Woke Video Game Developer BioWare Shuts Down In Humiliating Failure
The video game industry is collapsing in 2026 under the weight of their own arrogance and stupidity, and the “chuds” are cheering. Why? Because this is what needs to happen before better companies and better games can be made. The people who ruined the hobby with their politics need to lose their jobs and be exiled from the business.
Around 13,000 games developers are slated to be fired this year alone. Since 2022, the industry has cut over 57,000 workers due to imploding revenues and lack of consumer interest. Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and a dozen other studios are cleaning house and booting out the rubbish.
The most recent example is the large Xbox cuts to ultra-woke Bethesda Softworks. Their layoffs (reportedly close to 440 workers) triggered socialist protests and accusations of discrimination against LGBT and minority employees.
The vast majority of these layoffs are being blamed on “restructuring”, but the restructuring was caused by a plunge in gamer interest. And the decline in gamer interest is part of an ongoing boycott of woke propaganda in games. This is something the political left will never admit to, but the fact remains that the majority of developers who get woke, ultimately go broke. In other words, the majority of woke products fail.
Gaming studio Bioware, a veteran company in the industry, did not learn this lesson soon enough. Bioware officially announced this week that after 30 years, they will be shutting down.
The company dove headfirst into woke virtue signaling around 2016-2017 and it was all downhill from there. Critics say the final nail in the coffin was the game Dragon Age: Veilguard, which is widely considered one of the most ridiculously homosexual games ever produced. The game was so notorious, it is still the subject of internet mockery to this day.
For anyone with common sense, it’s easy to see why the company is being scrapped by parent company Electronic Arts (EA). Veilguard was the last game they published before they hit rock bottom. Industry shill and activists initially claimed that Veilgaurd sales were doing well, despite evidence to the contrary. The estimated cost of development and marketing was around $250 million, and it took around 9 years to make.
After release, most estimates suggest the game pulled in less than $50 million in total sales. An utter disaster.
At its historical peak, BioWare employed around 500 people. By the time of the October 2026 closure announcement the remaining staff was around 50 people, all of them are now being laid off. The lesson here is clear: The progressive invasion of gaming media was a disaster for these companies.
Those who want to survive past 2026 need to accept an undeniable reality – The consumers own you, you do not own them. You cannot force gamers to buy your products. You cannot shame them into opening their wallets. Games are not a platform for your degenerate fanfiction. They are not a platform for your personal politics. The “modern audience” you are trying to appeal to does not exist. You cannot win.
Either make games that the people you call “chuds” enjoy, or go broke and get replaced. It’s that simple.
Although Putin might agree to some trade-offs in Ukraine as the quid pro quo for these deals, it’s not guaranteed, but they can still be clinched so long as Trump has the will to waive more sanctions without a ceasefire first.
Putin’s top aide Yury Ushakov confirmed after Steve Witkoff’s latest meeting with Putin that “Other large-scale joint economic projects, which offer significant prospects for bilateral cooperation, were also discussed in detail; some of them are now nearing the implementation stage.” This followed Putin courting the return of US investment to Russia’s resource sector in early 2025 and Kirill Dmitriev recently confirming talks on nuclear-powered data centers.
Here are the five most promising joint opportunities:
* Oil & Gas
US stakes in Russia’s energy infrastructure and companies can incentivize it to get the EU to return Russia’s frozen assets through the sequence proposed here. They’d also serve as security guarantees against Ukrainian attacks on pain of the US cutting Ukraine off if it attacks assets in which Trump personally obtained stakes for the US. A separate injection of US capital into Russia’s energy industry as the new “deal of the century” can reshape the global industry by reducing dependence on the Gulf.
* Critical Minerals
Russia’s globally significant critical mineral deposits remain woefully underexploited, but with US stakes in this industry through the abovementioned sequence and separate capital injections, it can be brought online relatively quickly for accelerating the US’ diversification from dependence on China. Russia’s sparsely populated Siberia and Far East regions can also host pollution-heavy processing facilities far away from populated and agricultural areas. This makes joint investments extremely attractive.
* Data Centers
Per Dmitriev’s recent disclosure, talks on nuclear-powered data centers represent another promising opportunity for both countries. Russia’s globally significant critical mineral deposits could be processed in the country as proposed above and then immediately put to use within these facilities. That can greatly lower the cost of constructing them, while maintaining them would be similarly cost-effective through nuclear-powered means. This could lay the basis for global nuclear and tech partnerships too.
* Power Plants
Critical mineral processing facilities and data centers can also be powered by hydroelectric dams, not just nuclear power plants, and the US can obtain stakes in all four – the facilities, centers, dams, and plants – through the return of Russia’s frozen EU assets as proposed. Separate capital injections can help fund the costs of construction in exchange for greater stakes, and any excess electricity produced through new dams and nuclear power plants can be exported to Russia’s neighbors, both in Asia and Europe.
* International Logistics
The mineral deposits in which the US recently invested in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan can reach jointly owned processing facilities in Russia through the Trans-Siberian Railway and then onward to the global market. The same goes for the US’ related investments in similarly landlocked Mongolia. As the gatekeepers of the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage through their control of the Bering Strait, separate Arctic logistical cooperation is possible too, as is cooperation on nuclear-powered icebreakers.
Gunmen Attack Orthodox Church In Jordan During Service, Killing 7 & Wounding Dozens
Multiple gunmen brutally attacked a church in Jordan on Friday in the middle of a funeral, killing at least seven people and wounding 34 others – in what is one of the worst terror attacks on Christians in the country’s modern history.
The Jordanian government quickly condemned the act as terrorism, and authorities are reportedly seeking the attackers amid an investigation.
St. George Orthodox Church in Karak, via AP
It happened in Jordan’s Karak region, south of the capital of Amman, at St. George Orthodox Church – in a region which has been home to a sizeable ancient Christian community for some 2,000 years.
According to a Reuters description of the terror assault:
Interior Minister Mazin Al Farrayeh said the attack had been carried out by “extremists”, but that it was too early to tell whether they had any links to known groups either inside or outside Jordan. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
A video aired on Jordan’s state-owned Al-Mamlaka television station that appeared to be from a security camera mounted on the church showed three people firing at it from a sidewalk and hiding behind trees and a low wall. The video showed the attackers then running towards the church’s entrance. Reuters was able to verify the video from the entry path and wall surrounding the church, as well as other details.
Some reports have been suggesting an ISIS or other takfiri or jihadist association of the attackers, but there’s been nothing official yet as to their identities.
The attack happened for several minutes, with people at the entrance of the church seen scattering, and with some immediately collapsing to the ground after being hit amid a hail of bullets. The attackers appeared to go inside the church, where the massacre continued. Around 150 to 200 people were at the church at the time.
Jordan’s King Abdullah soon after said the killers would be apprehended and punished “with an iron fist”.
“The terrorist attack against Karak will be met with the harshest retaliation. Those who delude themselves into thinking that they can divide Jordanians with their bullets have no chance in the face of our unity,” he said in a statement.
St. George Church is under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Orthodox Christianity in Jordan is so old and rooted that it predates the birth of Islam by centuries, going back to Biblical times. Indigenous Christians there have over the centuries spoken and worshipped in ancient languages including Arabic, Greek, and Aramaic.
The US ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz called the attack on Jordanian Christians a “depraved and brutal attack on a house of worship.”
7 dead, 10 injured in attack on Orthodox funeral in Jordan (+VIDEO) https://t.co/ucnQn83pLb Gunmen opened fire on mourners inside a church during a funeral in central Jordan, killing at least seven people and wounding ten more. https://t.co/5bGB0FJsSz
In neighboring Syria, Iraq, the West Bank, and Gaza – ancient Christian communities have also suffered attacks, along with being squeezed by fast-moving geopolitical events.
US policy in the region has not been friendly to Middle East Christians, and Washington continues to barely acknowledge their presence. For example, throughout the Syria proxy war to oust Assad, the US covertly armed and funded groups which openly declared they seek to exterminate Christians, Alawites, Shiites, and other non-Sunni religious minorities.
* * *
For more on Levantine Christians and Geopolitics:
“We are a church of martyrs and we will stay.“
This book is the result of years of Syrian Christians warning what’s coming. We collected the interviews from 2015-2020. Last words to me of a priest in Damascus while we sat on Straight Street: “We are a church of martyrs & we will stay.” #Syria is home. https://t.co/JsjacQwNJO
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” said Lady Macbeth as she paced in a hallucinatory state, reliving in her subconscious the murders she helped plan. She rubbed her hands as if washing them, to wash away the sin, following up the promise to her son that “a little water clears us of this deed.”
Confidence that the virus was a lab creation was growing. That points directly to Fauci. The lockdowns had given rise to growing population-wide fury. And the shot was not working, not stopping infection or spread while groups reporting deep injury from injection could not be censored fast enough to make them vanish completely, though tech companies certainly tried.
Fauci still held his position at NIAID with certainty that he would keep it under President Biden, whose confidence he enjoyed. He was daily in touch with the people who were actually running the government – aides Ron Klain and Jeff Zients – and coordinated his decisions with them. They trusted him to continue the Covid operation, which they all knew to be a national security issue beyond the control of any political player. Fauci was the front man but an effective one, until he became a liability.
We know from previous entries that Fauci at first hoped the new virus would get lost in the mix of a bad flu season. This was mid-January 2020. The CDC called him out on that. His first scheme failed because a savvy businessman in China spilled the beans by posting the sequence on a pay-to-play website in mid-January.
After pressing a friend and former colleague to use his personal credit card to download the sequence, Fauci launched plan B, which was to deny the lab leak and prepare a nationwide inoculation to make it all go away.
The audacious scheme was to keep population immunity at the lowest levels possible through lockdowns while the shot went through clinical trials and was ready for distribution. Fauci knew for certain that this was the type of virus that would mutate rapidly. His hope was to take the energy out of the pace of mutation by reducing the infection rate as low as possible.
Sadly for him, the new and most powerful variant had appeared just as his shots hit general distribution. Delta disabled their protection that had been formulated for wild type and Alpha. The race was on, as mutations appeared faster than repeated boosters could catch.
The spot would not go away no matter what he did.
The darkest hours open with the appearance of Omicron in December of 2021, the fastest spreading but least virulent strain. He now had a new problem. With Omicron operating as a form of inoculation itself, there was less reason for vaccination than ever, especially given the risk of injury. And yet his goal of 90 percent coverage was nowhere in view, while population opposition to the entire Covidian regime was rising.
Fauci might as well have thrown up his hands, admitted defeat, apologized for putting the country through the biggest trauma of our lifetimes, and ruining the lives of students everywhere, in addition to crushing the dreams of millions of small business owners.
But that is not who he is. He would not and could not accept responsibility for doing this. He ended up demonizing the opposition, scrambling for cover, wrapping himself in ever more layers of fame for protection, and clinging to the lies he told himself as self-justification as his career and legacy were permanently tarnished beyond repair, even as he developed a severe and strange case of germaphobia in a Macbeth-like way.
Two weeks before this tranche begins, Biden had gone on TV to declare the following: “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated – for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. But there’s good news: If you’re vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death.”
It was an intense claim even as the weakest of all variants had just appeared, even as evidence poured in that these injections provided no protection whatsoever. Regardless, the Biden administration was dedicated to ruining a second holiday season with terrifying warnings all in the hope of maximum shot coverage.
Fauci begins his diary close to Christmas in a dispute with the CDC, which was starting to open up a bit and lighten up on its diktats. It wanted to permit people to choose whether to get tested yet again after recovering from Covid. Fauci smelled a rat – that dread thing called freedom – and tried to strangle the baby in the crib.
Meanwhile the opposition campaign gained new steam from the release of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s masterpiece, The Real Anthony Fauci, and he had headlined a rally on Capitol Hill that galvanized a movement. Fauci was aware of the growing opposition but was mostly dismissive.
By February 2022, pressure was rising to open up the economy and society and Fauci was on the backfoot. He was still defending China-style lockdowns before he later claimed never to support them at all.
Fauci began collecting international endorsements to assure himself of the good job he had done.
The White House, meanwhile, was increasingly concerned about the sheer number of military men and women who had quit rather than submit to vaccination. What kind of militia might they form if it came to that? Fauci claimed not to be worried about that at all, observing that they must not have liked their jobs very much. This is a man entering into deep denial.
Meanwhile, he was being more honest with himself about the lack of efficacy of the shots themselves.
His fame and stardom became his only solace, the warm blanket in which he wrapped himself for comfort from the storms outside.
Another strange feature of this period is how Fauci became absolutely obsessed with avoiding any possibility of catching Covid. He started panicking in crowds, taking his own advice ever more seriously. He started cancelling dinners and meetings.
Thinking through why, consider that he knew that this virus was created in a lab and he knew that the shots would not protect against it. He now had fully two years to turn over these facts in his brain. They began to eat at him more and more. No matter how many times he boosted himself, his paranoia only grew worse.
By the spring, even Fauci started admitting that both he and the CDC were completely making things up. There was no science to anything they were saying and he knew it. Even he had lost faith in the system he created, playing a scientist only on TV.
By late April, Fauci was starting to clamor for other ways to understand all that had unfolded. Maybe the Great Barrington Declaration had been correct all along? He could never admit it to himself. But his egregious failures to control the virus through any means finally led him there through a side door.
That said, Fauci’s own personal germaphobia only intensified to the point that it was debilitating.
This tranche ends with Fauci’s paranoias growing, his fears of the opposition intensifying, and finally mollifying his psychological breakdown by reflecting on his own global fame, which he regarded as his only real hope to avoid the consequences of all that he had done.
Fauci was finally pushed out of his job later in the year, mostly because of growing concerns that the more he talked, the more the resistance to vaccination grew. There are even indications in this drop that it was industry itself that pushed him out for doing such a bad job in selling their product. He found safe haven at Georgetown University in a high-paid post.
And where are we today? Fauci will talk with no one, no reporters, not even on background. His last public appearance consisted of 110 invocations of his right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment.
The spot never went away, no matter how much sanitizer he rubbed on his hands. “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,” he might be saying to himself, “that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
US Designates Helium A Critical Material In Reindustrialization Push To Avoid “Single Point Of Failure”
America’s reindustrialization depends on securing reliable, conflict-free supplies of critical materials, including rare earths and other critical metals, most of which are produced and processed overseas.
The Trump administration has made rebuilding and strengthening domestic critical material supply chains a national security priority. Its designation of helium as a critical material on Friday morning extends that effort to now include the industrial gas used for semiconductor manufacturing and many other applications.
The Energy Department’s decision earlier today makes the 20th critical material designated by the agency and brings the industrial gas within the Energy Act of 2020’s critical materials framework, including closer government monitoring.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote in a statement, “President Trump is bringing back America’s manufacturing industry, and that means making sure we have the materials needed to build things in America again.”
Wright continued, “Helium is essential to producing the semiconductors and advanced technologies that power our economy. By designating helium as a critical material, we are taking another step toward securing our supply chains, creating American jobs, and ensuring the United States leads the world in energy and technological innovation.”
Helium is recovered as a byproduct of natural gas processing and faces growing geopolitical risks in the Gulf area. Qatar’s exports have been severely curtailed by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Qatari infrastructure, while Russia imposed temporary export controls in April.
The good news is that the US remains one of the top helium producers in the world, supplying 81 million cubic meters in 2025, or about 43% of global output. It exported 38 million cubic meters that year.
Helium is critical to applications ranging from chipmaking to medical imaging to quantum computing to magnets to space rockets.
Assistant Energy Secretary Audrey Robertson warned that shortages could become a “single point of failure” for strategically important industries. The Canadian Press quoted her in an interview.
“We need to make sure that we can build those here. And helium is one of those components that could be a single point of failure, where we cannot let that happen. That’s why we’re designating it within our statutory authority, but I think why it’s important is not necessarily for our birthday parties,” Robertson said in an interview. “It’s really towards the future of American competitiveness and energy security, which we believe is national security.”
Designating helium as a critical material under the Energy Act of 2020 brings it within DOE’s framework for developing, demonstrating, and commercializing critical material technologies to support America’s reindustrialization efforts.
The new designation could help qualifying helium projects access government financing, technical assistance, and partnerships, similar to support provided to rare earth miners.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a notice of appeal on Oct. 22 in its bid to block California from counting mail-in ballots from voters whom the federal government suspected of being noncitizens.
The DOJ asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene after U.S. District Judge David Carter failed to rule on its emergency application for injunctive relief by noon Thursday, the deadline set by the department.
The department said the judge’s silence amounted to what it called a “constructive denial” of its emergency application for preliminary injunctive relief, citing the “critical and exigent nature” of the case.
The DOJ sued California on Oct. 15 to prevent the counting of mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 people identified by the federal government as likely noncitizens.
The federal government asked that if California was not able to independently confirm the citizenship of the voters registered, the state should set aside ballots received until citizenship could be confirmed.
Los Angeles County said on Oct. 15 that it could not comply with the DOJ’s demand because the department has not provided evidence, sources, or methodology to establish that the individuals identified in its records were ineligible to vote.
“We cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots based solely on unverified allegations, nor can we disregard the legal requirements governing our election – and we certainly have no authority to act on records that are outside of our jurisdiction,” the county said in an Oct. 15 statement.
In its Oct. 21 emergency filing for a temporary restraining order, the DOJ said state and county officials contended they lacked the mechanisms and authority to prevent noncitizens from voting in the midterm elections.
The department argued that this showed an immediate threat to the integrity of lawful votes.
“As defendants continue processing ballots that cannot later be segregated or verified for eligibility, the dilution of lawful votes accelerates in real time,” the DOJ said in its filing.
“This is an emergency. Every minute of processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens.“
Los Angeles County filed a motion on Oct. 21 asking the judge to dismiss the DOJ’s lawsuit, arguing the department lacked legal standing to bring the case.
“The executive, like any other plaintiff, must identify a concrete injury, actual or imminent, fairly traceable to the county’s conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief. The complaint identifies none,” it said.
Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Counsel’s office on Oct. 16, saying the DOJ did not expect county officials to adjudicate anyone’s immigration status, but asked the county to temporarily set aside ballots when there are credible concerns about the voters’ eligibility.
McCotter warned that county officials could risk “becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime” if they knowingly count ballots from individuals whom federal agencies have identified as noncitizens.
In response to the letter, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said his office is focused on conducting a fair and secure election.
Authorities assure us that we are perfectly safe and that no giant space rocks are heading our way. If that is true, why is a scenario that has been developed for the 2027 Planetary Defense Conference “based around a hypothetical impact threat” from a very large asteroid? And why are scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory studying how to destroy a giant asteroid that is heading toward Earth using nuclear weapons? If there is no threat anywhere on the horizon, wouldn’t you think that those scientists would have something better to do with their time? On top of everything else, NASA recently concluded a secretive operation known as “OSIRIS-REx” in which a spacecraft visited an asteroid, plucked a piece off of it, and returned it to Earth. While the general public is being told that we are safe for decades to come, a tremendous amount of time, money and energy is being poured into preparing for a potential asteroid threat.
Do they know something that the rest of us do not?
I am convinced that there is far more going on behind the scenes than we are being told.
They never say anything that will alarm the general public, but at the same time they are pumping vast resources into “sophisticated planetary defense efforts”that are intended to protect our planet “from potentially hazardous asteroids”…
Would we be prepared if a potentially life-threatening object from space were on a collision course with Earth? And how much damage could an incoming asteroid actually cause?
Such questions remain at the forefront of increasingly sophisticated planetary defense efforts aimed at protecting our planet from potentially hazardous asteroids. Yet even if astronomers are able to identify a space object that might pose a threat, a significant number of uncertainties remain: the object’s size, composition, structure, and potential impact locations all must be considered, as these factors can dramatically influence what happens once an asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere.
If there are no near-Earth objects that are a threat, why spend so much money on this?
We certainly have a lot of other very pressing matters that do require funding right now.
NASA is either wasting our money, or something else is going on.
Interestingly, NASA is a participant in the 2027 Planetary Defense Conference. An exercise is underway that simulates how authorities would respond to a “Tunguska-sized object” that is headed toward Earth…
Additionally, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) regularly participates in planetary defense exercises designed to test these assessment methods, with current scenarios under development for the 2027 Planetary Defense Conference that take a cue from one of history’s most concerning airburst events.
“The current exercise that is underway for the 2027 Planetary Defense Conference is based around a hypothetical impact threat from a roughly Tunguska-sized object,” Wheeler told The Debrief.
For those of you that are not familiar, in 1908 the Tunguska event flattened approximately 2,000 square kilometers in Siberia…
Tunguska event, enormous explosion that is estimated to have occurred at 7:14 AM plus or minus one minute on June 30, 1908, at an altitude of 5-10 km (15,000-30,000 feet), flattening some 2,000 square km (500,000 acres) and charring more than 100 square km of pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia (60°55′ N 101°57′ E), Russia. The energy of the explosion is estimated to have been equivalent to the explosive force of as much as 15 megatons of TNT – a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.
Why hold an exercise of this nature if there is absolutely no threat of this sort of event occurring for decades to come?
On Sept. 30, NASA formally concluded OSIRIS-REx, the historic first U.S. mission to pluck a pristine piece of an asteroid and deliver it safely back to Earth.
The van-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft – whose name is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer – visited and sampled Bennu, an ancient space rock holding pristine remnants from the dawn of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Among those cosmic relics are raw organic building blocks, the kind that may have seeded life on Earth.
“I have known this day was coming for a long time, but it is still difficult to see it arrive,” OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta, who’s based at the University of Arizona, said in a post on LinkedIn. “I feel enormous pride in what we accomplished together, and real sadness that this journey has come to an end.”
That was certainly an impressive scientific achievement.
But it also cost a lot of money to do that.
Why not spend all that money in more productive ways if asteroids are no threat to us?
And why study how to destroy asteroids using nuclear weapons if there won’t be any asteroids to destroy for the rest of this century?
A shocking study that was recently conducted by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is raising a lot of eyebrows…
A new study from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has used advanced 3D simulations to assess how effective a nuclear weapon would be for destroying a dangerous space object such as a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Yeah, that definitely sounds a lot like a Bruce Willis movie that I once watched.
But in that case, a civilization-killing space rock was actually headed toward us.
Why are our scientists running so many simulations if we are facing absolutely no threat?…
For their new work, the team ran simulations to explore how an asteroid might be affected by a nuclear blast somewhere near its surface, with the aim of rapidly heating and vaporizing material within it.
They began with more than 1,500 one-dimensional simulations to test the approach before running three fully three-dimensional simulations modelling the effects of a nuclear blast on a roughly 160-meter (525-foot) asteroid, altering factors such as the distance to the asteroid when detonation occurred and assumptions about how easily it would be damaged by such an explosion.
“These simulations give us a much more detailed picture of how an asteroid may respond to a nuclear mitigation attempt,” Isaiah Santistevan, who led the study, said in a statement. “Being able to model damage, fracture and material motion in three dimensions is an important step toward improving our ability to evaluate planetary defense options.”
More resources are being devoted to “planetary defense” than ever before in our history.
Is this being done for a reason, or is this just a colossal misallocation of public funds?
Those of you that have been following my work for an extended period of time already know what I think.
I believe that there are very serious threats out there that are not being discussed publicly.
It is always policy to keep the general public as calm as possible when we are facing a very serious threat.
That means not telling the general public the truth.
Of course everyone should be able to see that our particular neighborhood of the cosmos has been unusually busy lately.
I asked Google about this, and this is the response that I got…
Yes, data from the American Meteor Society and USA Today confirms an unusual and significant surge in large fireball events during the first quarter of 2026, especially through March
This week, we are witnessingthe peak of the Orionid meteor shower…
The Orionid meteor shower reaches its peak tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 21, and continues into early Thursday morning. The shower is made up of debris left behind by Halley’s Comet, which burns up as it enters Earth’s atmosphere.
Under dark, ideal conditions, the Orionids can produce about 10 to 20 meteors per hour. But a bright waxing gibbous moon will hide some of the fainter streaks. NASA says the moon is expected to set around 3 a.m. local time, giving skywatchers a darker window before sunrise.
The fireballs in the sky that people are marveling at right now are no threat.
But there are giant space rocks that are looming in the distance.
One of these days, our luck will run out and one of them will hit us.
When that day arrives, everything will change and millions will suddenly die.
Selling Gas Twice: Venture Global Courts Qatar While Plotting A $160 Billion AI Power Empire
Seven months ago, Qatar was the world’s biggest LNG seller. Now it’s a buyer.
According to a Reuters scoop late Thursday, QatarEnergy is in advanced talks with Venture Global (VG) on a long-term supply deal for at least 3 million tons of LNG a year, sourced from VG’s CP2 plant, which is still under construction in Louisiana. The report landed just hours after QatarEnergy signed a separate deal with Cheniere (LNG) for up to 4 million tons a year through 2054. VG shares jumped more than 6% on Friday, and they have now roughly doubled this year. Then again, they’re still trading about 45% below their $25 IPO price.
Venture Global’s other headline this month is that it wants to get into AI data centers… in a very big way. Goldman thinks both stories come back to the same molecule. Below we summarize what Goldman’s LNG team has been telling clients about each (available to pro subs), and why we think the Qatar trade is the one that pays first.
The Customer Who Used To Be The Competition
Regular readers know how Qatar got here. In March, Iranian missiles hit Ras Laffan, the world’s largest LNG complex. We wrote at the time that the attack itself was “bad” and the math behind the global LNG fleet “far worse”, and a day later we concluded that Qatar had been dethroned as “LNG King”, with the US taking the crown. The strikes damaged two of Qatar’s 14 trains, taking out 12.8 million tons a year, or about 17% of export capacity. QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi said repairs would take three to five years and cost roughly $20 billion a year in lost revenue.
The bill has been coming due. Last week we reported that Qatar’s government revenue plunged 42% in the first half: LNG exports were just 1.6 million tons in September, less than a quarter of the prewar average, and Kpler sees October falling to 0.6 million tons. QatarEnergy has also been renewing its force majeure notices every month, most recently through November.
Meanwhile, Doha still has customers to serve. So it has been buying spot cargoes, many of them from Venture Global, and is now trying to lock in long-term supply. As one source told Reuters back in September, “They will have to buy whatever they can get their hands on.” We flagged where this was headed the moment Bloomberg first reported the talks:
Goldman’s Americas Pipelines & MLPs analyst John Mackay ran the numbers that same day in “Outlining Contractable Capacity for Our LNG Coverage Following Media Reports of QatarEnergy Interest“. Mackay notes that Qatar is “the largest single LNG exporter in the world,” sits behind the Strait of Hormuz, and “is planning the largest LNG capacity additions through the medium-term.” Goldman says it takes no view on whether a deal happens, but it points out who would be on the other side if one does:
We note that Venture Global (VG, Buy) management stated during our mid-August virtual NDR that such deals could be a sign of significantly tighter global LNG balances than the market currently expects. To illustrate the scale of available capacity, we outline below the uncontracted capacity within our coverage universe, which totals ~69 mtpa potentially available by YE32. Specifically, we project up to 40 mtpa / 9 mtpa / 7 mtpa / 12 mtpa of contractable capacity at VG / LNG / NEXT / GLNG, respectively… In our view, VG and Golar LNG (GLNG, Buy, on CL) are well-positioned due to their ability to offer meaningful capacity with flexibility around timing.
Put differently, VG alone has about three times as much uncontracted capacity as Qatar lost at Ras Laffan. Rapidan’s count of capacity under construction is more modest, but VG still leads it at 10 mtpa, ahead of Cheniere and Woodside (6 mtpa each) and Sempra’s Port Arthur (3 mtpa). So when Qatar goes shopping in the US, Venture Global probably can’t be avoided.
Mackay brought Qatar up again in his 3Q26 preview on Oct 8. He trimmed his 3Q EBITDA estimate to $2.52 billion, below the $2.61 billion consensus, but kept FY26 at $9.03 billion, “still at the top-end of guidance.” He also wrote that “any Qatar contracting, on top of their ongoing spot deals, would be meaningful.” That was two weeks before the Reuters scoop. Goldman also counts recent additions such as ConocoPhillips’ 20-year deal (Oct 1) and China Gas as “high-quality,” while dismissing the adverse Galp arbitration ruling on CP1, where damages are capped at $170 million, as “manageable.” Goldman’s price target stays at $18, about 32% above Friday’s price.
Two caveats. Nothing has been signed yet: Reuters “could not immediately learn the timeline of any agreement… or how long a contract could run,” and neither company commented. And Cheniere’s deal doesn’t start until 2031, which says a lot about how long Doha expects to be without those trains.
Plan B: Burn It For AI
The Qatar news is relatively straightforward. The data center plan is a far bigger swing.
On Oct 15, VG signed frame agreements with GE Vernova (GEV) and Baker Hughes (BKR) for up to 16 combined-cycle “power island” units of 720 MW each, plus transformers and switchgear. VG says the units could support up to 10 GW of compute by the end of 2034. The plants would run behind the meter, without drawing on the grid or local water utilities, around VG’s existing Louisiana LNG sites. VG plans to place its first power island order by year-end and was set to file its first permit applications that week. It already runs 4.5 GW of gas-fired generation in island mode to power its LNG plants.
Goldman’s first take, called it “on its face, a major diversification away from VG’s core LNG export focus,” but listed five ways it could fit with the LNG business. The fifth is the most interesting:
…an admittedly amorphous but potentially meaningful ability, over time, to “switch” between liquefying gas for export and burning it for compute.
In other words, VG would own an option on which use pays more for a molecule of Louisiana gas: a Qatari utility or a hyperscaler. That’s the “sell gas twice” pitch.
The market wasn’t convinced. VG was up 1.5% in the premarket, according to Goldman’s Industrials & Natural Resources desk, which called it a “big diversification for VG.” The stock then closed down 5.8%. Investors seem to be asking the same thing as Mackay: whether VG can fund the rest of its LNG buildout to ~85-100 mtpa before taking on a second capital-intensive business. Goldman also notes that “strip pricing would add ~$20b to our EBITDA estimates, all else equal, by YE30.” That’s a good reminder that the LNG business is the one generating the cash.
…their plans are potentially massive, specifically >10 GW by 2034 and ~$160b of deployed capital, with typical scope effectively being a powered shell solution (~teens million of capex per MW) vs. smaller-scale behind-the-meter (BTM) solutions (generally ~$1-2m/MW)… potential scope aside, VG’s current commitments are relatively small – specifically ~2 power plant commitments and a few hundred million dollars in capex, with firm off-ramps before meaningful capital is spent, and could be redeployed for their LNG expansions and/or resold if commercial wins do not materialize.
Some math: $160 billion for 10 GW works out to about $16 million per MW, roughly ten times the cost of a typical behind-the-meter project, because VG would supply the land and buildings as well as the power (everything except the chips). About two-thirds of that capex isn’t power-related, and VG says it won’t commit to that part without signed tenants. For the power portion, management is targeting ~75% investment-grade debt financing. If the power piece is the remaining third, or about $53 billion, that’s somewhere around $40 billion of new debt on top of a balance sheet that already carries a debt-to-equity ratio of about 3.5x.
Goldman, which rates VG Buy, ends up more constructive than the tape:
Overall, we expect the broader power trade could remain choppy in the near-term and believe investors will look for more confidence in commercial execution before giving more credit to VG (as we have recently seen for others in the data center power market, including WMB, KGS, and LB in our coverage). That said, we come away from the conversation increasingly viewing the strategic rationale of the BKR/GEV agreement as effectively a relatively low-cost call option for VG, with a mostly limited impact on the story if the broader power macro story doesn’t re-inflect – and with significant potential upside over time if it does.
Wells Fargo, which had been sitting at Equal Weight, apparently agrees: it upgraded VG to Overweight on Tuesday and raised its target from $15 to $21. The “choppy” part is easy to see: as Goldman’s desk showed a couple of weeks ago, IPPs and GE Vernova were trading near their “Liberation Day” lows on a P/E basis.
Cheap Power, Slow Power
We’ve been pounding the table on on-site generation for almost a year. Since last November, we have argued that every data center should have its own “behind the meter” power so that households don’t pay for the AI buildout through their electric bills. A month later we put it more simply:
Wall Street has since come around. Goldman now expects behind-the-meter generation to power a quarter of all US data centers by 2030. So VG’s idea is sound. The problem is timing, and it comes down to which technology VG picked. Combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) are the cheapest behind-the-meter option and also the slowest. Bernstein’s machinery team spelled out that trade-off last month in “Powering AI: The modular advantage” (also available to pro subs): CCGT power costs about $48/MWh, but it takes 4-5 years to deliver, versus months for fuel cells at almost twice the price.
That lines up with Goldman’s timeline: first deployments in late 2028 at the earliest, and only about half of the capacity ramped by 2031. By then, VG will be competing for tenants with everyone who signed up two years earlier. Goldman flags this too, asking about “their go-to-market strategy for signing customers as a relatively later entrant vs. other competitors in the space.”
Equipment is the other constraint. Back in September we noted that the gas turbine shortage was sending AI developers back to boilers and steam. VG’s GE Vernova and Baker Hughes order secures a big block of a very scarce resource, and as Goldman notes, VG is already one of those suppliers’ largest customers. There’s a twist here, too. As Bloomberg’s Stephen Stapczynski pointed out in March, Qatar’s two damaged trains need new gas turbines for their refrigeration compressors, with delivery expected to take 2-4 years. So the same turbine backlog that keeps Qatar’s capacity offline is the one VG has just reserved a large chunk of.
One Molecule, Two Bidders
VG now has two possible new markets for its gas. One is a state-backed buyer that has lost a sixth of its capacity for years and needs cargoes now. The other is a data center business that doesn’t yet have a single tenant and can’t deliver power before 2028. Goldman’s view is that the power plan is a cheap option and the LNG business keeps generating the cash in the meantime:
…the size of their agreement and their track record of disruption in LNG should argue for VG upside over time as well as a potentially meaningful shift in competition for the BTM power and EPC sectors.
We agree with the first half. The Qatar deal is close to signing, the counterparty is about as motivated as a buyer can be, and every month Ras Laffan stays damaged makes 20-year American LNG look more valuable. The $160 billion data center plan is a different matter: until VG names a tenant, it is mostly equipment reservations and press releases. To its credit, VG knows this, which is why it built in “firm off-ramps.” The bigger risk may be the timing. If Hormuz reopens properly and Qatar’s trains come back sooner than expected, the spot cargoes, and maybe the urgency to sign long-term deals, could fade just as the power build starts requiring real money.
For now, the market is rewarding the Qatar story and punishing the AI one: shares jumped over 6% on a Reuters report of talks and fell 5.8% on 10 GW of compute. We’ll know more on Nov 10, when VG reports third-quarter results.
Much more in the full Goldman notes (here, here and here) all available to pro subs.
US officials publicly accused Russia of threatening a Finnish-operated commercial satellite that provides imagery and intelligence to Ukraine and other nations, calling the move “deliberately reckless.”
In response to the accusations, made during a United Nations debate on October 21, Russia broadly described US claims as “absurd” and accused Washington of its own “aggressive military space ambitions.”
The back-and-forth came days after a Russian military satellite known as Kosmos-2612 moved “dangerously” near to ICEYE-X36, a satellite registered in the United States and operated by a Finnish company called ICEYE.
The Russian satellite came “exceptionally close” – within 200 meters, by some estimates – something that space officials and amateur satellite watchers said was extremely unusual.
“This was not a routine conjunction or ‘fly by,'” LeoLabs, an aerospace intelligence company, told RFE/RL. “The behavior is consistent with sophisticated rendezvous and proximity operations.”
ICEYE-X36 carries a radar technology that can gather detailed terrestrial images, even through cloud cover. The Finnish company in January signed a contract with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to provide intelligence.
Kosmos-2612 “exhibited threatening behavior by intentionally maneuvering dangerously close to a commercial satellite,” Brian Hardesty, an adviser to the US Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament, saidduring a meeting in New York of the UN First Committee, a body that debates arms control and disarmament issues. “These behaviors appear consistent with an on-orbit weapons operation.”
“The decision to conduct these activities was deliberately reckless,” he said.
Russia’s representative who could not be immediately identified, did not directly address the assertion.
“We call on member states to give the proper response to the aggressive military space ambitions of the United States,” he said.
He also referenced comments made last month by the secretary of the US Air Force, the top civilian official for that military branch.
As just announced in the @UN First Committee, Russia’s COSMOS 2612 military satellite has been exhibiting threatening behavior by intentionally maneuvering dangerously close to a commercial satellite, behaviors consistent with on-orbit weapons operations. This violates long-established safety thresholds in low Earth orbit. The United States will continue to secure and defend American vital national security interests in, from, and to space.
— Under Secretary of State Thomas G. DiNanno (@UnderSecT) October 21, 2026
Speaking to a conference outside of Washington, Troy Meink’s comments that Washington has in fact deployed actual weapons in space – “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action” – caused a jolt among policy experts.
Other longtime space watchers, however, said the announcement merely stated publicly what had already been obvious for some time.
“The United States did not suddenly weaponize space by acknowledging that it possesses these capabilities,” wrote Mallory Stewart, a former top arms control secretary at the US State Department. “An arms race in space has been under way for years.”
Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Accuses FBI Agent Of Witness Intimidation As New Report Challenges His Claims
Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of electric truck maker Nikola and now CEO of jet company Syberjet, is suing an FBI agent and a whistleblower who testified against him during his fraud trial, alleging they conspired to intimidate a potential defense witness ahead of his trial.
Milton filed a complaint on October 13 in federal court in Utah against FBI Special Agent Christopher S. Essick and Nikola whistleblower Paul Lackey. The lawsuit alleges Essick secretly controlled two anonymous X accounts, @CntrlScrut1nizr and @lfxs1212, which posted negative commentary about Milton and Nikola, discussed betting against the company’s stock and allegedly harassed former Nikola executive Jason Roycht.
Milton claims the online activity contributed to Roycht’s decision not to meet with his defense attorneys before his trial.
But before an answer was filed in his latest lawsuit, a new investigation by Activ8Insights has raised questions about key allegations in Milton’s latest lawsuit, including his claim that an FBI agent operated anonymous social media accounts used to target him and a potential witness.
In what appears to be a detailed investigation, Activ8Insights reported that it identified and interviewed the person operating both Twitter accounts, finding evidence that appeared to contradict Milton’s allegations. The account holder purportedly showed reporters his government-issued photo ID, vehicle registration and insurance documents, all bearing a name other than Essick’s. He also demonstrated control of both X accounts by sending messages from each during a live video call.
The individual denied knowing Essick or having any connection to the FBI and said no one else had ever controlled the accounts.
Milton defended his lawsuit in an interview with Activ8, saying his investigators had gathered evidence connecting Essick to the accounts. He suggested the agent may have transferred control to another person or directed others to post on his behalf.
“He could have traded them off. He could have handed them off,” Milton said. “Look, it’ll all come out in the lawsuit… we’re going to come in with depositions. We’re going to come in with discovery.”
The report questioned Milton’s decision to bring the lawsuit in Utah. The complaint cites interactions with an X account called @life_utah as part of its argument that the alleged conduct was directed at the state. However, the account’s operator told Activ8 he does not live in Utah.
According to the complaint, none of the parties named in the lawsuit resides in Utah, raising questions about whether the federal court has jurisdiction.
The lawsuit comes after Milton suffered a separate legal defeat in his case against CNBC and short seller Hindenburg Research, which published a damaging report about Nikola in 2020. In December 2025, a New Jersey appeals court ruled against Milton in a lawsuit stemming from a 2022 episode of CNBC’s American Greed that examined Nikola and the fraud allegations surrounding the company.
Milton had accused CNBC of trade libel and Hindenburg of helping spread damaging allegations. The appeals court concluded that his claims concerned alleged harm to his personal reputation rather than his business and were barred by the one-year statute of limitations for defamation.
The court ordered the lawsuit dismissed with prejudice and a New Jersey judge ordered the Nikola founder to reimburse CNBC $286,087 in attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses. Hindenburg Research was also ordered to be reimbursed by Milton to the tune of $270,475 in fees.
Milton was indicted in 2021 on securities fraud and wire fraud charges and convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors and later sentenced to four years in prison, though President Donald Trump pardoned him in March 2025.
Milton has continued to challenge the circumstances surrounding his prosecution, arguing that he was unfairly targeted. He has moved on to become CEO of SyberJet, a company focused “on cutting-edge aerospace technology” that includes, among other things, developing AI assisted flying.
