOs that were “in league with Communist China and other geopolitical adversaries.”

On the day of Rubio’s announcement, the American Foreign Service Association union, which has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, said in a statement that USAID’s closure would cause the United States to lose its standing in the world and would impact the government’s capacity to wield “soft power.”

“Rather than engage in constructive conversations to lessen the devastating impact of these layoffs, the administration chose instead to inflict maximum pain and hardship through a barrage of questionable—and likely illegal—policies, accompanied by dismissive and dehumanizing rhetoric, all delivered with little thought to implementation or human consequences,” the American Foreign Service Association stated.

A new “analysis” published Monday in The Lancet, a once-reputable medical journal that disgraced itself during the COVID-19 pandemic, made the absurd claim that “14 million people could die over the next five years” because Donald Trump and the Trump administration cut funding to USAID.

This “analysis” also claimed that from 2001-2021, per NBC News, that “USAID-funded programs prevented nearly 92 million deaths across 133 countries.”

Some Republicans in Congress welcomed Tuesday’s announcement.

“America First: Every Dollar, Every Diplomat. Thank you, President Trump and Secretary Rubio, for your leadership,” GOP members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote in a post on social media platform X.

This comes just three weeks after Rubio ordered U.S. embassies around the world to proceed with a directive to fire all remaining staffers with USAID.

A federal judge had temporarily blocked an executive order by President Donald Trump for mass firings at multiple federal agencies, including the State Department, and plaintiffs have argued that Rubio’s reorganization plan appears to violate that court injunction. The Trump administration said the plan was already underway when the order was issued.

Earlier this year, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had made USAID one of its first targets to dismantle as part of a Trump administration initiative to reduce what it said was fraud, waste, and abuse within the federal government. At one point earlier this year, Rubio had served as the acting head of USAID while it was being dismantled.

If you’re working in banking, your next colleague could be a bot. Once unthinkable, the Bank of New York Mellon announced that it has deployed dozens of artificial intelligence-powered “digital employees” that operate with human employees, and even have their own company login credentials.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Similar to human employees, these digital workers have direct managers they report to and work autonomously in areas like coding and payment instruction validation, said Chief Information Officer Leigh-Ann Russell. Soon they’ll have access to their own email accounts and may even be able to communicate with colleagues in other ways like through Microsoft Teams, she said.

What the bank, also known as BNY, calls “digital workers,” other banks may refer to as “AI agents.” And while the industry lacks a clear consensus on exact terminology, it’s clear that the technology has a growing presence in financial services.

“This is the next level,” Russell told the Journal. “I’m sure in six months’ time it will become very, very prevalent.”

BNY said its AI Hub developed two digital employee personas in three months, according to Adrienne Russell. One persona is engineered to identify and resolve coding vulnerabilities, while the other verifies payment instructions. Each persona can operate in multiple instances—up to several dozen—with each instance confined to a specific team to limit company wide data access.

Soon, the bank plans to integrate its digital workforce with email addresses and Microsoft Teams access in the near future, enabling these AI personas to proactively communicate with human managers, but will maintain its focus on recruiting top human talent while simultaneously expanding its digital workforce, according to the Journal.

Of course, BNY isn’t the only bank looking to shift work from its human staff to AI. Goldman Sachs has already launched an internal AI assistant to 10,000 of its bankers, traders and asset managers to use. In an interview with CNBC, the bank’s Chief Information Officer, Marco Argenti, said the AI assistant will pitch in with basic tasks like proofreading documents and improving language. “Think about all the tasks that you might want to complete with regards to a variety of use cases for all those professions that can be now at your fingertips,” Argenti said. “The AI assistant becomes really like talking to another GS employee.”

“As we progress, the second step is when you’re starting to have this agentic behavior, that is, ‘I’m completing a task on behalf of a Goldman employee, and I need to take a set of steps,’” he added. “That’s where the model is going to start to do things like a Goldman employee, not only say things like a Goldman employee.”

At JPMorgan Chase, Chief Analytics Officer Derek Waldron thinks of “digital employees” as more of a helpful model for business people to conceptualize AI tools. They are fundamentally different from human employees, of course, but also traditional software systems, and so they may need their own type of system connectivity and access management, he said. It’s an open question exactly how much or how little access to give an agent, and it’s going to have to be figured out on a case-by-case basis, he said.

And while it’s not clear yet exactly what it will look like, he does envision a future where every employee will have an AI assistant and every client experience will have an AI concierge. 230,000 employees already have access to a general AI chatbot through the company’s proprietary platform, and the goal is to build out more autonomous and more agentic versions of it that are further and further tailored to individual job groups. -WSJ

According to Scott Mullins, Managing Director of AWS for Financial Servies, the question of how to integrate digital workers with a human workforce is a top issue across the finance industry.

“How do we coordinate that work together?” he said, adding “How do we manage those folks? How do we actually instruct those folks? What’s the new operating model? Those are the answers that we’re all working on right now.”

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court delivered an opinion last week that not even the best of the punditry class was prepared to understand. The decision was Trump vs. CASA, and the topic concerned the nationwide injunction against Trump’s management of U.S. immigration policy. As with more than 40 other cases, federal district judges have intervened to stop the president from exercising executive powers.

The opinion could not be plainer: “Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” That principle applies not only to this case but to the whole panoply of cases that have tethered the ability of the president to manage executive branch operations. The courts have presumed authority over the president that the Constitution plainly does not grant.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the following of the unjoined dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: “[It] is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an Imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Court watchers called this an unprecedented rebuke of a colleague in a majority opinion.

The practical effect of the decision is to underscore the meaning of Article 2: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Why should this be controversial? Here we get into the overwhelming reality of the structure and operations of the U.S. government that stand in complete contradiction to the U.S. Constitution. It’s been going on for more than a century and has never been fundamentally challenged. Until Trump, most presidents were fine with it and offered no serious challenge. The legislature too has chosen to look the other way.

The issue is the fourth branch of government that is nearly the whole of the operational side of government as we know it. We elect leaders and representatives but our votes have carried ever less power over the course of a century. We know that but it has not always been obvious.

The answer has been hiding in plain sight all this time. It took a dramatic and domestic exercise of administrative power, one that hit us all our lives personally, to reveal the extent of the problem. It comes down to the approximately 425 agencies with millions of permanent employees that are the real government in the United States.

Who or what controls them is the issue. The second term of the Trump administration took office with a profound awareness that it was precisely these administrative powers that wrecked his first term and drove him from office. He won a second term and brought in a team determined to get to the issue of who is in charge settled once and for all.

The answer is in the organization chart of the U.S. government. There are three branches. All these agencies fall under the executive branch.

It’s a relatively simple point which everyone in business knows. The point of an org chart is to establish lines of authority. The president is in charge of the executive branch. He appoints cabinet officials and agency heads who are responsible to the executive office of the president. What he says goes.

The complication is that all these agencies were created by legislation. They could have been placed under the legislative branch like the Library of Congress. But that’s not what happened. Instead they wanted to wash their hands of them. That’s why they were routinely placed under the executive branch. Presidents from Woodrow Wilson onward have generally neglected them. They got bigger and more powerful over time.

This beast grew up in Washington and no one much cared because all the powerful interests found them useful for their purposes. No one really had much interest to do anything about them because they made the business of government happen. After so many decades of neglect, the agencies took on a life of their own, without anyone really asking fundamental questions.

In 2014, just two years before Trump’s first term, the scholar Philip Hamburger wrote “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?” His argument was that this machinery does not exist in the Constitution. There is no such thing as an agency that is independent of presidential control.

The point seemed academic until it was not. Trump was vexed by shadowy forces that kept making wild accusations against him. Media cooperated with administrative state authority to accuse Trump, absurdly, of being a Russian asset elected by Russian intervention in the election. The claim consumed years of journalism and blindsided the whole Trump administration.

It gradually dawned on Trump’s team that they needed to assert some authority of the executive branch. Trump fired the head of the FBI. That decision was the first major pushback. It was a strong statement that the president elected by the people would be in charge of this strange beast that presumes the right to manage the country outside his authority.

That’s when the struggle, or really war, really began. In March 2020, Trump was convinced by faux experts, national security people, and even family members that he had to give the order to shut down the entire U.S. economy, complete with business and school closures and strange rules that everyone needs to say 6 feet apart from everyone else.

Trump made the decision to get ahead of what he believed was likely inevitable. He gave the order. Immediately, the administrative state swung into action. The CDC issued an incredible plethora of regulations. Congress accommodated them with spending like we’ve never seen before. Part of the guidelines included a mandate for absentee ballots which are known to be insecure.

It took a few weeks but Trump’s doubts started to grow. After a few months, he was done with the nonsense. He started issuing calls to open up the country. They fell on deaf ears. The authority for locking down was already transferred to the states while the federal agencies simply ignored him. This went on for months leading to the November election.

It was a clear attempt to humiliate Trump. He eventually became the social media president, issuing daily exhortations. The media largely poked fun at the powerless lame duck. That was enough to cause him and his team to finally say enough is enough. He issued an executive order reclassifying many federal jobs as subject to termination. The court rejected the order, which was later rescinded by his successor.

The administrative state and its power had been laid bare. The curtain had been pulled back, not only for Trump to see but the American people too. Four rough years went by when he won reelection.

This time he had a plan. He would issue a huge flurry of executive orders and presume to be the actual president, acting as if the administrative state as an independent force did not exist. He knew for sure that this would trigger a wave of injunctions but he was ready for the risk.

After all, you are president or you are not.

There would be no more autopen presidencies, no more marionettes acting like they were in charge while the bureaucrats ran the show. In essence, they decided to test the Hamburger thesis. What else could the Supreme Court say but that Article 2, Section 1 holds?

The Supreme Court was flooded with cases. Finally it spoke out. It said plainly that the courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions that effectively stop the president from being president.

The counterargument is that this gives the president too much power. The point is not easily dismissed, but someone has to be in charge. For those who fear the idea of one man exercising dictatorial control over millions of bureaucrats, there is a solution. Get rid of most of the agencies and their employees. Fire them all. Defund them all.

Of course, that is not what the “liberals” want.

They find that intolerable.

Their ideal country is one in which vast agencies exercise total power independent of any oversight, wholly captured by industry and responsive only to mass media. From what I can tell, those days are over and not coming back.

Someone has to be in charge. The Constitution is clear about who that is.