The first phase of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is coming to a close, with Hamas Thursday night expected to handover the bodies of four more deceased Israelis. This time there won’t be a handover ceremony, after outraged Israeli officials threatened it could collapse the deal and all progress made.

Negotiations for the second phase don’t really appear to have gotten of the ground as yet. The first phase took effect Jan.19 – and has resulted in the release of 25 living hostages by Hamas, as well as the bodies of four more.

The deal called for the exchange of some 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel. Over 60 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Israel, but some half are suspected to be dead at this point.

Conditions in the Gaza Strip continue to deteriorate amid winter conditions. “Sila Abdul Qader is the seventh child confirmed to have died from the cold in Gaza in just 24 hours,” Al Jazeera reports Thursday.

Meanwhile, Turkey is warning that once Israel gets all its citizens back, Prime Minister Netanyahu will simply resume the war, also as the White House has been vocalizing plans for a total displacement of the Palestinian civilian population there:

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says he fears Israel will resume the war on Gaza after all the captives are released.

“As it is known, an ethnic cleansing war was witnessed by the whole world; almost 60,000 civilian Palestinians were killed, most of them were women and children. This must never reoccur,” Fidan said.

“However, it is feared that once all Israeli captives are released, Netanyahu will resume the war. There are deep concerns in this respect and they give rise to constant threats within the region,” he said.

Turkey has also called Israeli policies ‘expansionist’ – also as tanks and ground forces this week went into the West Bank, resulting in the expelling of some 10,000 Palestinians there (and counting).

Indeed there would be less incentive for Tel Aviv to hold back future military operations. For this reason, Hamas may slow-play future releases, and this is likely to greatly complicate any hopes for a phase two or three sticking.

Early this week, US National Security Advisor Mike Walz, after six Israelis were recently freed on Saturday, has said it was Hamas’ fear of Trump that made this possible.

“Hamas is listening to the president… 29 hostages are alive today and reunited with their families because the whole world listened when President Trump said there would be all hell to pay after the Biden administration couldn’t get this done for 15 months,” Waltz told “Fox & Friends” on Monday.

The timeline of the deal seems to back this assessment – that indeed it was anticipation the Trump presidency would push the deal over the line. That deal had been agreed to on January 19, 2025 – literally the day before Trump was inaugurated.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed a proposal from President Trump to cut military spending in half as part of a potential three-way arrangement between the US, Russia, and China.

“I think it’s a good idea. The US would cut by 50%, and we would cut by 50%, and then China would join if it wanted,” Putin said in an interview on Monday. The Russian leader said he couldn’t speak for China but said Moscow could “come to an agreement with the US, we’re not against it.” He added that it was a “good proposal, and we are ready for a discussion about this.”

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian was asked if China supported the proposal. He didn’t give a direct answer but said China’s “limited defense spending is completely out of the need of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests, and the need of maintaining world peace.”

As things stand, the US spends significantly more on its military than Russia and China combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2023, the US accounted for 37% of global military spending. China came in second but was still far behind, accounting for 12% of military spending, and Russia was in third at 4.5%.

When Trump floated his proposal to cut spending, he also suggested the idea of denuclearization. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many you could destroy the world 50 times over or 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and [Russia] is building new nuclear weapons, and China is building new nuclear weapons,” he said.

While Trump seems to favor the idea of limiting military spending and reducing nuclear weapons, he is also advancing policies that will have the opposite effect.

The president has backed a budget plan from House Republicans that will raise the US military budget by $100 billion and also signed an executive order to develop a massive new missile defense system, which risks starting a new arms race.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

The US might go along with this though to accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU” led by a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others.

Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz declared on Sunday after the snap elections’ results started streaming in that he envisages helping his country “achieve independence” from the US. This is a dramatic statement that few could have foreseen any German leader saying just several months ago but that just goes to show how fundamentally Trump 2.0 is revolutionizing International Relations. Here’s what he told a televised roundtable about his foreign policy plans:

“The interventions (meddling) from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.

My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

I would never have believed that I would have to say something like that on television. But at the very least, after Donald Trump’s statements last week, it is clear that the Americans – at least this part of the Americans in this administration – are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

That’ll be a lot easier said than done for several reasons. 

To begin with, Germany hosts around 50,000 US troops at five Army garrisons and two Air Force bases. The US also displaced China as Germany’s top trade partner last year. Moreover, the US became Germany’s largest LNG partner last year too, which covered around 9% of its total gas usage last December. These three factors make it difficult for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US but the US might also go along with this for its own purposes.

Many of its troops in Germany can be redeployed to Asia for containing China and/or to Poland as part of that country’s power play to replace Germany as the US’ top ally in Europe. While casual observers might interpret these outcomes as victories for the military dimension of Merz’s policy, they’d come at a huge economic cost to the local communities that are employed by these US bases and receive their troops’ business. This observation segues into the US’ trade leverage over Germany.

While some think that Trump’s threatened tariffs can create strategic openings for China, at present, the EU is actually working with the US to prevent Chinese “overcapacities” in steel and other products from flooding the bloc as they desperately search for new markets amidst Trump’s new tariffs. In other words, Trump’s tariffs have thus far created a domino effect where China tries to dump newly tariffed products onto the EU, which in turn considers tariffing these same products. This works to the US’ advantage.

Lastly, the only realistic way for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US in the energy sphere is to lead the EU in removing the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions and agreeing to import pipeline gas from it once more, but the Baltic States and Poland stand in the way. Not only that, but the whole reason behind the latest transatlantic rift is Trump’s comparatively softer approach towards Russia, not him going harder on it than they are. It would therefore contradict their logic to lift sanctions on Russia.

Nevertheless, the past three years proved that Germany is willing to sacrifice its objective national interests in pursuit of ideological goals, which in the most recent context refer to signaling displeasure with Trump over his policies towards Russia (and to a lesser extent their domestic socio-legal affairs). Accordingly, it might therefore try to make good on Merz’s pledge to “achieve independence” from the US through the previously mentioned means, though this could be counterproductive as was explained.

Even so, the US might still go along with it by using this as the pretext for redeploying most of its troops in Germany to Asia and/or Poland, which could occur in parallel with targeted sanctions against Germany and the punitive curtailment of the LNG upon which around 1/10th of its gas industry now depends. The combined effect could be economically devastating enough to prompt snap elections or at the very least accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU”.

What’s meant by that concept is the diversification of power from Germany to a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others, each of which have strategic bilateral significances for the US such as controlling Central Europe, managing African affairs, and monitoring the Mediterranean. There’d be some collateral damage together with twists and turns along the way, but the processes that the US could set into motion in response to whatever Merz might do could forever change the EU to Germany’s detriment.

Authored by R. Jordan Prescott via RealClearDefense,

With unprecedented zeal, Special Government Employee Elon Musk and his DOGE team have descended upon multiple agencies to execute its cost cutting agenda. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said DOGE will be welcomed at the department but simply accessing its accounting systems will not provide the visibility needed. The Department of Defense has failed seven consecutive audits, its financial information systems are a disaster, and solutions have been elusive.

Thou Shalt Be Audited

In 1990, Congress passed The Chief Financial Officer Act and one provision required every agency to be audited in full. Between 1991 and 2013, DOD only subjected itself to partial audits. In 2014, Congress required DOD to comply in full by 2018.

Unsurprisingly, DOD failed this first audit. The DOD Inspector General identified 20 material weaknesses, which are shortcomings that, in simple terms, means errors will occur but they won’t be caught or corrected before it is too late.

For the next seven years, audits never reported less than 25 material weaknesses. The associated “notifications of findings and recommendations” would average almost 2,500 reissued and 850 new NFRs every between 2019 and 2023.

Big Checkbook, Antiquated Calculators 

Two major deficiencies have persisted throughout — the Fund Balance with Treasury (the department’s checking account) and Information Technology.

In the former, the department can’t balance its $800 billion-plus checkbook and lacks the tools to research discrepancies or produce the receipts.

On the latter, the department simply has too many obsolete systems; in 2021 the DODIG reported the department wouldn’t be retiring 140 legacy systems until 2036.

In 2017, the department’s Chief Financial Officer began using a data platform called Advana to build the missing universe of transactions so desperately needed to support auditability.

However, Advana is a data repository, not a tool for validating data; reliability is the responsibility of system owner from which Advana is drawing. Moreover, Advana does not have access to data across the entire department.

To overcome these challenges, the Deputy Secretary of Defense “decreed” in May 2021 that data sharing would be maximized. More pointedly, Advana would be the “single source of truth” for objective, informed decision-making.

Beginning with the 2022 audit, the DODIG began recommending the department use Advana to address the aforementioned Fund Balance with Treasury deficiency.

In May 2023, the Government Accountability Office credited the department with progress but noted its remedial plans still lacked basic details, such as interim dates to track the steps taken to achieve auditability.

Similarly, the DODIG identified problems with Advana. In October 2024, the DODIG examined whether billions of dollars in Ukraine assistance had been used in accordance with federal law.

The DODIG tersely reported “DOD did not.”

The DODIG found the department did not have documentation for $1.1 billion in outlays. More notably, the DODIG identified the amount as Questioned Costs, those transactions that may constitute legal or regulatory violations.

To date, Congress has appropriated $111 billion in Ukraine assistance

In 2025, the DOD budget totals $850 billion and the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair is aggressively pursuing a $200 billion increase.

Even a conservative (e.g. generous) projection of ten percent in questioned costs would mean almost $100 billion in transactions that could be violations of law or regulations.

Follow the Blockchain … 

To extract itself from its fiduciary quagmire, DOD should embrace blockchains.

Blockchains are a secure means of executing and recording transactions without the need for a central authority. Per its protocols, transactions are recorded transparently and permanently; the data is synchronized in real time and shared in full by all stakeholders.

Inherently immutable, blockchains ensure data integrity, transparency, and above all, auditability.

To its credit, Congress has encouraged DOD to use the technology. According to a 2018 congressionally-mandated study, adoption would improve cybersecurity, supply chain efficiency, continuity of operations, and, most importantly, auditability.

An Air Force Institute of Technology publication from 2022 also examined the advantages of employing blockchains.

First and foremost, the publication acknowledged DOD blockchains could not mirror Bitcoin, which permits anyone to have access and the ability to record transactions. Instead, the sensitivity of data and need to restrict user rights dictated that a DOD blockchain would be a “permissioned private” database, not Bitcoin’s permissionless public variant.

To demonstrate its effectiveness, the publication summarized its application by Walmart, a common comparison given the company’s size and logistical sophistication.

In 2020, Walmart launched the “world’s largest blockchain industrial application solution” to date.

Under its existing system, disputes over Canada-based invoices occurred in approximately 70% of deliveries and required labor-intensive investigations taking six and eight months to resolve. While Walmart found paying the disputed amount easier, it also meant paying a 38 percent overage.

The contracted provider configured a blockchain within eight months and conducted a two-month pilot. The results were such that Walmart swiftly moved all seventy of its Canadian suppliers on the blockchain by 2022. The blockchain reduced disputes to 1.5% of all deliveries, dispute resolution times shortened, and the company saved millions.

The provider was DLT Labs, a small Canadian company founded in 2017 – not a major prime charging hundreds of billions.

The blockchain was a distributed ledger architecture that had been developed by a non-profit launched in 2015 by the Linux Foundation — not a multi-year acquisition program.

The publication also demonstrated how the Walmart blockchain outperformed current DOD accounting systems in terms of lifecycle costs, transaction throughput, and error rates.

Lastly, the publication catalogued how blockchains satisfied existing regulatory regimes governing information technologies and would address its audit deficiencies.

While the confrontation between a trillionaire and a trillion-dollar entity will be epic, the brutal reality is neither will win because defense spending is the quintessential unknown unknown.

In the thirty-four years since the first required audit, DOD has lived down to the low expectations ascribed to government bureaucracies. Congress is now requiring the department to pass an audit by 2028.

The department’s financial systems are marred by unreliable data and archaic technologies. Blockchains constitute an elegant solution to these failings and more.

R. Jordan Prescott is a private contractor working in defense and national security since 2002. He has been published in The National Interest, Small Wars Journal, Modern War Institute, 19fortyfive, and RealClearDefense.

The global space economy reached $596 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $944 billion by 2033.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the size of the space economy as of December 2024, based on data compiled by Novaspace.

The space economy includes government agencies and companies involved in the production and launch of satellites and spacecraft, data generation, Earth-based infrastructure, R&D programs, and more.

Over 10,000 Satellites Orbit the Earth

Space-based applications that are enabled by space, such as weather forecasting, remote sensing, satellite navigation systems, and satellite television, make up the largest portion of the market, representing $308 billion.

Satellite services are another major component of the space economy, generating $137 billion per year. Currently, over 10,000 satellites orbit the Earth, with SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, controlling half of the market.

Upward Trajectory

2024 set spaceflight records for the fourth consecutive year, with 259 launches worldwide—an average of one launch attempt every 34 hours, according to a recent analysis of the global space economy.

The study, published by The Space Report, also predicts that the pace of launches will continue to rise this year.

The U.S. dominated the launch cycle in 2024, outpacing China by more than 2-to-1, according to the report. Meanwhile, Russia significantly increased the number of satellites it deployed into Earth orbit, rising from 21 in 2023 to 98 in 2024.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Visualized: Every Moon in the Solar System on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via The Mises Institute,

Ludwig von Mises called the universities of his day “nurseries of socialism” because of the inevitable socialist bias of all government-funded universities. He also said that there is always a remnant of students, however, that does not buy into the endless drumbeat about the alleged wonders of socialism and the “imperfections” of free-market capitalism. It is this remnant that the Mises Institute devotes so much effort to educating and inspiring in the Misesian/Rothbardian tradition. 

The vast majority of today’s American universities have become incubators of socialism to a far greater extent than anything Mises experienced. They have produced generations of students who are well versed in all the left-wing platitudes about just about everything even if they lack the most elementary critical thinking skills. (So-called “critical theory,” invented by Marxist law professors, is not about critical thinking but criticizing the critics of socialism and all the institutions of Western civilization). The unique incentive systems in American universities have made this possible.

Almost all universities are either government funded state universities, or private nonprofit sector universities that receive significant amounts of government subsidies, making them de facto state universities. (Remember: He who takes the king’s shilling becomes the king’s man). As such, they have no real customers in a business sense. Students do not think of themselves as customers in the sense that they are customers of say, Starbucks or a pizza joint. They rarely pay the tuition bills for one thing; mom and dad or the taxpayers do, or the banks that extend to them student loans. Parents may pay the tuition bills but it is the children who receive the primary benefits of higher education, if such benefits even exist. Thus, consumer pressure that leads to consumer sovereignty is very weak.

There are no stockholders in government or private, nonprofit universities, so neither is there stockholder pressure as with private competitive businesses. On top of that there is supercharged rational ignorance. When we acquire information during the course of our lives it is mostly to get through school, get and keep a job, raise a family, buy houses and cars, etc. Private affairs. We spend relatively little informing ourselves about government policy. Besides, government at all levels is so gargantuan that no human mind could possibly comprehend a tiny fraction of one percent of what governments do. We are rationally ignorant of it for the most part. Universities are the same way, but in addition, many people are intimidated by people with Ph.D. degrees in the same sense they are somewhat worshipful and intimidated by medical doctors. So they don’t question them very often. Rational ignorance is supercharged when it comes to universities and doctors. 

The boards of directors of universities are primarily composed of yes men and women who rubber stamp the decisions of the administrators for the most part. To oppose them might jeopardize the main reasons they are on the board of trustees in the first place: to improve their social lives, local reputations, and business connections. University boards were easily intimidated into acquiescing in the latest synonym for socialism, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” with its threats of calling critics racists or sexists. 

At some universities the university president can fire board members rather than the other way around.

When yours truly first arrived at Loyola University Maryland in the early 90s a senior faculty member recalled how Loyola alumnus Tom Clancey, the famous author, was not invited back to the board after he complained too much that the son of a mail man like himself could no longer afford the tuition. 

So-called peer-reviewed research is not all that it is made out to be. So much university research is government funded, that “peer reviewers” are often very careful not to allow the publication of much literature (if any) that criticizes the state. Try having a career as an environmental scientist who criticizes the EPA, or as an agricultural economist who criticizes the massive interventionism of the Department of Agriculture. Even modern physics is almost entirely devoted to military applications. Economist Larry White published a research article that revealed that almost three fourths of all peer reviewed articles in monetary economics were authored by economists with some connection to the Fed. As Milton Friedman once said, if one wants a career as a monetary economist, it is best not to criticize the major employer in your field. 

Let’s not forget also that the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s theory about “the long march through the institutions” to turn a country communist was first spread in universities, and is still metastasizing there. The extreme left-wing bias among university faculty is proof, moreover, that most faculties are enemies of academic freedom despite all their false claims otherwise. 

Because of the near absence of customer and stockholder pressures – or even elections as with government – university administrators often behave like dictatorial tyrants who answer to no one. This causes younger conservative or libertarian faculty members to cower in fear that the university administrators might discover that they have politically unacceptable ideas like respect for property rights, the rule of law, or God forbid, free enterprise.

University faculties are mostly paid like government bureaucrats with rigid pay scales that go by seniority rather than merit. Faculty committees are typically controlled by the least scholarly faculty members due to the fact that to the more productive scholars the opportunity cost of spending endless hours sitting in unproductive committee meetings is too high. It’s the low opportunity cost faculty who make university policy by committee. 

Ever since the American economy moved from being dominated by sole proprietorships to corporations the Left has complained about the separation of ownership from control. In corporations the stockholders are the owners and management is composed of their agents who are entrusted to earn profits for them. Who, but the taxpayers, are the “owners” of a state-funded university? And what control do they have over what goes on? 

Universities are incubators of socialism because they are themselves socialist institutions funded by taxpayers with Rube Goldberg style incentive systems. 

This article is adapted from a talk delivered at Educating for Liberty: Mises Circle in Tampa.

The Kremlin has pointed out on Wednesday that there appears as yet no actual US-Ukraine mineral deal, even as President Zelensky is expected at the White House Friday to sign a finalized agreement.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hasn’t been confirmation that anything on this front has been reached. “So far, there are no official statements on this matter. We have only heard that Zelensky seemed to be going to Washington on Friday,” Peskov told reporters.

He expressed doubt that anything final and with substance will be signed, saying “There will probably be attempts to make this visit somewhat substantive.”

Zelensky’s own words strongly suggests he’s headed to Washington even though details have not been agreed to or fully worked out.

“This is a start, this is a framework agreement,” Zelensky told reporters in his latest remarks. “This deal could be a great success or simply disappear. Whether it’s a big success, I think, depends on our conversation with President Trump. We’ll draw conclusions after.”

Trump has articulated the minerals deal in a way that has raised fears of deep future US entanglement in Ukraine…

Trump says the Ukraine minerals “deal” means the US will be “on the land” in Ukraine, and this gives Ukraine “automatic security” because no one will be “messing with our people.” He also backs deploying French and British “so-called peacekeeping” troops (NATO troops) to Ukraine pic.twitter.com/NdqGjmSNAv

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 26, 2025

Zelensky wants security guarantees, but that’s not what the draft says, only that the US “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace,” without making explicit commitments.

A Tuesday FT headlines said an agreement had been reached, and soon after Trump touted that Zelensky would be at the White House Friday to ink a final deal on rare earths and mineral access.

Most international reports agree that though Zelensky’s visit to Washington looks certain, a final singed deal is still anything but certain, and remains up in the air:

Reports suggested a US request for $500bn (£395bn) in potential revenues from using Ukraine’s natural resources had been dropped. But we also learnt that Ukrainian security guarantees had not made their way into the deal – something Kyiv has been pushing for.

Twenty-four hours later, little more is known. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenksy has said it’s important that at least a “sentence” about guarantees is included, but US President Donald Trump reiterated his stance that such assurances should be made by Europe, Ukraine’s “next door neighbor”.

We do, however, know Trump and Zelensky will thrash out the terms of the agreement in a meeting in Washington DC on Friday. Trump said so during his first cabinet meeting – during which he also hinted at a possible Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin would need to make “concessions” for that to happen.

Journalist Michael Tracey has said, based on reviewing the draft, that the scope goes far beyond just minerals…

It’s not even really accurate to call this a “minerals” deal. Ukraine is obliged to turn over 50% of revenues from *all extractable natural resources* as well as physical infrastructure like ports and refineries! Trump wants to “own” a huge swath of the entire country’s assets! pic.twitter.com/7USI1R6IQr

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 26, 2025

Tracey concluded, “This is sweeping enough that it could easily qualify as a Treaty requiring Senate Ratification but don’t hold your breath for that.”

Authored by Peter Jacobsen via the Foundation for Economic Education,

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is signaling the end of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The USAID website is currently down, and employees have been locked out of computer systems.

USAID has a controversial history and has been accused of imperialism by the left and waste and corruption by the right. In a previous article discussing National Security Study Memorandum 200, I highlighted one of these issues: a government document that proposed utilizing USAID (among other levers) to lower the population in developing countries under the guise of providing aid.

Many defenders of USAID argue that the fiscal concern behind Musk’s offensive is overblown because the agency represents less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

However, the fact that USAID is a small part of the budget gives us no information on whether or not it should be removed. In fact, it’s likely one of the best places to start slashing government spending. Why?

1) Bigger Cuts Cost More

If your goal is to cut down on spending, whether personal or government, larger expenditures are better to cut, everything else held constant. If you cut an item that represents 15 percent of your expenses instead of 5 percent, you’ll be making a bigger impact with—in theory—the same amount of effort. However, some things are more expensive to cut than others.

For example, personal finance classes often suggest that people can save by cutting back on meals out or buying coffee. Yet for most people, the monthly cost of eating out or getting coffee is a tiny fraction of their overall budget (much like USAID). So why start there?

You start with that because it is easy to cut those things out of life relative to big-ticket items.

For most people, expenditures on rent and mortgage payments dwarf coffee spending; however, it’s very difficult to lower spending on housing and transportation! For someone who has very little income to go around, even cheap housing will be expensive relative to his or her whole budget, and transportation is necessary for most jobs.

In the long run, people may be able to cut housing expenditures by finding roommates or downsizing, but the point is that in the short run, these big-ticket budgets are hard to modify. As such, cutting Starbucks and restaurant meals may be the easiest first step when we are struggling to make ends meet.

The same goes for the U.S. government. The big-ticket items for the budget (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) will be very difficult to address. Since those benefits are so large, modifying them will be expensive, both politically and financially. As such, even if these categories ultimately need to be tackled, this doesn’t imply that the government should be financially irresponsible with small expenditures in the short term.

In deciding what to cut, it isn’t just the total expenditures that should be considered; so should the difficulty associated with cutting it. Saying USAID is too small to cut is ignoring this important consideration. I put it like this on X:

“1 [percent] of the budget does not sound like a big cut, until you realize that getting a budget under control usually involves making lots of small cuts since large cuts are often infeasible.”

Ultimately, to borrow a modern version of a phrase coined by Benjamin Franklin, a penny saved is a penny earned. Small progress is still progress.

2) 0.7 Percent Is Not 0.7 Percent

The other problem with the “It’s only 0.7 percent” argument is that this view is too simplistic. In an accounting sense, it’s true that USAID accounts for only 0.7 percent of total spending. However, USAID’s impact on spending is not limited to what the department itself spends. USAID is a part of a network that includes various federal agencies and bureaucrats. These agencies can sometimes act as a team that works to increase overall spending. To understand this dynamic, we need to look at the economics of team production.

Economists Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz were the first to highlight the importance of team production in firm decision-making. Team production is based on a pretty simple idea: The sum is greater than the parts.

Let’s say Patrick and I start a moving company. Imagine I can move 15 things per hour by myself and Patrick can move 20 by himself. However, if we work together, we move 40 things. In other words, working together makes us more productive than each person working individually put together (40>15+20).

The reason for this is obvious—some objects are better moved by teams. It would take an individual a really long time to move a couch by himself. Working as a team is more than doubly fast.

Since some of the boxes are essentially being produced by “the team,” it’s hard to account for who’s responsible for them.

In for-profit business, teams work together to produce revenue. But in government bureaucracies, teams often work together to grow their budgets (see this article for more detail).

So when the Department of Defense puts together its budget proposal and they use studies conducted by USAID to justify it, who is responsible for the increase? Well, the whole increase will be attributed to the DOD, but clearly USAID is partly responsible.

In this sense, bureaucracy has the ability to feed on itself, thereby making the impact of a relatively small bureau such as USAID harder to account for.

3) Establishing a Precedent

The last reason shutting down USAID is important can be highlighted with the following question: What was the last standing U.S. government department to be shut down permanently?

Can you think of one? Congratulations if so, because I can’t. The closest thing I can find is departments being renamed (Department of War became Department of Defense) or temporary departments being shuttered (such as the National Recovery Administration). But even in the latter case, much of the department got turned into what is now the Small Business Administration.

Shutting down USAID would set an important precedent. Our government, and society, needs to build up experience with and infrastructure for shutting down government bureaus. Complaining that USAID should not be a target for cuts because it is small is like complaining that someone is going on a five-minute run in an attempt to train for a marathon.

Of course a five-minute run doesn’t solve your problem of getting ready for the marathon by itself. That isn’t the point. The point is that the five-minute run gets your body used to running for five minutes. You increase from there.

For my money, the shutdown of USAID will be an important bellwether, indicating that Trump’s administration has the power to take on the deep state. If he can’t remove USAID, there’s no chance he’ll take on anything bigger.

Furthermore, I see this as a bellwether for the country itself. If the deep state in the United States is so strong that it’s impossible to cut off even an agency established by executive order that makes up only 0.7 percent of the budget, how can we expect to deal with an exploding debt interest problem and an insolvent social security system?

Many in D.C. scoff when you talk about the national debt. After all, people have been warning about the debt for decades now. However, as one of my friends recently pointed out, countries are never in sovereign debt crises—until they are.

*  *  *

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

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Wednesday evening that she’s going to release DOJ files on dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“You said last week that you had the Epstein files on your desk. When can we see them?” asked Fox News‘ Jesse Watters.

“Jesse, there are well over – this will make you sick, 200 victims. Well over… over 250 actually. So we have to make sure that their identity is protected, and their personal information. But other than that, I think tomorrow Jesse – breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office.“

“What kind? Are we going to see who was on the flights? Are we going to see any evidence from what he recorded – because he had all of his homes wired with recording devices,” Watters asked.

“What you’re going to see, hopefully tomorrow, is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information… it’s pretty sick what that man did,” Bondi continued.

Watch:

BREAKING NEWS: US Attorney General @PamBondi says we can expect brand new Jeffrey Epstein details TOMORROW. Expect flight logs and names… pic.twitter.com/dMn4nkKefV

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) February 27, 2025

Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender was found dead in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. While his death was rules a suicide, he was also good friends with the Clintons and several other high-profile figures such as Bill Gates, Britain’s Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Barclays CEO and ‘Disney princess‘ aficionado Jes Staley, Larry Summers, Harvey Weinstein, and former Victoria’s Secret boss Les Wexner.

Here are the flight logs which have already been released.

Media Room?

Watters’ question about recordings stems from earlier reporting that the deceased sex trafficker’s homes were wired with recording devices.

In late 2019, Jeffrey Epstein victim Maria Farmer alleged that the deceased pedophile had a “media room” on the first floor where high-profile johns were allegedly recorded having sex with women and children.

“So if you’re facing the house, there’s a window on the right that’s barred – that’s the room, the ‘media room’ is what he called it,” Farmer said. “And so there was a door that looked like an invisible door with all this limestone and everything and you push it and you go in and I saw all the cameras.”

Maria said: “What it was – was like old televisions basically, like stacked.“

“They were monitors inside this cabinet and there were men sitting here and I looked on the cameras and I saw toilet, toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed.

“And I was like I’m never going to use the restroom here and I am never going to sleep here.” –The Sun

The claim was supported in a 2024 lawsuit by two women – Danielle Bensky and Jane Doe 3, who said Epstein employed a sophisticated system involving constant CCTV surveillance within his New York mansion.

Bondi’s appearance came hours after the DOJ appeared to give Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) the brush-off, telling her in a Wednesday letter that they are “reviewing your requests and look forward to engaging further to accommodate your oversight and legislative needs.”

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump suggested that he would be open to releasing the Epstein list, while Bondi said in November that anyone named in the documents who are “still fighting to keep their names private, Sean, they have no legal basis to do so unless they’re a child, a victim or a cooperating defendant.”

My office just received a formal response from the DOJ on the Jeffrey Epstein, JFK, MLK, & RFK files.

Read below👇 pic.twitter.com/gooBBQRlAq

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) February 26, 2025

Last week Bondi told Fox News that she had the Epstein files “sitting on my desk right now to review.”

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