Tonight at 7pm ET, two prominent voices on opposite ends of the Iran debate will face off as constitutional lawyer and professor Alan Dershowitz debates  the world’s most famous libertarian, Dave Smith, over the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Just days ago was the six month-mark for the conflict that has become considerably larger than the initial strikes on Iran’s nuclear program in June of last year during “Midnight Hammer”.

I’m debating Alan Dershowitz tonight on the Iran war at 7pm ET hosted by Zerohedge moderated by @MarioNawfal

— Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) September 2, 2026

After Israel and the United States launched their offensive in February, with major reporting (including in Israel) suggesting that it was Israel who killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, the conflict has expanded into a prolonged war that has severely disrupted shipping out of the Strait of Hormuz for now over half a year. While actual bombing intensity has fluctuated as several peace attempts lapsed, it has picked up in recent days.

Dershowitz: “Bomb Iran”

Dershowitz had been making the case for military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities well before the current war began.

He argued on his podcast “Dershow” in April 2025 (before Midnight Hammer) that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities was “absolutely essential to saving lives and to promoting peace in the Middle East and around the world.”

Dershowitz argued that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons would trigger a regional arms race and that Israel could not safely rely on deterrence. While he preferred a negotiated agreement, he ultimately concluded that military action was the only realistic alternative if Iran would not accept a deal permanently eliminating its nuclear capabilities.

“Bomb, bomb Iran. Not the people of Iran, not the people of Tehran, just the military targets, just the areas where they’re developing nuclear weapons.”

Months later, that debate is no longer hypothetical, so we look forward to hearing from Dershowitz specifically what Trump should do now?

Dave Smith And Anti-war Crowd Break With Trump

Smith backed Trump in 2024, in significant part because he believed Trump represented a better alternative to the interventionist foreign policy establishment (exemplified by Liz Cheney campaigning with Kamala Harris). But the Iran war fractured the coalition of anti-war voters who supported Trump.

By March, Smith was publicly arguing alongside Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson that Trump had betrayed his base by taking the country into another Middle Eastern war.

For Smith, Iran was the final break. For Dershowitz, it was not only justified but something he had explicitly advocated before the first bombs fell.

Tonight at 7pm ET, they’ll debate whether the war was necessary, what it has accomplished, and where President Trump should go from here. Watch live on the ZeroHedge homepage, X feed, and YouTube channel.

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

The House is expected to vote this week on a proposed constitutional amendment that would fix the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices. The number of justices is currently set by statute, which Congress can change by simple majority. If ratified, the amendment would place the figure in the Constitution, where changing it would require another amendment.

The measure, H.J. Res. 1, was introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and consists of a single sentence: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices.”

Under Article V of the Constitution, a proposed amendment must pass both the House and the Senate by a two-thirds vote before going to the states. The resolution gives states seven years from the date of submission to ratify it, and ratification requires the legislatures of three-fourths of the states – 38 of 50.

Some Democrats have been pressing for a larger court. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introduced legislation on May 4 to increase the court from nine justices to 13, and other prominent Democrats such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) have all recently floated a larger court.

Green’s bill has no cosponsors and has not moved out of the Judiciary Committee. Earlier versions of the Judiciary Act, sponsored by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) in 2021 and 2023, also proposed a 13-justice court and did not receive a committee vote. The committee report on H.J. Res. 1 cites those bills as the reason for acting, saying a recent set of expansion proposals makes it necessary to fix the number in the Constitution.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) listed the resolution among the week’s floor items in his weekly schedule preview, alongside a separate resolution from Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) condemning socialism and the Democratic Socialists of America.

“Radical left Democrats and the [Democratic Socialists of America] want to politicize and restructure the Supreme Court, effectively destroying the constitutional safeguards our Founders put in place,” Scalise’s office wrote in the preview. “For years, Democrats have called for packing the Supreme Court with more left-wing judges and now the [Democratic Socialists of America] is going even further by calling to abolish the Supreme Court and replace it with a judicial system subordinate to Congress.”

Biggs said in a June statement after the resolution cleared committee that the court had become a target.

“Our nation’s founders built a system of checks and balances to protect citizens from concentrated power – a central part being the U.S. Supreme Court, whose duty is to defend the rights and freedoms of every American, not to serve as a political tool for any party,” Biggs said. “The judiciary was designed to be the quiet guardian of liberty, insulated from the passions of the moment. Unfortunately, special interests have been increasing their attacks on the Court, threatening to pack this iconic American institution to ensure favorable outcomes for their causes.”

House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told reporters on Tuesday that he would vote against the resolution and characterized it as a message vote timed to the midterm elections.

“This is such a fake issue that Republicans are putting on,” Aguilar said. “The American public aren’t asking about this. I went around the country, the vice chair did a bunch of travel, I did a bunch of travel. Nowhere, ever, are people saying, ‘You know what we should do? We should cap the number of Supreme Court justices.'”

Aguilar said he expected the resolution to reach the floor on Wednesday and that he would oppose it.

“I understand that Republicans are gonna try to put up votes – socialism vote, Supreme Court justices,” he said. “These are all just kind of show votes. Assuming that this passes a rule, I’ll vote no, because this is just a complete show vote.”

Asked whether Democrats who have called for adding seats put the party at odds with its own leadership, Aguilar said expansion is not what the caucus is pushing.

“The argument among folks in our party is we want to reform the court, but we’ve said very clearly that that should be a code of ethics that they actually follow,” he said. “There needs to be real reform within the government side of what we do, and that’s every branch of government. Democrats have been loud and clear about that, and we continue to advocate for that, and we will when we’re in the majority.”

Aguilar’s framing tracks what House Democratic leaders said in May, when Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) each said judicial reform would be a priority if Democrats win the majority in November. Lieu said at the time that a Democratic majority would “usher in massive Supreme Court reform,” and Jeffries listed “massive judicial reform” alongside electoral and campaign finance reform. Neither specified what changes they would seek.

Judiciary Committee Debate and History

The House Judiciary Committee approved the resolution on June 3 by a vote of 15-8. No Democrat on the committee voted to report the resolution to the floor.

In dissenting views filed with the committee report, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, criticized the vote as being about giving up congressional power rather than the number of justices.

“The question H.J. Res. 1 presents is not really about whether nine should suddenly become a magic number of justices for the Supreme Court,” Raskin wrote. “It’s about whether this Republican-controlled Congress – which has already surrendered congressional war powers, congressional taxing and tariff powers, and congressional spending powers to a president desiring to be a king – should now permanently relinquish another constitutional power that the Framers gave to us in Article I.”

Raskin also accused the Supreme Court of being “profoundly partisan and lopsided” and wrote that the measure is meant to freeze the current court in place, pointing to the handling of two vacancies during President Barack Obama’s and President Donald Trump’s first terms.

He said that the amendment has no realistic path to becoming part of the Constitution.

Congress has changed the court’s size several times, according to a Congressional Research Service report cited by the Judiciary Committee.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 created a six-member court. Congress voted in 1801 to reduce it to five, but that change never took effect – the law applied only once a seat came open, and Congress repealed it before any vacancy occurred.

Several statutes over the following decades changed the number again, reaching 10 justices during the Civil War, the largest the court has ever been. Congress cut the number to seven in 1866, again through attrition rather than removing sitting justices, then set it at nine in 1869. That was the last time Congress changed the court’s size.

The report, “‘Court Packing’: Legislative Control over the Size of the Supreme Court,” says scholars disagree about why Congress made those changes, with some pointing to practical needs such as caseload and others arguing they were driven by political considerations.

The committee report says that during the period when the court’s size moved with the number of circuits, justices were also responsible for hearing cases in the lower federal courts, and that once that practice ended, there was no longer a reason to change the court’s size as new lower courts were created.

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator – the second largest US grid operator after PJM Interconnection – on Friday proposed a set of requirements large loads must meet before they can connect to the grid, including ramping and ride-through specifications.

The “interconnection reliability requirements” framework aims to improve MISO’s visibility into large load “characteristics and behavior, support reliable planning and operational decision-making, and establish scalable and technically justified expectations proportional to demonstrated reliability risk,” the grid operator said in its filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The proposal is a part of MISO’s response to FERC’s mid-June “show cause” orders requiring major grid operators to set rules that meet certain criteria for adding data centers and other large loads to the grid. MISO said it plans to make additional proposals by a Nov. 16 deadline.

MISO’s proposal follows similar actions at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the PJM Interconnection aimed at setting reliability standards for large loads after several incidents where data centers suddenly tripped offline, raising concerns about grid stability.

On average, electric demand was relatively flat between 2009 and 2024, growing by about 0.5% a year, MISO told FERC. Now, the grid operator expects 1% to 2% annual growth through 2044, with higher growth rates in the near term, according to MISO, which runs the grid and wholesale power markets from Louisiana to Minnesota.

MISO’s proposal defines “large loads” as those larger than 50 MW, and “computational loads” as large loads that include at least 25 MW of demand from information technology equipment, such as servers, storage and networking hardware.

The separate computational load classification will allow MISO to target certain requirements just to data centers, the grid operator said.

“Computational loads may exhibit rapid and coordinated changes in demand, significant power-electronic behavior, and distinct responses to transmission system disturbances,” MISO said.

MISO’s proposed reliability framework sets requirements for its transmission customers that take service on behalf of large loads. It covers four main areas:

• Visibility requirements

To improve MISO’s visibility into large loads on its system, transmission customers must provide MISO with basic information and modeling data on large load facilities, according to the proposal. They must also provide real-time and day-ahead load forecasts for the facilities.

The information is needed “to support planning studies, operational assessments, and accurate representation of large loads behavior and system impacts,” MISO said.

• Phasor Measurement Unit requirements

The PMU requirements set monitoring expectations for computation loads through high-resolution, time-synchronized measurements, according to MISO.

“PMU data provides MISO with greater visibility into facility behavior during system disturbances and rapid operating changes, supporting model validation, performance verification, disturbance analysis, and identification of potential dynamic interactions with the transmission system,” MISO said. 

• Ramp requirements

MISO said its proposed ramp requirements address the rate at which computational loads may increase or decrease electric use during stable-state transitions. 

“Managing rapid changes in demand helps reduce real-time supply-demand imbalances, sudden change in transmission power flows, and associated operational impacts, while supporting more reliable system operation,” MISO said.

• Ride-through requirements

The proposed measures set minimum disturbance performance requirements for computational loads during voltage and frequency disturbances to reduce the risk of unnecessary disconnection or customer-initiated rapid reductions in demands during system events, MISO said. 

MISO’s proposal includes grandfathering provisions to provide certainty to existing and nearly complete commercial arrangements for large loads. MISO asked FERC to let its proposal take effect on Dec. 4.

MISO plans to file additional large load-related proposals, including for additional transmission products and associated study processes, protections against cost shifts and the treatment of generation service to “electrically proximate” large loads, MISO said.

Oil prices were volatile but are trading around unchanged this morning, but still near the highest closing level in five weeks (WTI topped $92 overnight) as hostilities broke out again between the US and Iran, renewing the threat to energy exports from the Middle East.

The US conducted a second day of strikes on the Islamic Republic overnight, with President Donald Trump threatening more attacks if Tehran responded. Within hours, Iran retaliated against Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait, countries that host American forces.

“The market is now clearly pricing in a direct military confrontation, while the prospect of a negotiated solution has diminished,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at Global Risk Management in Copenhagen.

“This is a worse combination for the energy market than the situation we faced just a few days ago and even in April. Today, inventories are even more depleted.”

Priecs pared some gains this morning on Venezuela news and more much-debated news from Secretary Wright about ‘shadow’ flows through the Strait.

API

• Crude -2.6mm

• Cushing

• Gasoline +348k

• Distillates -265k

DOE

• Crude -4.45mm (+60k exp)

• Cushing +80k

• Gasoline -1.17mm

• Distillates +796k

US Crude stocks declined for the first time in five weeks (more than expected and more than API reported) while Gasoline stocks continued to drawdown and Cushing saw a de minimus build. Distillates stocks did see a build (good news) for the first time in five weeks…

Distillate supplies on the East Coast are now at record lows, while supplies on the West Coast are the lowest since May 2025. The vast majority of heating oil demand in the US occurs in the Northeast, so this is less than ideal with just a month to go before heating season starts.

Another brutal week for gasoline imports, which fell to 370,000 barrels a day last week. That’s below levels for the same time in 2020. There’s just not a lot of relief for markets desperate for more supply.

Amid all the clamor that Venezuela will be used to refill it, the SPR saw yet another drawdown last week (-3.12mm barrels) for the biggest overall crude draw since July…

The SPR is now at its lowest level since 1982…

US Crude production surged back to record highs…

Refinery crude refinery runs soared to the highest in seven years, as oil processing in both the Gulf Coast and Midwest moved higher, with the Midwest at an all-time record high. Runs on the Gulf Coast are the highest for this time of the year. 

WTI holding around $90…

The return to a hot war has once again thrust shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz into jeopardy, as the two sides remain at loggerheads and diplomatic efforts yield few results.

Iran is assessing the aftermath in terms of casualties and damage in the wake of the new flare-up in fighting, after the US launched a series of deadly attacks on the Islamic Republic Tuesday, focused in the south and Hormuz Strait area, and Tehran in expected fashion retaliated with drone-and-missile strikes against Gulf nations and Jordan.

Iran says the total death toll from the new American assault has risen to 18, especially following a an alleged mass casualty strike at a wedding celebration. It reportedly happened in happened Hormozgan province Tuesday night, with authorities having announced five were killed, including a child, and with at least 50 more wounded.

Regional media reports, “Six-year-old Amir Mohammad Karimi was among those killed, it said, adding that those wounded had been transferred to hospital in the nearby city of Minab.”

“Earlier, Reza Shahidiyan, the governor of Sirik county, told the IRIB state broadcaster that 63 people had been injured, including 50 women and children,” the report continues. “Other Iranian reporting has cited as many as 68 wounded.”

Tehran officials, as well as Iran’s Red Crescent Society, have made formal requests to global bodies, including the International Criminal Court, to take legal action for the civilian deaths and alleged war crimes.

BBC has cited the Pentagon as saying it is aware of reports about the strike but that US forces never targeted civilians.

🚨 🇮🇷 A U.S. attack on a wedding ceremony in Sirik, in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province, killed four people, including a child, the provincial Red Crescent’s managing director said, according to Tasnim. The province’s deputy governor for security earlier reported 50 wounded.… pic.twitter.com/eoHMkD2jJA

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 1, 2026

As for known targets from the Iranian response, which saw an initial ballistic missile wave target US bases in Jordan, some of the following has emerged:

• Camp Titin & Prince Hassan Base (Jordan): ballistic strikes.
• Erbil Bases (Iraq): Combined missile/drone.
• Ali Al Salem (Kuwait): HQs & drone ramps hit.
• US Naval Base (Bahrain): Casualties & destroyed aircraft reported.

Videos which purport to show some of these strikes, particularly against NSA Bahrain (certainly not for the first time, as it’s already suffered significant damage), have been widely circulating but remain unconfirmed.

WATCH: Footage reportedly showing Iran’s Shahed-136 drone hitting the U.S. 5th Fleet HQ in Manama, Bahrain this morning. pic.twitter.com/SR5ELmeS8i

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 2, 2026

In the Strait of Hormuz, the Revolutionary Guard has announced that two foreign ⁠oil ⁠tankers hit sea mines and are on fire after attempting to transit the waterway earlier in the day Wednesday. The IRGC said it occurred while the vessels used an “illegal route” through the the strait, state TV reports. Simultaneously Al Jazeera issued the following:

Bahri, a shipping company in Saudi Arabia, says two Filipino crew members were killed on board the SIDR vessel in an “incident” while transiting Hormuz.

As for the broader US naval blockade on Iranian ports, Reuters outlines that “Iran has gone about seven weeks without shipping meaningful crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz, as a U.S. naval blockade succeeds where years of sanctions failed by cutting off one of Tehran’s main sources of foreign-currency earnings.”

The commentary adds: “Unlike ‌previous sanctions campaigns, when Iranian crude continued reaching buyers despite restrictions, the current blockade has stopped fresh crude cargoes reaching China, Tehran’s only major remaining oil customer, increasing pressure on government finances and foreign-currency reserves.”

The world is now witnessing the seventh month of a “3-4 week” war, and the White House is still pushing this ‘the Iranian people will rise up’ narrative. According to a late Tuesday Trump Truth Social Post:

I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table, as ABC Fake News reported. I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight? President DJT

In the opening days of Operation Epic Fury it must be recalled that Trump claimed “help is on the way!” – and yet now amid a stalemated situation US bases across the region have been degraded and destroyed.

Where is Secretary of State Marco Rubio these days?…

I think Bessent is talking about the Trump administration here…

Things are getting rough behind the scenes clearly. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/Z5j40klgEG

— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) September 2, 2026

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meanwhile touting that the US is ‘cutting off the head of the snake.’

“When I was a kid in South Carolina, we lived near a swamp, and as a result, we’d end up with a lot of poison snakes in our yard. And you would take either a rake or a machete, or a paddle from a boat, and you cut the head off,” he said Tuesday.

“But the snake, the tail kept wiggling, and you had to bury the head of the snake because the head of the snake was still poisonous, and there was venom there. So we are burying the head of the Iranian snake,” he continued. “The snake doesn’t know it’s dead yet, but it will stop wiggling when the sun goes down.” But as yet, there are no signs of a rapidly collapsing state system, and there are no masses rising up in the streets.

Iranian leadership is vowing not to back down, but to continue inflicting pain on Washington, on the military, economic, and political fronts.

Parliament speaker goes off…

Minab school: children massacred.
Lamerd sports hall: kids slaughtered.
Kouhestak wedding: children killed with families.

If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan, and kills like Satan, it’s Satan.

Shields a junior Satan that does the same? It’s THE Great Satan.

— محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) September 2, 2026

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf on Wednesday has declared Iran does not reject negotiations but views them as a tool in its broader confrontation with the US and Israel, Tasnim reports. He is reiterating US must fulfill its commitments before Iran “takes steps” to reopen Hormuz – which suggests Tehran has not altogether abandoned the possibility of getting back to the negotiating table.

More Latest Developments

• US President Trump posted “I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table, as ABC Fake News reported. I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable.”
• US Treasury Secretary Bessent said Iran doesn’t control the Strait of Hormuz and the US took out Iranian radar along the strait, as well as got 17mln bbls of crude out on Monday. Bessent said that China pays Iran in yuan and when yuan cannot be converted to dollars, Iran starves, while he said they are in an acceleration phase of Iran bankruptcy and maybe Iran will lash out more kinetically.
• US Central Command said forces successfully completed a wave of strikes against Iranian military targets on September 1st in which they struck targets including air defence sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities, and communications sites.
• US strikes on Iranian targets on Tuesday included two Iranian government tankers under a new ‘tanker for tanker’ approved by US President Trump to deter Iranian attacks on tankers, according to Axios. Furthermore, US officials said around 100 targets were attacked during the strikes, while it was separately reported that the US assessed Iran was planning to expand attacks against commercial ships.
• Pakistan’s foreign ministry said Army Chief Munir visited Tehran and generated substantial momentum on the Strait of Hormuz issue and that Pakistan is positive about all parties returning to the negotiating table.
• Iran’s IRGC said two tankers were blown up and stopped a few hours ago after striking mines in the Strait of Hormuz. IRGC also warns of additional penalties for shipping companies.
• IRGC said it targeted US bases in Erbil, Iraq with missiles and drones. Iran’s army also launched drone attacks on the US base in Bahrain, while Kuwaiti air defences confronted attacks by hostile drones. Additionally, the IRGC said it attacked a US Marines base in Jordan known as Camp Tibtain with missiles and claimed that a large number of US forces were killed in the attack. However, US and Jordan officials reported no casualties.
• Russia has been secretly helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles, according to FT.

Having broken hand held above 160/USD, this morning (as the G20 meeting comes to an end), the yen is suddenly spiking higher, prompting desk chatter of another intervention…

There was no obvious news or macro catalyst for such a move, and for now, there is no follow through but it appears 160 is the new line in the sand for the Bessent/BoJ plunged protectors.

Some traders suggested it was a simple stop-hunt (which could still be instigated by ‘authorities’).

Developing…

Bloomberg obtained a letter from Uber Technologies CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to employees announcing “significant organizational changes” across the company aimed at reallocating spending toward delivery, artificial intelligence, and an increasingly expensive robotaxi buildout.

“Today, we’re making several significant organizational changes across Uber. We are removing layers, simplifying team structures, refining our global location strategy, and focusing our people and investments against the biggest opportunities ahead of us,” Khosrowshahi wrote in the letter.

The latest Bloomberg data show that, as of 2Q26, Uber employed 36,600 people across its global workforce, meaning a 10% cut equates to about 3,600 workers.

Uber will eliminate nearly half of its teams with only one or two members and reduce by 20% the number of employees positioned seven or more organizational layers below the CEO. In other words, the restructuring is impacting white-collar workers that AI agents can likely replace. 

The company is also combining engineering and science teams while consolidating its separate restaurant, retail, and white-label delivery operations.

There was a report earlier this year that Uber had blown through its AI budget within the first few months of the year after encouraging employees to use frontier models as aggressively as possible. 

We summed that up perfectly…

Tokenmaxxing -> Layoffmaxxing https://t.co/ZHHLQDhIHO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2026

Savings from the restructuring will be reinvested in Uber’s core ride-sharing and delivery platforms, as well as the company’s effort to build what Khosrowshahi called an “autonomous future.”

Uber has pledged to invest more than $10 billion in robotaxi partnerships over the coming years as it seeks to become the dominant top player for summoning autonomous vehicles. The company has already invested in Avride, Lucid, Nuro and Rivian while reducing stakes elsewhere to free up capital.

WAYMO IS FIGHTING THE ROBOTAXI WAR WITH AN EXPENSIVE & CLUNKY PROOF OF CONCEPT COMPARED TO A SLEEK TESLA MODEL

Eight boxy Waymos. One million dollars.

Each one a $125,000 science project: lidar hats, radar arrays, custom compute, a chassis that still costs more than some… pic.twitter.com/jkYTD78rJ3

— 🌋🌋 Deep₿lueCrypto 🌋🌋 (@DeepBlueCrypto) September 2, 2026

Khosrowshahi’s companywide email in full: Team,

Team,

Today, we’re making a number of significant organizational changes across Uber. We are removing layers, simplifying team structures, refining our global location strategy, and focusing our people and investments against the biggest opportunities ahead of us. As a result, we will be reducing the size of our team by about 10%. Everyone whose role has been affected has already been notified, except in countries where we will follow the required local process.

This wasn’t a decision we made lightly, because it will have a real impact on our teammates and friends who have worked hard for Uber. It’s important to say that these changes are about how we’re organized and what we’re prioritizing, not about anyone’s contributions to Uber, which we always value.

I’m sure you’re asking, ‘Why, and why now?’—particularly since our business is performing so well. Over the last 5+ years, Uber has grown by orders of magnitude, with our top line nearly tripling. We’ve built new products, expanded into new businesses, reached more consumers and supported more earners, and become a much larger and stronger company. But that growth has also brought complexity: more layers, more coordination, more fragmented ownership, and in some cases structures that made sense when businesses were smaller but no longer serve us well at our current scale.

Our opportunity from here is enormous: we have the chance to bring Uber to hundreds of millions more people; to invest even more in drivers, couriers and merchants; and to innovate across our core businesses and build the autonomous future.

To do those things, we need to make deliberate choices about where we put our people, our time, and our capital.

The changes we’re making today are designed to do two things: make Uber simpler and faster, and create more capacity to invest in our future. A leaner organization will mean clearer ownership, faster decisions, and more time spent building rather than coordinating. It will also generate savings that we intend to reinvest in growth, innovation, and the capabilities that will matter most over the coming years.

It’s our job as leaders to make these difficult calls, and to give you transparency into our thinking and our decision-making process. Here’s what we are doing and why:

• Organizational health: In Pulse surveys and conversations with many of you, we’ve heard that too much work requires coordination across teams, debates take too long, and decision-making rights are unclear. I’m sure many of you have felt that you spend too much time “aligning” rather than building, shipping, or serving customers. To improve this, we have reduced roles primarily focused on coordination, and have clarified the remit of the coordination roles that remain. We also cut down the number of management layers by broadening manager scopes, particularly where we had “micro-teams” of only 1-2 reports. In all, we’ve reduced the number of employees who sit 7+ layers from the CEO by 20% and the number of micro-teams by nearly 50%. The outcome is a simpler org chart geared toward building versus managing.
• Team simplification: We brought together teams where fragmentation was creating duplication and slowing decisions. The most significant example of this is Mac’s decision to combine our three current Delivery Ops teams (across Restaurants, Retail, and Direct) into single-threaded teams at the global, regional, and country levels. Running these three businesses separately made sense in their early days, but that structure is no longer serving us at scale. Bringing the P&Ls together under single owners will reduce overlap, clarify accountability, and allow GMs to allocate capital more efficiently and effectively based on their strategic imperatives. Another example of this: in Tech, we’re combining our Core Services Engineering and Science teams, mirroring the structure we already have on Mobility and Delivery.
• Location strategy: The benefits of sitting together, collaborating in person, and solving problems as a team are clearer than ever in our post-Covid world. With that in mind, we’re establishing clearer principles for where roles and teams should be based, with the goal of concentrating teams in a smaller number of key hubs. Global teams will be concentrated in our largest global hubs, NY and SF; regional teams in designated regional hubs; local teams in country hubs; and tech teams in tech hubs. We’ll prioritize co-location between managers and their teams wherever possible, particularly for earlier-career employees. We are also asking the vast majority of remote employees to move to an office, and going forward, only ~1% of employees will be remote. We’ll also continue to reinforce compliance with our hybrid work policy, which requires three days a week in the office. You can read more about our location strategy here.

I realize this is a lot of change, but we decided it was better to make one big shift rather than multiple small ones. We also know organizational changes can be hugely distracting, and our job is to create an environment that allows you to focus and do your best work. With these decisions now made, our focus is on the future.

We have tremendous momentum, significant financial capacity, and opportunities in front of us that are larger than at any point since I joined the company. The decisions we’re making today are difficult, but they will help us build an even stronger Uber for the years ahead.

You can read more about the changes across the company here, and please be sure to read specific follow-up information you’ll receive from your leaders about what this means for your team, so we can all keep building together.

Uber on,
Dara

The restructuring follows a subdued stretch for Uber shares this year, which were down 8% year-to-date through Tuesday’s close after trading largely range-bound between $70 and $80.

The market welcomed the cost-cutting measures, with shares gaining nearly 2% in premarket trading in New York.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

It was carried out to justify the German economy’s evolution to war footing, distract from the resultant problems, and legitimize a future serious escalation against Russia.

Germany blamed Russia for last month’s incident in Leipzig when one explosives-laden drone was found on the tarmac in proximity to Ukrainian cargo planes, another reportedly collided with a separate cargo plane as it tried to land but failed to explode, and a third was later found close to the premises. Putin condemned their claim, shared his opinion that it was a false flag due to them planting evidence, and speculated that the motive was to distract from domestic problems by fearmongering about Russia.

While skeptics might roll their eyes, the Leipzig incident has all the hallmarks of a false flag.

• For starters, Germany is implying cartoonish incompetence on the part of Russia. The public is supposed to believe that the most skilled drone operators in the world, who were tasked with what would have been the most sensational Hybrid War attack on NATO ever, left a drone on the tarmac, got unlucky when another failed to explode after it hit a landing cargo plane, and left another nearby. That’s difficult to believe.

• The second point to make in support of Putin’s hypothesis is that something similar happened last fall when unknown drones forced major airports in Scandinavia to temporarily ground all flights. Zelensky predictably blamed Russia and called for closing the Danish Straits to its shipping. As with the Leipzig incident, no evidence was ever shared in support of that claim, but it served as the precedent to blame Russia for mysterious drone-related incidents in Europe in order to justify more escalations against it.

• And finally, while Zelensky’s proposed escalation ultimately never came to fruition (most likely to avoid a hot NATO-Russian war), an escalation of some sort might follow the Leipzig incident. It was argued here in late August that NATO would expect to gain more from a serious escalation with Russia than the inverse, which could take the form of resuming summer’s failed drone campaign against Russia at scale indefinitely in pursuit of its deindustrialization and demilitarization. That might be attempted next year.

Observers should remember that Germany, which is now Ukraine’s second-most-important military patron behind the US, reached a deal in the spring to develop Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities. Its economy is also getting on war footing as Germany rapidly remilitarizes in furtherance of its goal to command Europe’s largest army ahead of the EU’s prediction of a possible war with Russia around 2030. This has proven unpopular with voters, however, ergo the need to justify it through the Leipzig incident.

To recap the explanation of Putin’s false flag hypothesis, last fall’s Russian drone scare in Scandinavia served as the pretext for blaming the Kremlin for future such incidents without evidence, which Germany has now done with the Leipzig one. The narrative of Russian drone operators’ incompetence is difficult to believe, however, but it’s still being pushed to justify the Germany economy’s evolution to war footing, distract from the resultant problems, and legitimize a future serious escalation against Russia.

As was written, this could take the form of resuming summer’s failed drone campaign against Russia at scale indefinitely in pursuit of its deindustrialization and demilitarization, but that risks crossing Russia’s nuclear threshold per its updated doctrine. At the very least, Putin would once again mildly “escalate to de-escalate” against Ukraine, but there’s always a chance that everything spirals out of control. It would therefore be best for Germany to eschew escalation just like the Scandinavian states ultimately did.

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest monthly gain since the chaotic days of the Arab Spring riots and is nearing a breakout above its 2023 highs, signaling a broad-based acceleration in agricultural commodity prices. The upside momentum comes as Wall Street increasingly warns that a perfect storm of factors, from El Niño and higher fertilizer and diesel prices to disruptions in the Black Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, could push the global food system toward another crisis.

From veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie turning bullish and UBS urging clients last week to “position for a commodity upcycle” to warnings from Barclays analyst Craig Rye and JPMorgan analyst Nora Szentivanyi, the message from Wall Street is becoming increasingly harder and harder to ignore: Agricultural prices are breaking out, raising the risk that today’s physical commodity squeeze develops into a worldwide food crisis next year.

For August, BCOMAGSP logged an impressive 13.5% gain, its largest monthly increase since July 2012’s 14.3% gain – around the time of Arab Spring spread across Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. 

BCOMAGSP is up 39% from its 2024 low. If the upside momentum continues, the index, which tracks major crops and soft commodities, is poised to take out its 2023 highs.

Our latest coverage:

• Barclays Warns Next Commodity Shock Is Taking Shape: What You Need To Know
• Agricultural Commodity Prices Break Out As JPMorgan’s Food Crisis Warning Gets Louder

Snapshot of the broader commodity complex:

1. Hormuz tanker strikes send Brent above $92. Two oil tankers were struck in the Strait of Hormuz overnight. Brent traded around $92.20, up roughly 2%, while WTI traded between $87.80 and $88.00, up approximately 2.3% to 2.6%.

2. Gold falls below $4,400 as the 10-year yield approaches 4.79%. Spot and futures gold traded between approximately $4,370 and $4,400, down roughly 1.3% to 1.9% following Warsh’s hawkish Jackson Hole remarks. Markets are pricing in approximately 60% odds of a September hike.

3. Silver breaks into the $65 range, while palladium fares worse. Silver traded between approximately $64.70 and $65.40, down 2.4% to 2.7%; palladium traded around $1,340, down roughly 2.8%; and platinum traded around $1,768, down approximately 1.5%. Gold and silver are selling off together with rising yields, suggesting this is not an isolated gold ETF liquidation.

4. Chinese refiners bid ESPO to a $7 premium over Brent. 

6. Long-term uranium hits another all-time high at approximately $96.50 per pound. The blended UxC and TradeTech long-term U3O8 price reached $96.50, while the UxC long-term price rose $2 to $96. Spot uranium traded between approximately $89.60 and $89.75, up roughly $3.

7. Distillate tightness remains the underreported oil story. Heating oil traded around $4.46, up 1.1%, while gasoline gained only 0.4% to approximately $3.09. Older but still relevant research continues to circulate showing US distillate inventories at 23-year lows and 13% to 14% below seasonal norms. Crude inventories are 6% below the five-year average following an eight-week, 47.5-million-barrel draw.

8. US Henry Hub remains weak at $2.92, while TTF and UK gas surge. NYMEX natural gas traded around $2.92, down 0.3%; TTF traded around €71.50, up 2.4%; and UK gas surged approximately 7%. US natural gas remains the orphan of the energy complex.

10. Copper slips roughly 1% despite the oil shock, highlighting the split between growth concerns and physical tightness. COMEX copper traded between approximately $6.51 and $6.61, down roughly 1.2%. Prices remain near cycle highs, with an August peak of approximately $6.75 and LME copper near $14,400 per ton. The physical-tightness and US inventory-migration story from August is fading into a rates- and growth-driven market.

11. Long-term breakouts in wheat and soybeans remain in play. Chicago wheat gained approximately 1.5% to 2%, trading between roughly 772 and 785, while soybeans gained around 1%, trading between approximately 1,288 and 1,301. Soft-commodity commentary indicates that wheat, soybeans and sugar have made long-term bullish breakouts, while cotton remains offered.

12. The ISM Manufacturing PMI is today’s key event risk for the entire commodity complex. Foreign-exchange and commodity desks have flagged the ISM report as the session’s primary catalyst on top of Warsh and Hormuz. A strong print could increase the odds of another rate hike, inflicting further pain on gold and silver while producing a mixed response in copper. A weak print could trigger a risk-off move that still lifts oil if interpreted as stagflationary.

13. Trump’s SPR-for-Venezuelan-oil proposal and the country’s 65 billion barrels of reserves.

14. UAE refinery returns to full capacity after sustaining wartime damage.

15. Ukraine strikes the Ust-Luga oil terminal on the Baltic Sea.

16. Retail investors continue buying the gold dip, while CTAs and broader positioning appear offered.

The Group of 20 finance meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, concluded on Tuesday after four days of discussions among finance ministers and central bank chiefs on global trade. The news late Tuesday was that China had derailed the group’s efforts to issue a joint communiqué by refusing to endorse specific language targeting trade surpluses and export-dependent economic models.

“The country with the world’s largest and unsustainable current account surplus, the People’s Republic of China, was the dissenter,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters.

Bessent added, “Non-market-based economies pushing out a never-ending spring of cheap exports is not sustainable.”

US and European officials told the Financial Times that Beijing objected to language intended to support the smooth functioning of global supply chains for energy, food, fertilizer and critical minerals.

Asked why China had opposed the language agreed upon by the group, a senior US official explained: “They are guilty. If we are worried about persistent distortions, they are the worst offenders. For the G20 to have something at 19-1 is unbelievable.”

The dispute over the communiqué, an official joint statement agreed to by all G20 members after a meeting that typically summarizes areas of agreement, economic concerns, policy commitments or priorities, and areas requiring further cooperation, offers another glimpse into the widening economic fracture between Beijing and the West. China’s staggering $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025 was up 20% from the previous year, as its heavily subsidized exports flood the West, such as cheap EVs produced by BYD Motors.

What the breakdown suggests is that Beijing remains unwilling to rebalance an economic model built around industrial overcapacity, state-directed financing, weak household consumption and relentless exports. For the US and Europe, the concern is becoming a national security priority as industrial bases are hollowed out while governments attempt to rebuild domestic supply chains. 

“It came down to a few words. As we have seen with the Chinese, they try to slow things down and methodically change the nomenclature. We’re not going for that,” a senior US official told the FT. “They need to seriously reconsider this. If they can’t even agree on words, they certainly won’t be able to deliver on any action.”

China also objected to any mention of “critical minerals,” according to the officials.

Last year, Beijing introduced sweeping new global export controls on critical materials after Trump slapped tariffs on China. Two critical materials subject to export restrictions, tungsten and germanium, among others, have only led to severe tightening across global physical markets.

President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping are set to meet on Sept. 24 in Washington, DC, as increasing hostilities have already emerged over Bessent’s economic campaign against Iran and sanctions against Chinese entities. A Politico report last week detailed how US lawmakers are pressing Bessent to target large Chinese banks over Iran. Any such effort could come after the Trump-Xi meeting.

If Bessent targeted Chinese banks over their involvement with Tehran, we would expect Beijing to further tighten supplies of critical materials to the West, which is why we launched our decoupling theme, focusing on the top ex-China miner.