Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,

U.S.-based capital markets will fuel the private investment needed to grow the nation’s energy grid to build out an electrifying digital economy, BlackRock cofounder, Chair, and CEO Lawrence Fink told energy corporation leaders and innovators Monday.

President Donald Trump’s drive to dramatically scale back the nation’s federal workforce, however, could backfire by delaying approvals for projects and innovations financed by private sector investors, he said during the 43rd annual CERAWeek by S&P Global conference at the Americas Hilton-Houston.

“The only way we can navigate this” need to scale up the nation’s electrical capacity “is not by cutting, because cutting is going to destroy the economy,” Fink said.

“We must grow the economy,” he continued. 

“We have to encourage more and more private capital. And this is why, if we can reduce the timing of permits, reduce the regulatory [requirements], we have a little opportunity” in the next few years that could be squandered if key agencies are understaffed and in disarray.

Fink shared numerous insights during a 75-minute one-on-one interview with S&P Global Vice Chair Daniel Yergin during the opening day of the five-day CERAWeek conference, a premier annual gathering of energy leaders with more than 8,000 attendees, including at least 450 energy corporation CEOs and energy officials from more than 80 countries.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered the keynote address Monday. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who was also at the conference, will speak Wednesday.

Fink said private investment and “energy practicalism” can generate 3-to-3.5 percent growth in annual gross domestic product (GDP) to chip away at the nation’s $37 trillion deficit; that the U.S. faces a short-term worker shortage but, as artificial intelligence (AI) advances, long-term job “deflation”; and that preparing workers for retirement is “the great crisis of America that nobody wants to talk about.”

And no, he added, BlackRock “did not buy the Panama Canal,” referring to its March 4 $22.8 billion acquisition, with other investor groups, of 44 ports in 32 countries owned and operated by Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison.

“This is something we’ve been working on with the seller, Hutchinson” during “a very concentrated period of two weeks, really. They’ve been faced with a very poor stock price for some time. From our estimates, Hutchinson was trading at 30 percent and they decided, after much deliberation, to see what the market would take related to selling” dozens of ports, including six in the Suez Canal, Fink said.

BlackRock now owns or has majority interests in 100 ports, he said.

“Unfortunately,“ Fink said, ”the far left and the far right didn’t mention that we bought 44 ports. They mentioned we bought two.”

BlackRock, with more than $11.5 trillion in its investment portfolio, is the world’s largest asset manager, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fink was among co-founders who created the Manhattan-based firm “in a one-room office in 1988” that went public in 2000. “I did my 100th earnings call this last January,” he said.

As the acquisition of 44 Hutchinson ports indicates, he’s bullish on the global economy and remains staunchly “optimistic that U.S. exceptionalism will continue” into the foreseeable future.

Mexican migrant workers load boxes of organic cilantro during the fall harvest at Grant Family Farms in October 2011 in Wellington, Colo. John Moore/Getty Images

Labor Shortage to Job ‘Deflation’

But there are challenges on, and beyond, the horizon, Fink cautioned.

“We have to think about power and energy in a pragmatic way,” he said, adding that while “we’re going to have to focus on decarbonization” until breakthrough technologies, including nuclear power, are commercially affordable, an “all of the above” energy policy is the key to growing the grid to meet growing demand.

“Everyone talks about the opportunity with hydrogen. Well, we can have green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, but is anybody willing to pay the cost?” Fink asked.

In speaking with “hyper-scalers” that need massive electrical loads, there’s been a shift from what they want to what they can get, he said.

“Four years ago, they would say, ‘If we’re building a data center, it must be renewable’ energy,” Fink said. “Two years ago, they said, ‘We prefer renewable,’ and today, they care about power.”

Biomass, or “vegetable power,” is among under-tapped power sources that are coming to the fore, he said. “There are many opportunities in working side-by-side to try to work this out. I talk about ‘practicalism’—it’s how to solve these problems in a holistic way.”

Fink said inflation and a labor shortage in key industries are quickly emerging as major issues.

“Over the course of the next six to nine months, we’re going to see embedded inflation” aggravated by the Trump administration’s “deportations and speed at which it is happening,” he said.

The administration’s immigration policies will have a “severe impact” on the nation’s agricultural and construction sectors, Fink said.

“I’ve talked to CEOs in the [agriculture] sector [and] they remind me that 70 percent of the men and women in agriculture were not born in the United States,” he said. “Many of them have work permits” but are leaving or not planning to return just as planting spring crops is beginning.

Fink said at least 40 percent of construction workers on sites across the nation “were not born in the United States,” which concerns private investors.

“The whole idea is that we’re going to have to use private capital that builds up this economy. Are we going to have enough workers?” he asked, noting the data centers that will key the emerging 21st century economy wonder “if we’re going to run out of electricians as we build out AI data centers. We just don’t have enough.”

Those same AI data centers that could be impaired by short-term skilled labor shortages could, potentially, present a long-term “deflation” of the job market, Fink said.

The advancement of AI robotics is “going to reshape the economy,” he said. “It’s going to change every business that we could think of.”

As the war in Ukraine shows, “technology even changes war. If war is fought in a whole different manner than we are used to … take that into every different business across the board and think how that translates.”

‘You translate that across all the economies, everything,” Fink continued, “and we’re going to have a shortage of jobs. Just the social implications are pretty frightening and we have to be thoughtful about it. We have to be working towards this. We, the private sector, must work with governments and work together on how can we shape this together.”

“Uncertainty” and “angst” by retired Americans is a crisis that few are addressing, he said.

“To every CEO in the audience, we need to be focused on how to make sure our employees have the right financial literacy so that they can navigate their own retirement,” Fink said. “As we moved away from defined benefits to defined contributions, we took the liability off us, passed the liability onto the individual, but we have not provided, as a country, as companies, enough of the financial literacy to help them over this long journey.”

That presents a double-edged problem, he said. Retirees need investments to generate an income and capital markets need their contributions to provide seed money to finance emerging technologies.

Capital markets have provided the United States a big advantage on the global stage, Fink said. 

“So much of the U.S. exceptionalism is our capital markets. If you’re a startup company with a good idea, you can get capital in the United States. You probably can’t get that if you’re a small Indian company.”

To make America great, the nation must “make energy great” with a “practicalism” that funds a  government that can provide swift surety in permitting and regulating, stable labor availability, and strong capital markets to fuel private investment, he said.

“How do we make this a conversation across the board? To me, this is the beauty of this country,” Fink said. “When we have a conversation, we fix problems.”

The latest housing market snapshot for Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland shows a continued surge in active listings as the risk of a Doge-related recession looms around the Capitol Beltway. 

Bright MLS, a multiple listing service covering the Mid-Atlantic region, released new weekly data through March 9 showing that active listings are piling up, totaling 31,597—up 20.2% from the same week one year ago. Week-over-week, active listings across the MLS service area have increased by 3.3%

Weekly active listings across the MLS service area have trended well above the last three years and have begun rising sharply in recent weeks. This increase is likely driven by the start of the spring selling season and rising concerns over a potential Doge-related recession.

The region, heavily reliant on the federal administrative state—now faces a vicious downturn after DOGE and the Trump administration made sizeable cuts to several federal agencies (see: here) and halted funding of corrupt Deep State NGOs that employ tens of thousands across the region. 

Recall that Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, recently said on BBG TV: “The consensus expects total DOGE-related job cuts to be 300,000 … However, studies show that for every federal employee, there are two contractors.” 

“As a result, layoffs could potentially be closer to 1 million,” Slok warned. 

The latest jobs market data showed last month that DOGE-related layoffs are beginning to spike.

Given the mounting macroeconomic headwinds in the Mid-Atlantic, we questioned just yesterday – more broadly: Is Trump Trying to Push the U.S. Into a Recession?… 

Shifting back to MLS data, the weekly snapshot of Washington, DC, shows active listings are up 32.8% versus the same period one year ago. 

Here’s a better way to visualize the active listing surge.

Is the median listing price in DC reversing with new supplies hitting the market?

In North Central Virginia, just south of DC, the data shows active listings are up 39.1% versus the same period one year ago. 

A flood of supply is hitting several Mid-Atlantic housing markets, combined with surging layoffs of federal workers, contractors, and NGO staff. A perfect storm is brewing for the area.

The federal bureaucracy in these areas has never truly felt a proper downturn in the past few decades, thanks to the government’s unlimited ‘magic money tree’ that has repeatedly bailed them out—while the rest of the country has been stuck in financial ruin.

Via Remix News,

Waves of TikTok club-going Ukrainian women mowed down by first-person drones, arms missing, legs missing, battlefields littered by female corpses as far as the eye can see. In a “gender equal” world, this would be the brutal and terrifying reality on the ground in the Ukraine war. That is unfortunately the reality that men are facing every single day.

Historical grievances from women — less pay for the same work, even lacking the right to vote — pale in comparison to the issue of forced conscription, which dates back to our origins as a tribal species. Men mostly had no choice but to pick up a spear or gun when the call came, or face imprisonment, execution or even torture. On the battlefield, men died violent, horrifying deaths.

In fact, the issue of conscription, and the imbalance between the genders, is becoming increasingly relevant across the world. As women demand the benefits of equality, equal pay for instance, they mostly have no desire to experience the negatives of equality, especially when it comes to combat operations.

The issue is now being debated in the German press as the country grapples with potentially reintroducing conscription under the new CDU and SPD government.

Arguably, progressive and liberal Germany makes gender equality even more of an issue than mostly conservative Ukraine, so if conscription is instated in Germany once again, women should not only be drafted, but they should also be drafted in equal numbers for front-line combat positions.

Private Dajana Bartczewski, left, puts camouflage paint on the face of an unidentified male soldier during an exercise by German Bundeswehr soldiers from the “Generalfeldmarschall-Rommel-Kaserne” barracks in Augustdorf, western Germany, 200 kms (125 miles) northeast of Duesseldorf, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001. It was the first time since the beginning of 2001 that female soldiers joined a military exercise in combat units and were permitted to handle weapons. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

One German commentator for Welt, a female writer, Marie-Luise Goldmann, would likely agree with this position, writing:

“One question is central to the discussions about the reintroduction of conscription: Should it also apply to women? In addition to pragmatic reasons, there are also moral ones. After all, sparing women is not fair.

Anyone who talks about the reintroduction of conscription cannot – to paraphrase Max Horkheimer – remain silent about gender equality. After Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg suspended conscription in 2011 after 55 years, German politicians are now once again calling on the government to discuss the abolition of the principle of voluntary service. This is intended to counteract the shortage of personnel in the Bundeswehr in an increasingly uncertain world situation.

But who should conscription apply to? Again only to men or now also to women? A simple majority in the Bundestag is enough to reinstate conscription under Article 12a. To make conscription compulsory for women, however, the Basic Law would have to be changed, which would require a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat.”

Goldmann further notes that in Norway, women are already drafted, and in countries like Cuba, Bolivia and Eritrea, there is no distinction made between the sexes when it comes to compulsory military service. She ends her piece by writing, “Before women wait for men to voluntarily give up their privileges at some point, they could show them how to do it.”

However, even for those countries that draft women, it is questionable if gender equality truly exists in these nations. Even for the famously gender-equal Israeli army, women mostly get a free pass. The army there noted during the 2014 Gaza War that fewer than 4 percent of female soldiers were enlisted in combat positions, such as infantry or fighter pilots. Instead, almost all women were in “combat-support” positions. That is not to say that women in the IDF have not fought and died for their country, with over 500 dying since 1962. However, the gender ratio in terms of combat deaths is wildly skewed, with men far more likely to perish.

Goldmann should at least be commended for promoting real equality in Germany, but there are few other women lining up behind her. Even for those women who are against the war in Ukraine, most of them are also for equal pay, equal voting rights, and other forms of equality. If that is the case, then men must also demand equality on the battlefield.

EU Girl Bosses lead the charge (from the rear)

All of this is especially relevant as publications praise the war hawk “girl bosses” running a pro-war Ukrainian policy. The New York Post, for instance, in its article “ Meet the tough women leaders taking on Vladimir Putin,” features photos of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

The article even claims: “It’s striking, the large number of brave women who are leading the protests against Iran’s violent and vicious theocratic regime.”

Yes, these women are very “brave” calling for more war against Russia, using Ukrainian men no less, all from the comfort of their offices in Brussels, Berlin, and other safe European cities all hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers, from the front. Can these women even name the name of one private who lost their lives at the front?

The article further praises these brave ladies’ calls for more weapons to Ukraine. As for the German foreign minister, the Post writes: “Now Baerbock leads the charge to supply Ukrainians with the means of self-defense. She has been calling for heavier weapons since early spring. She stands as the first prominent German politician to admit Germany has been flat-out wrong on Russia.”

Notably, Baerbock will never pick up a weapon herself, nor will any of these other women. Even more absurd is the fact that none of these EU “girl bosses” are even Ukrainian, just more foreigners leading Ukraine, a country experiencing the worst demographic disaster in the entire world, to further misery.

Meanwhile, Gallup Research shows that a majority of Ukrainians want a negotiated peace that includes a willingness to lose territory.

Girl power, indeed.

The female war privilege has gotten only more extreme in the modern era

If anything, the female privilege that exempts them from war has gotten even more extreme and out of control, as the Ukraine conflict exemplifies. Not only were women in Ukraine exempted from conscription, but they were allowed to leave the country en masse. Many of these women who left were in no real direct danger, but they saw an opportunity for a new life in Western Europe. Not only are many dating on Tinder and settling in with new partners, but they are even participating in such exciting activities as creating “BDSM masks.”

The old model of the father, the brother, and the son, going off to war while the “womenfolk” remain faithfully behind to take care of “hearth and home” has been broken, raising the question of what the men are even fighting for anymore. As Remix News has reported extensively, Ukrainian men are not exactly enthusiastic about the war effort themselves, with videos of them being violently snatched off the streets and forced into combat flooding the web. These men have no choice.

Ultimately, if women are not going to want to serve at the front and do not want to be forced into conscription, then why should men accept equality for women in other spheres of life?

Most men and women view the idea of sitting in a trench enduring withering shelling, being hunted by FPV drones, or losing an eye or limbs to shrapnel, as a far worse fate than not being able to vote. There is no doubt that women have faced oppression and been deprived of rights in history, but all of it pales in comparison to the horrors of war men have been systematically forced to suffer for eons through mass conscription.

Now, women have the right to vote, and in fact, they can even vote for more war if they want to. That comes with responsibilities. Defending the nation, especially against an “evil and vile” threat such as Russia, requires a truly national effort, or so the EU elite tells us. If so, that means all hands on deck.

Read more here…

In this chart, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao explores a what-if scenario. How much money would each American get if divided equally?

First, we had to approximate a figure for all of America’s money. This data comes from the Federal Reserve, which tracks M2 money supply in the country.

M2 money supply includes cash, savings, time deposits, and money market funds held in the country. It does not include stocks, real estate, or other investments.

America’s population figures are sourced from the Census Bureau, with the estimate for July, 2025 used for this graphic.

Each American Resident Would Get $63,000 If Divided Equally

Nearly $22 trillion dollars divided amongst 340 million American residents yields around $63,000 for each person.

What can be bought with that?

Depending on priorities, any one of these things:

• A new car (like the 2025 Ford F-150 Lariat)

• Around 10 years worth of groceries

• A four-year undergraduate degree from a state university (tuition only)

• A down payment on a $300,000 house

Perhaps more interesting is that this same arithmetic for dividing all the world’s money yields only $15,000 per person.

This is because the U.S. accounts for almost 20% of the global money supply with only 4% of the population.

Want to see this same what-if scenario play out with other metrics? Check out: Dividing All the World’s Gold Equally for more fun facts.

Henry Hub spot natural gas prices surged to $4.90/mmBtu on Monday morning, reaching fresh two-year highs as traders weighed the impact of tariffs on Canadian fuel and potential retaliatory measures. Amid the volatility, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of Global Commodities Research, Samantha Dart, clarified what’s next for prices, warning, “US Gas Rally Likely Too Much, Too Soon.” 

Dart said the sharp increase in Henry Hub spot NatGas prices has been a combination of colder-than-average temperatures, which, along with production freeze-offs and a quick ramp-up of liquefaction operations at the newly started 1.4 Bcf/d phase one of the Plaquemines LNG export facility in Louisiana, helped draw down salt inventories to very low levels.

Despite Dart’s forecast that 2026 prices will remain above $4/mmBtu to support drilling in Haynesville, the recent front-end price spike appears excessive.

She identified two key downside risks for NatGas prices:

1. First, last week’s US gas rally that took prompt gas prices back above $4/mmBtu was not accompanied by any significant tightness in the physical market like what we observed in mid-February, and the colder March weather forecasts that arguably triggered that rally have fully reversed (Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2).

2. Second, this week’s downward revision to US gas production estimates by Wood Mackenzie[2] still leaves month-to-date production more than 1 Bcf/d above our expectations, suggesting no urgency for the market to incentivize a sharp increase in drilling this summer.

While storage congestion isn’t a near-term concern, demand-side switching to coal has been maxed out, and higher prices won’t impact supply. Given these factors, Dart noted the risk balance for NatGas prices has now “skewed to the downside,” advising clients to “close our long Apr26 NYMEX natural gas trading recommendation.” 

More color from Dart: 

To be clear, we don’t see US storage congestion appearing as a result of this latest rally in US gas prices, so there is no binding physical constraint forcing US gas prices immediately lower. This is in part because, on the demand side, gas-to-PRB-coal switching is already maximized with Henry Hub near $3.75/mmBtu, and, on the supply side, the impact of higher gas prices on drilling (and ultimately production) is slow. But we do think the balance of risks around US gas prices has changed and is now skewed to the downside. Accordingly, we take this opportunity to close our long Apr26 NYMEX natural gas trading recommendation, now priced around $4/mmBtu, for a potential gain of $0.80/mmBtu.

Too fast, too furious? 

However, longer-range fundamentals, including rising LNG exports to Europe, indicate a much brighter future for NatGas following a multi-year price trough. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

There has been an 86% rise in sexual violence on public transport in France since 2016, with much of the surge happening as a result of mass migration.

Figures released by the National Observatory on Violence against Women (Miprof) show that sexual violence in 2024 increased by 6 per cent over the previous year and 9 per cent over 2022 numbers.

Since 2016, after which France experienced a surge in mass migration, the figure is up by a whopping 86 per cent.

44 per cent of victims were located in the Paris region, with women being the victims on 91 per cent of occasions, with 75 per cent of victims being under the age of 30 and 36 per cent of those being minors.

“It should be noted that this data comes at the same time that France’s migration population has exploded,” reports Remix News.

“With 63 percent of those arrested for sexual assault and 92 percent for petty theft in public transport being foreigners, according to data from 2019. Similar data is seen in Germany, where 59 percent of all sexual assaults on German trains are attributed to foreigners, with sexual crimes doubling since 2019.”

The study also found that 56 per cent of women were afraid to ride on public transport in the Ile-de-France (Paris) rail network, while 80 per cent said they were constantly on alert.

The figures were released at the same time as another batch of statistics from the UK were made public which found that foreigners were responsible for nearly a quarter of recorded sex crimes.

“While most violence against women is committed by members of their close circle, the fact remains that public spaces, and particularly public transport networks, remain places where women are exposed to sexist and sexual violence as soon as they enter them,” said Miprof Secretary General Roxana Maracineanu.

As we previously reported, a left-wing politician who campaigned for the rights of migrants was brutally beaten by a gang of ‘North African’ men yards from her own front door in France.

As we highlight in the video below, despite women typically voting in favor of more mass migration, the consequences continue to be experienced across western countries.

*  *  *

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Elon Musk in a recent post on X called it “prophetic”. He featured a decade-old clip which said of President Trump’s commentary on the future of Syria, “How right he was.” 

Trump said in the 2015 interview, “The problem in Syria is we have no idea who the other side are. Maybe we’re better off with Assad. We give (the Rebels) weapons and ammunition but, to me, Assad looks better than the other side.”

One Trump’s main points in the CNN interview was to “let Syria and ISIS fight” – arguing that Assad forces were effective in killing radical Islamic terrorists. He also said that the US should step back and allow Russia to fight the Islamic State terrorists.

“Let Russia fight ISIS,” he also said. “Fight it out, let Russia take care of ISIS.” CNN had of course responded by absurdly trying to paint the words as an example of Trump ‘siding with Putin’.

On Assad specifically, Trump explained at the time that “it’s all about watching people, I’ve watched Assad and a little bit on the other side. We have no idea who they are.”

Trump then mused, “are we better off with Assad?” as “we have no idea” who the anti-Assad insurgents are. “What are we doing? Why are we involved?” This was of course at a moment Barack Obama was president, and he had authorized the CIA to support regime change.

He continued, “And Assad to me looks better than the other side” which in many historical examples has turned out to be a “total catastrophe” – such as in Libya.

In December of last year, this “other side” took over Damascus as Bashar al-Assad fled the country amid a jihadist onslaught out of Idlib, in the form of Jolani’s hardline Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied foreign fighters.

The last several days have seen these same jihadists conduct a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign against Syrian Alawites and Christians along the coast. Many thousands of innocent civilians are dead. So much for the West’s supposed regime change ‘democracy promotion’ in support of terrorists ‘freedom fighter’ in the Levant.

Authored by Will Jones via DailySceptic.org,

Right-wing politicians are being shut out of Government across Europe, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator, as so-called ‘progressive’ elites in politics and the judiciary effectively rig what are supposed to be democratic elections. 

Here’s an excerpt.

Alarm grew as opinion polls indicated [Calin] Georgescu would win the second round [of Romania’s Presidential election]. Something had to be done, and it was. A couple of days before the decisive vote, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round because of alleged Russian interference. The court had perused some declassified intelligence documents that claimed 800 TikTok accounts had been activated shortly before polls opened. There was no evidence of voting irregularities in the election itself but the fact Russia had been active on social media was enough for the court to intervene.

At the time, Georgescu likened himself to Donald Trump: an anti-system candidate who was the target of Establishment ‘lawfare’. The Trump administration has subsequently cited Georgescu as an example of the EU’s creeping illiberalism.

In a speech at last month’s Munich Security Conference, Vice-President J.D. Vance expressed his astonishment “that a former European Commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian Government had just annulled an entire election… these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears”.

The Commissioner in question was Frenchman Thierry Breton, who in a television interview in January boasted that “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary”. He was referring to the upcoming German election and the possibility that the Right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) might win.

As it turned out, simply annulling Romania’s Presidential election didn’t derail the Georgescu bandwagon. Quite the opposite. He picked up momentum and polls showed that he would romp to victory in May’s re-run election. As I predicted in January, Romania’s elite wouldn’t allow this to happen.

And they haven’t. At the end of February, Georgescu was detained by police as he drove through Bucharest to file his candidacy in the election. He was indicted on six counts, among them false funding sources and false information in his last campaign. He was also barred from leaving the country and creating any new social media accounts.

Now he is barred from standing for President, a decision he has called a “direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide”.

It’s part of a disturbing illiberal pattern, says Gavin. 

In Germany, the AfD came second on 20% of the vote but has been shut out of Government in favour of the Left-wing Social Democrats, despite having had their worst performance since 1945. 

In Austria, the anti-immigration Freedom Party won the election last October but still finds itself shunned by the other parties who have colluded to keep it side-lined.

And in France on March 31st a court will rule whether Marine Le Pen will be barred from office for five years over a charge of “misusing EU funds”.

This doesn’t end well. 

The issues that these politicians represent – and simmering public anger about them – obviously aren’t going away, least of all while Left-wing parties cling to power despite losing elections and refuse to address them.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Geographic reasons make this a practical necessity if he wants to restore the US’ military presence at Bagram Airbase and/or return some of the equipment that Biden left there during the withdrawal.

Trump surprised many when he recently declared that he wants to restore the US’ military presence at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase and return some of the equipment that Biden left during the withdrawal. 

He justified the first on the basis that it’s just one hour away from where China makes (likely meaning bases) its nuclear weapons and claimed that it now allegedly occupies Bagram.

The second, meanwhile, was justified due to the dangers presented by the Taliban selling this equipment to other groups.

Trump also expressed frustration that the US is allegedly spending billions of dollars each year helping to keep Afghanistan afloat. 

Even if he successfully leverages foreign aid in advance of these interconnected military-strategic goals, which might be counterproductive if China replaces lost American support to entrench its influence in Afghanistan, then he’ll still likely have to cut a deal with Pakistan. 

That’s because the most viable way for the US to access Afghanistan is from its traditional partner’s airspace and roads.

The problem though is that a growing number of issues have begun to beset their partnership. These include the US’ preference for India as its top regional partner in recent years, criticism of a military court’s conviction of 25 civilians a few months ago in connection with unrest over Imran Khan’s scandalous jailing, and newfound concerns about the true intentions of its long-range missile program. Pakistan is also disappointed that the US hasn’t taken its side over the Taliban amidst their tensions.

While it’s possible that Pakistan’s de facto military regime might literally sell out their nation’s abovementioned interests to let the US transit across its territory en route to Afghanistan if Trump reaches a deal with the Taliban, which is itself easier said than done, that can’t be taken for granted. They might very well bargain hard on some issues in order to receive more than just pecuniary benefits. This could take the form of demanding more military equipment and an end to alleged US meddling.

The first could be manipulated to create the optics of the US rebalancing its relations with India for the purpose of provoking an overreaction from the latter’s decisionmakers or media, while the second could silence criticism of Imran Khan’s scandalous jailing and relieve pressure on its missile program. Of course, another possibility exists, and it’s that Trump doesn’t negotiate fairly with Pakistan but instead ramps up pressure upon it and then promises to reverse what was just added in exchange for what he wants.

That could be accomplished via more official attention being paid to Imran Khan’s case in parallel with threatening the curtailment of existing military aid and sanctions over its missile program. All that would change if Pakistan capitulated to this newfound comprehensive pressure campaign is that the intensity would simply revert back to what it once was instead of remaining high. Instead of giving him what he wants, however, Pakistan might abandon its Sino-US balancing act to defiantly pivot towards China.

That might not be the best course of action from the perspective of Pakistan’s objective national interests since the US could deal a lot of strategic damage to its renegade partner in that scenario. Its military and political leadership could be personally sanctioned, all aid might be immediately withheld, and Trump could double down on the sale of the latest military-technical equipment to India. All of this could also be paired with sectoral sanctions, including secondary ones, for generating more unrest.

Nevertheless, none of this might come to pass since it’s ultimately dependent on Trump reaching a deal with the Taliban for returning to Bagram Airbase and/or returning some of its military equipment that Biden left in Afghanistan, neither of which should be taken for granted. It also remains unclear how serious Trump is about this since he might have just been spitballing like he’s known to sometimes do. Although unlikely, there’s also an out-of-the-box solution, which will now be touched upon.

In the event that a deal is reached with the Taliban but Pakistan remains obstinate in cutting its own with the US, then the US might reach a deal with the Central Asian Republics to facilitate the exit of US military equipment and/or allow the US military transit rights to return to Bagram. This corridor, which relies on the South Caucasus for access to the Eurasian Heartland, was in effect during most of the American occupation of Afghanistan and was referred to as the “Northern Distribution Network”.

In the contemporary geopolitical conditions, this could be achieved in coordination with Russia as a manifestation of the nascent Russian–US “New Détente”, the details of which are beyond the scope of this analysis but can be learned more about from the preceding four hyperlinked analyses. This wouldn’t be anywhere near as economical as securing transit through Pakistan, but it could suffice if that country refuses to cut a deal, and even the possibility might be enough to get its policymakers to reconsider.

Altogether, everything depends on how serious Trump is on reaching a deal with the Taliban; him successfully clinching such; and then the success of his efforts to reach a related one with Pakistan. It’s too early to tell either way in any of these three cases, but any progress on the first part would then put Pakistan in the spotlight, thus making this analysis very relevant. Until then, observers should casually monitor this issue, but they should also temper expectations about anything significant happening.

In news that we’re certain will have Adam Schiff laying out a multi-national, multi-planetary conspiracy that can only be stopped by impeaching Donald Trump tomorrow, a new report from Bloomberg found that from 2017 to 2019, employees at Evraz North America Inc., a Russian-owned steel manufacturer, falsified quality control tests on armor plating used in the JLTV, according to an internal report and company officials.

The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), the U.S. Army’s successor to the Humvee, is designed to protect troops from bullets, mines, and explosives. At its Portland, Oregon facility, workers skipped mandatory hardness tests and fabricated results for about 12,800 armor plates, which were falsely labeled as approved. Some of these plates later developed cracks, raising concerns about their reliability in combat.

Oshkosh Defense LLC, a major military vehicle manufacturer, was a key customer for Evraz’s armor plates. The company produces the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), marketed as a “go-anywhere, do-anything” light tactical vehicle. Primarily used by the U.S. military, the JLTV has also been provided to Ukraine, Israel, Brazil, and Lithuania. As of last year, over 22,000 JLTVs had been built, each expected to last around 20 years, the report says.

It remains unclear how many of the 12,800 untested plates were installed on JLTVs or other military vehicles. Following an internal report, the FBI has visited multiple Evraz facilities over the past year. Authorities have also issued a subpoena requiring Evraz to preserve records related to its production processes, according to company officials and local media reports.

Bloomberg writes that in response to inquiries, Evraz North America stated that its internal report “examines quality control protocols” and reinforces its commitment to high-quality production. The company emphasized that its plates passed independent government-approved testing and that it has not received any client complaints. The military also conducts independent checks of armored plating to ensure its protective capabilities.

Despite this, Evraz launched an internal probe in late 2019 after allegations surfaced about lapses in quality control. A December 2019 report titled “Portland Plate Quality Inspections” found that, since November 2017, staff skipped mandatory hardness tests and manually entered fake results. The report emphasized that armor plates require 100% hardness testing to ensure strength and durability.

Interviews with four employees revealed that falsifying data was a common practice due to production pressures. Rather than testing each plate, workers would copy results from previously tested plates to keep the assembly line moving. The widespread issue, detailed in the confidential report, raises concerns about the integrity of armor plating used in military vehicles.

Read Bloomberg’s full writeup here.