Goldman’s CoreWeave upgrade is three days old, and so far it has achieved precisely nothing.

On Monday, Goldman’s Gabriela Borges upgraded CoreWeave (CRWV) to Buy (in the process cutting her price target by almost a quarter) which is a creative way to turn bullish:

On CRWV, Goldman was Neutral with a $139 price target. it is now a Buy with a $106 price target.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 19, 2026

The stock spiked to $66 premarket and then, right after the open, gave back the entire pop, prompting us to note that Goldman was gonna need a bigger upgrade:

The opposite happened: a day later, HSBC tore apart Goldman’s bull case a new one with a $39 target (“the more it invests, the more the value destruction“), and this morning it’s Bernstein’s turn. CoreWeave is down another 8% this morning to $56.70, below where it traded before Goldman said “Buy”, and below the 52-week low of $57.24.

Goldman, meanwhile, doubled down. Late on Wednesday, Borges published a follow-up titled “How big is the funding gap?” (available to pro subs), because, in her words, “the primary question we have received from investors is around the magnitude and viability of future funding needs.” Her answer: about $23 billion. Bernstein’s answer, published a few hours later: $76 billion.

Somebody’s math is off by more than three times. Let’s figure out whose.

“Not Great, Not A Surprise”

Bernstein’s Madison Rezaei, who correctly had an Underperform on CoreWeave since initiating seven months ago, cut her price target to $51 from $74 in a note with what is hands down the best title of the year: “Core-We’ve got bills to pay… lowering our PT” (also available to pro subs). She also cut her target EV/EBIT multiple to 23.5x from 25.5x, “primarily reflecting concerns around its cost of capital, especially as the company moves to shorter-dated contracts.“

The note follows a week of what Rezaei describes as non-stop calls with “hedge funds, LOs, bulls, bears, credit people, REIT investors, and everybody in between.” The first question on everyone’s mind was the same one Goldman tried to answer, and Bernstein’s reply is refreshingly blunt:

“Not great, not a surprise. We estimate CRWV needs to raise $85B to fund the existing committed backlog, $9B of which is already covered by existing facilities. The unsecured credit market are still open to them at rates in the 15%+ range, given where the bonds are trading today, but we think there are a range of more reasonable options.”

In other words, $76 billion of fresh money just to deliver the compute CoreWeave has already sold, before signing a single new contract. And no, CoreWeave can’t simply stop growing its way out of the problem. Bernstein specifically addresses the investors asking whether the company could just slow spending and harvest cash:

“We distinguish stopping new contract wins from stopping investment: even without additional backlog, the company would still need to fund deployment obligations embedded in existing contracts, as well as maintenance and replacement requirements. Even a no-additional-backlog scenario would not produce immediate improvements in profitability given the funding requirements of existing contracts.”

Bernstein models roughly $46 billion of growth capex next year to deliver existing backlog plus about $6 billion of maintenance capex, for a total of $52.5 billion in 2027, actually above consensus. And even in the “no future backlog” scenario, 2027 capex is still $43.5 billion. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that Bernstein’s capex falls off a cliff after 2027 because it is well below the Street on growth in 2028 and beyond. Bulls may not see it that way.

Bernstein also took an axe to earnings: its 2026 adjusted EPS loss widens to -$5.14 from -$4.56, and 2027 to -$6.81 from -$4.77, with adjusted losses persisting through at least 2029 in its model. That’s three more years of losses on top of the $76 billion.

Goldman’s $23 Billion Napkin

Now for Goldman’s version. Borges walks through three illustrative scenarios, and the headline (as per the title of her one and only exhibit) is that debt needed to serve existing $129 billion backlog “could be $20-23bn when including customer prepayments,” while ramping all 4.2GW of secured power would take about $38 billion.

Look a little closer at that table, though, and the number gets small mostly because of what goes into it. In Scenario 1, CoreWeave needs about $60 billion of capex to serve its backlog. Goldman assumes 80% can be debt-financed through DDTLs, subtracts $10.6 billion of committed-but-undrawn DDTL capacity and $10.4 billion of “cash optionality”, and arrives at $36.7 billion of new debt. To get to the headline $22.9 billion, it then assumes customers hand over 20% of total contract value up front, or $15.7 billion. Stretch GPU useful life to six years, and the number shrinks further to $19.5 billion.

A few problems with that:

• The prepayments are going the wrong way. By Goldman’s own admission, “CoreWeave’s prepayment percentages have come down in the last 6 months.” Goldman’s spin is that this “suggest[s] these percentages can also go up in an environment where there is less visibility into debt financing.” Translation: when CoreWeave can’t borrow, its customers will happily lend it the money instead. Maybe. Or maybe customers who just watched CoreWeave’s bonds trade at 15% decide they’d rather not prepay a counterparty with distressed debt.
• The “cash optionality” is optimistic. The $10.4 billion includes $2.2 billion from selling 35 million ATM shares at $64, about 9% above where the stock trades this morning, and a $2 billion revolver. According to Bernstein’s debt table (as of Oct 20), $1.2 billion of the $2.5 billion revolver is already drawn, which would leave $1.3 billion.
• The 4.2GW number needs $52.7 billion of customer money. Scenario 3’s $38 billion assumes prepayments of $52.7 billion. Without them, the new debt needed is $84.5 billion, at a 94% debt-to-loan ratio, which is well above the 80% cap Goldman itself says the DDTL structure allows. Funny how that number didn’t make the title.
• There is no cost of capital anywhere in the note. Goldman calculates how much CoreWeave needs to borrow, but not at what rate, deferring to the “financing cost assumptions in our upgrade note” (the one with a 10% cost of new debt, about two-thirds of what CoreWeave’s unsecured bonds currently yield).

Here is the full range of answers to “how much does CoreWeave still need to borrow”, depending on whose spreadsheet you trust and what you assume customers will do:

To Goldman’s credit, the note ends with “Our worksheet is available on request and we welcome feedback on our assumptions.” Consider this our feedback.

Goldman’s Model Disagrees With Goldman’s Note

The irony is that the best rebuttal to Goldman’s funding note can be found on page 2 of the very same note, in Goldman’s own financial model. Ignore the illustrative scenarios and look at the cash flow statement, and Goldman has CoreWeave burning $28.2 billion of free cash flow in 2026, another $28.2 billion in 2027 and $15.8 billion in 2028, on capex of $38.6 billion, $48.0 billion and $49.9 billion. To fund that, Goldman’s model has debt increasing by $26.7 billion this year, $26.6 billion in 2027 and $20.0 billion in 2028. That’s $46.6 billion of new debt in the next two years alone, double the headline “funding gap”, and that’s before $50 billion of lease liabilities which Goldman models by 2028 (and which are, of course, debt by another name).

Long-term debt goes from $14.9 billion at the end of 2025 to $90.8 billion by 2028. Goldman’s interest coverage ratio for CoreWeave is 0.3x this year and 0.7x in 2027, meaning operating profit doesn’t even cover the interest bill until 2028, when it reaches a still-miserable 1.3x. Net debt to equity peaks at 3,059% in 2027. And cash on the balance sheet drops to $1.2 billion at the end of 2027, which is a little thin for a company with $6 billion in annual interest expense (also per Goldman).

Which brings us to the obligatory disclosure appendix, where Goldman notes it “is acting as a manager or co-manager of a pending underwriting” for CoreWeave, owns 1% or more of the stock, and expects “to receive or intends to seek compensation for investment banking services in the next 3 months.” As we said on Tuesday, none of this makes the analysis right or wrong. But if CoreWeave really does need somewhere between $20 billion and $85 billion in new money, it’s nice to know who’ll be helping raise it (the same one, mind you, that just upgraded the stock).

15% Money And The DDTL Treadmill

Back to Bernstein, which does what Goldman doesn’t: it looks at what the debt costs, when it comes due and who it sits with. CoreWeave has $42.1 billion of debt outstanding and a $3.3 billion annual interest bill, a blended rate of 7.8% that is dragged down by $10.8 billion of 2-3% converts. Everything else is priced like junk, because it is.

On Bernstein’s numbers, CoreWeave’s gross debt is 8.6x LTM adjusted EBITDA, or 11.7x on total committed capacity, and still 7.4x on next year’s EBITDA:

The good news is that most of the debt matures in 2030-2032 (about $31 billion in those three years), so Bernstein does not “expect the company to see real distress anytime soon.” The less good news is that the DDTLs are amortizing structures, and “principal repayments and covenant tests begin well before final maturity, making near-term debt service and covenant headroom important considerations.“

How near-term? According to Bernstein’s DDTL calendar, monthly repayments on DDTL 5.0 begin around October 22, 2026, i.e. today (CoreWeave says November), with the first 1.35x DSCR covenant test due around November 30. DDTL 5.5 starts amortizing in January, and the $8.5 billion DDTL 4.0 next July:

Then there’s the cost of new money. CoreWeave’s unsecured bonds yield around 15%, which Bernstein calls “an important signal of the market’s required compensation for risk,” and the most recent secured facility was hardly cheap either: DDTL 5.5, priced in August, came in at SOFR+5.50%, the widest spread since the very first DDTL in 2023. Bernstein thinks “subsequent deals could price even higher.“

And here is the catch-22 at the heart of Bernstein’s thesis. CoreWeave needs to move toward shorter contracts with enterprise customers to remain competitive with hyperscalers (who are also its biggest customers and are building their own capacity). Shorter contracts capture higher pricing per MW. But…

“Unfortunately those contracts are riskier to creditors and do not help CRWV lower its cost of capital. DDTL 5.5 was at SOFR+5.5% – this is the best proxy; subsequent deals could price even higher.”

Put differently, the more CoreWeave does what it needs to do strategically, the more it costs to fund. Bernstein assigns “a low, nonzero probability” to CoreWeave building a sufficiently differentiated enterprise business, which is about as polite as sell-side prose gets.

A 9% Business With A 32% Story

Which brings us to returns. Bernstein runs the numbers on what it believes is CoreWeave’s best contract, the Meta deal (including the $21 billion expansion), and gets a best-case unlevered IRR of 9-12% (9% in its illustrative model). Levered, it jumps to 32%, which sounds great until you look at how it gets there:

CoreWeave spends $10.8 billion of capex, borrows $10 billion of it, puts in $756 million of equity, and then collects… $129 million a year in levered free cash flow for five years, with the bulk of the return riding on a $2.3 billion residual value in year six. In other words, the 32% is almost entirely leverage plus a bet on what six-year-old GPUs will be worth in 2031. And that’s on 9% unlevered returns, against new money that costs 9% secured and 15% unsecured. HSBC made the same point on Tuesday with its 8.9% ROIC, and Bernstein’s math gets to the same place from a different direction.

Management says contracts signed since 2Q have “materially better economics.” Bernstein’s response is that the newer contracts “may be too small to change overall blended returns meaningfully,” and its “view leans toward medium-term economics resembling the older contracts more closely.“

Not A Zero… Just A Ward Of Jensen

To be fair to CoreWeave, Bernstein is not calling for a wipeout: “We do not believe CRWV is a 0 – they still have a large backlog, line of sight to powered shell delivery, and while we don’t think the contracts are super attractive, they’re not underwater.” Prediction markets seem to agree, at least after SpaceX’s blowout quarter:

stellar SPCX results sent Coreweave bankruptcy odds (by Dec 31, 2028) sharply lower https://t.co/Mjc8LU7xjp

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 21, 2026

The floor, in Bernstein’s view, is the same one that has been debated on these pages since the meltdown began last week: Nvidia. Asked whether Jensen would step in, Bernstein says “we think they would intervene in a true downside. Doesn’t necessarily re-energize the stock, but raises the floor.” Which is great news for CoreWeave shareholders, if a little awkward for Huang, who told everyone last week that CoreWeave’s cost of capital was “actually decreasing.” Well, no… it’s not of course, and as one of our contributors put it on Saturday, Jensen will blink first.

Bernstein’s other conclusion is that the damage is “semi-contained“: “If it ceased to exist tomorrow, colo contracts would be absorbed and the rest of the market would carry on.” We’d put more weight on the “semi” than the “contained.” CoreWeave is still the market’s beta barometer for AI credit, it’s the tenant on seven of the 20 project-finance data center bonds in the junk market, and the neocloud listings that tried to follow it to market keep faceplanting. Here is the latest casualty list:

Rezaei closes with what might be the most honest paragraph written about CoreWeave all month:

“We caught a lot of hate when we initiated on CRWV with a $56 price target seven months ago. Today, it’s a lot harder to find bulls – certainly some of them just don’t call us anymore, but there seems to be more broad acceptance of the challenges of this business model. Could this turn around? Maybe: it’s a wildly volatile, momentum-driven stock, but barring major moves, the fundamentals are probably stuck.”

So there you have it: one bank says CoreWeave’s funding gap is $23 billion if customers prepay, GPUs last six years and the stock goes back to $64; the other says $76 billion, at 15%, for a business earning 9% (obviously, one is wrong).

Goldman’s own model, meanwhile, quietly sides with the latter. Having warned since last October that AI had quietly become a debt bubble too, we know which spreadsheet we’d trust, and it’s probably not the one attached to a pending underwriting. The bills, as Bernstein puts it, still have to be paid, and the first DDTL 5.0 installment comes due right about now.

Much more in the full Bernstein “Core-We’ve got bills to pay… lowering our PT” note and Goldman’s “How big is the funding gap?“, both available to pro subs.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A possible new wealth tax in California prompted Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg to consider leaving the state, according to a new regulatory filing.

California voters will decide on Proposition 40 in November. It would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires.

If approved, Zuckerberg would have to pay a multibillion-dollar tax, Meta lawyers said in the Oct. 21 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that included frequent mentions of a special committee of independent directors.

“In light of this potential tax exposure, Mr. Zuckerberg informed the Special Committee that he was evaluating relocating his primary residence outside California and that steps toward any such relocation, including any listing of his residential real estate in California on the market, would be public and inevitably noted and commented upon by Company employees and, accordingly, raise questions for management of the Company going forward,” the filing stated.

The committee said Zuckerberg “has been crucial to the Company’s growth since its inception,” that he is best-positioned at this time to ensure the company’s continued success, and that it is important to keep him in a leadership position to drive the company’s continued success.

Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, faced challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, which it said stemmed from Zuckerberg’s inability to be physically present with the company’s management team, and the committee did not want similar challenges in the future.

The company said it is creating a new class of stock, beginning in January 2027, that will let it raise money for investment in artificial intelligence systems and incentivize Zuckerberg to remain a Meta executive.

An upcoming stock dividend will distribute class C shares to Zuckerberg and other shareholders.

“Again, the goal is to keep Mr. Zuckerberg continuing to lead the Company from California and in close proximity to Meta Superintelligence Labs,” the filing stated.

“In light of that importance, the Special Committee secured Mr. Zuckerberg’s commitment to remain a resident of California, or any other jurisdiction in which the Company maintains its corporate headquarters, for eight years from the date of the Founder Alignment Agreement, for so long as Mr. Zuckerberg satisfies the Continued Leadership Condition, unless there are material unforeseen circumstances that would render it prudent or advisable for Mr. Zuckerberg to reside elsewhere.”

Meta on Wednesday reported a third-quarter profit of $9.89 billion, up from $2.79 billion in the third quarter of 2025. Earnings per share were $3.83, up from $1.05.

The jump stemmed in part from much lower taxes and higher revenue.

Meta’s revenue was $64.6 billion in the third quarter, and it expects to make $73 billion to $76 billion in the fourth quarter.

“We hit major milestones this quarter toward delivering personal superintelligence for everyone – including launching Muse and Muse Wonder, our first frontier model,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “Our investments are paying off, the core business is strong, and we’re seeing velocity across the board.”

Artificial intelligence has uncovered a potentially catastrophic security flaw in one of the internet’s most widely used technologies, setting off a scramble among cybersecurity researchers, software developers, and website operators to prevent hackers from exploiting the discovery, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The vulnerability affects PHP, a programming technology that underpins as much as 70% of the world’s websites. Researchers discovered that weaknesses in the way PHP handles computer memory could allow attackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable servers, potentially gaining control of websites, accessing sensitive information, and compromising visitors.

What makes the discovery particularly troubling is that the same AI technology used to identify the problem could also make it substantially easier for criminals to exploit it.

WSJ writes that the flaw, dubbed PHP2Shell, was uncovered in August by Ryan Austin of cybersecurity firm Calif, who used OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol to examine PHP’s underlying code. Although the weaknesses had been present for years, researchers had previously considered them extraordinarily difficult to exploit. With AI assistance, however, Austin demonstrated that some servers could be compromised in seconds, while more complicated systems could be breached over several hours.

The findings prompted a coordinated effort involving PHP developers, independent security researchers, and teams from Google’s Wiz and OpenAI. The group spent weeks quietly developing fixes, ultimately modifying nearly 200 files and writing more than 10,000 lines of code.

The secrecy was intentional. Researchers feared that publicizing the vulnerability before a patch was ready would give attackers an opportunity to develop their own AI-assisted exploits.

That concern reflects a broader shift in cybersecurity. Historically, hackers needed considerable time and expertise to reverse-engineer software updates and determine which weaknesses developers were attempting to correct. Advanced AI systems can now automate much of that work, potentially allowing attackers to develop working exploits before website administrators have finished installing security updates.

Volker Dusch, a security engineer associated with the nonprofit foundation responsible for PHP, called the discovery the technology’s most serious security problem in more than a decade. He compared its significance to Heartbleed, the notorious 2014 vulnerability that forced organizations around the world to urgently secure their systems.

Wiz co-founder Ami Luttwak went further, describing PHP2Shell as an exceptionally serious AI-discovered vulnerability, suggesting that its complexity might have kept it hidden indefinitely without artificial intelligence.

The developers initially targeted October 22 for releasing the patches, but details of the upcoming security update leaked onto Hacker News on Tuesday. That prompted an accelerated rollout Wednesday, as some government and commercial website operators reportedly took systems offline as a precaution and reports of attempted attacks began circulating.

The larger concern is that artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the economics and speed of cyberattacks. The technology is allowing security researchers to uncover vulnerabilities that might otherwise remain buried for decades, while simultaneously giving malicious actors increasingly powerful tools to exploit those same weaknesses. For organizations responsible for securing the internet, the window between discovering a vulnerability and facing a potentially widespread attack may be shrinking dramatically.

Update(1145ET): Amid fresh reports of the US and Israel drawing up plans to attack Iran after the November midterm elections, President Trump has issued a new Truth Social post, saying Iran is doing everything possible to try and drive up oil prices – suggesting “fake hits” and daily reports of mine explosions – but while also touting the US naval escort mission which has seen “more oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz than it did before” the conflict, which as we highlighted is accurate. He further repeats the highly dubious ‘75,000 protesters killed’ number, and stresses that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.

This also comes as Netanyahu has freshly claimed Iran is bent on creating a nuclear weapon, emphasizing he wants to see regime change in Tehran.

Strait traffic dramatically rebounded over the last month:

🔺 Iran says it hit 7 vessels in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz as Brent crude surges to $112. 🔹Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy said Thursday that its forces simultaneously struck four vessels conducting ship-to-ship oil transfers in the northern Persian Gulf, leaving all four burning. Three other vessels hit naval mines west of the Strait of Hormuz overnight, caught fire and came to a halt, according to the IRGC. 🔹The IRGC said the four vessels had used shipping routes it had declared prohibited, despite Iranian warnings. It accused the U.S. military of encouraging ships to cross mined routes, and warned that further U.S. involvement could prompt attacks on American bases across the region. 🔹As Brent crude rose nearly 3%, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Iran of “making up fake hits, mines, and everything else” to drive up oil prices before the midterms, claiming “more Oil is coming through the Hormuz Strait now than it did even prior to the beginning of the Conflict.” The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency, however, recorded more than two dozen attacks on ships in October, a record, and said a “majority” of vessels attacked were not reporting incidents.

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 22, 2026

*  *  *

At this point it seems both sides believe another major round of the US-Iran war is imminent. There’s been ample speculation of late whether President Trump will initiate another bombing campaign before or after the November midterm elections.

The White House may throw its hands up in the air and reason that Republicans are going to do bad in the elections anyway, and a pre-election bombing could be a Hail Mary effort at resetting the board, though one that will probably make it worse for the US force posture in the Middle East.

At the moment, the US State Department is evacuating further diplomats and their families from the embassy in Saudi Arabia, as Houthi attacks keep threatening airports, energy sites, and cities. A heightened state of alert is in effect for American citizens across the whole region.

Read our: Amid ‘Compromise’ Chaos, Analyst Sees 90% Chance Of Iran War Round 3 As Hegseth Makes ‘Secretive’ Israel Visit

Fresh reporting in the NY Times says indicates a renewed bombing campaign is likely to happen after the elections on November 3. The US and Israeli militaries have drawn up detailed plans for an attack, The New York Times reported on Wednesday evening, citing American officials.

It indicates that the plans focus on a short, intensive military operation that could last approximately three days – though we’ve all seen how ‘trustworthy’ these war timelines have been.

The NYT report notes, “As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S. officials said.”

There has been increased aerial activity spotted over Iraq and Syria over the last days as well. These are speculated to be practice bombing runs.

For all the planning, even the NYT must point out: “Still, there are reasons to be skeptical that a renewed war would be any more successful than the first phase of intense U.S.-Israeli strikes between February and April. Those rounds of fighting drove up energy prices and inflation around the world, eroded security in the Middle East and severely strained the Pentagon’s supply of missile interceptors.”

This seems yet more ‘bombing campaign in search of a strategy’. It remains anything but clear what the admin’s ‘mission accomplished’ endpoint in Iran will be.

Israeli jets violates Iraq’s sovereignty to fly near Iran’s borders, sending a message and Iran responded by testing a new missile, sending a similar message: come, we are ready. https://t.co/L1IX5g9U8P

— Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 (@ejmalrai) October 21, 2026

Iran’s top security official, Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and personal representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has stated the following to Drop Site News:

“If the question is whether Iran still has the ability to continue missile and drone operations, the answer is yes,” Rezaei said in an exclusive written interview. “The United States has valuable assets in the region. In the event of war, cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities could also come within range. If the conflict begins again, we will have a broader plan.”

“Everyone must understand that action against Iran carries a cost,” he added. “If diplomacy can bring about that understanding, we prefer diplomacy. But if the war continues, Iran has the tools it needs to keep responding.”

President Trump declares that the US is not negotiating with Iran, says something will happen “soon.” https://t.co/9Gi4aXmST8

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 22, 2026

So whatever US-Israeli attack plan is triggered, it is very unlikely to be confined to a mere few days, as US officials are claiming once again.

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk…

• For most of the war, Iran had an invaluable cushion: dozens of oil tankers holding millions of barrels of crude sitting safely in waters in Asia. Tehran steadily sold the oil to China, bringing in billions of much-needed cash. Now, that floating storage is gone. By mid-October, the reserves were fully depleted, according to analysts at Kpler, as a U.S. naval blockade prevented Iran from replacing the crude it normally sells to Chinese refineries. WSJ

• The US ordered some diplomats and their families to leave Saudi Arabia because of the threat from Houthi militants, as the Iran-backed group carried out more strikes from Yemen; four people were killed in two attacks on an Aramco oil field and an airport in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. BBG

• The US and Israel have drawn up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after the midterm elections, with targets likely to include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities and missile and drone arsenals. NYT

• Aramco told staff to leave its headquarters in Dhahran and work remotely. RTRS

• Iran’s IRGC threatened US bases in the region if Washington keeps escorting ships through what it calls an “illegal” Hormuz route. BBG

• Saudi Arabia is in talks with foreign governments to give state-owned Aramco access to their strategic oil storage, as the kingdom seeks to make its supplies to customers more resilient during disruptions, Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser said. BBG

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A Santa Fe judge on Wednesday ordered Meta Platforms to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company committed 43.9 million violations of state consumer-protection law by making misleading statements about Facebook users’ data privacy and control.

The case, filed in 2021, grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. New Mexico alleged that Facebook, now Meta, systematically misled the public – and New Mexico users – about how it handled personal data and allowed third-party apps access to users’ information, including statements by senior executives such as CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

A jury on Sept. 25 sided with the state, finding 26 of 29 public statements by Facebook to be misleading and treating each as reaching large numbers of New Mexico Facebook users, producing a total of almost 43.9 million violations.

Under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, the maximum penalty is $5,000 per willful violation. Judge Francis J. Mathew of New Mexico’s First Judicial District Court imposed the statutory maximum (roughly $219.5 billion) but reduced the award to $25 billion. Interest accrues at 15 percent annually until paid. Meta has said it will appeal.

“Facebook’s wrongdoing – over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public – goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Mathew wrote in his order.

The jury’s findings covered Facebook’s statements on data practices, as well as its handling of hate speech, misinformation, and exceptions to platform rules.

“This is a historic day for New Mexico and for consumers across the country,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement. “A New Mexico jury found nearly 44 million violations of our consumer protection statute, and this penalty order demonstrates that those violations carry real consequences.”

Meta did not immediately return a request for comment by The Epoch Times, but its chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, told Reuters the company is confident it will prevail on appeal.

“This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico. At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online,” Mahoney said.

In the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the now-defunct British political consulting firm obtained personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users and used the data for political profiling and targeted advertising. New Mexico alleged that Facebook misled users about third-party access to their data and the degree of control users actually had, and that after the Cambridge Analytica event the company’s statements about investigations, audits, bans, and user notifications were also misleading.

This is Meta’s second major courtroom loss in New Mexico this year.

In a separate case involving the safety of young users, a jury in March imposed $375 million in civil penalties on the company. On Aug. 6, a judge ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million into a fund for youth mental-health remedies and imposed court-supervised changes to Facebook and Instagram, bringing the total financial exposure in that case to $942 million.

At this point it seems both sides believe another major round of the US-Iran war is imminent. There’s been ample speculation of late whether President Trump will initiate another bombing campaign before or after the November midterm elections.

The White House may throw its hands up in the air and reason that Republicans are going to do bad in the elections anyway, and a pre-election bombing could be a Hail Mary effort at resetting the board, though one that will probably make it worse for the US force posture in the Middle East.

At the moment, the US State Department is evacuating further diplomats and their families from the embassy in Saudi Arabia, as Houthi attacks keep threatening airports, energy sites, and cities. A heightened state of alert is in effect for American citizens across the whole region.

Read our: Amid ‘Compromise’ Chaos, Analyst Sees 90% Chance Of Iran War Round 3 As Hegseth Makes ‘Secretive’ Israel Visit

Fresh reporting in the NY Times says indicates a renewed bombing campaign is likely to happen after the elections on November 3. The US and Israeli militaries have drawn up detailed plans for an attack, The New York Times reported on Wednesday evening, citing American officials.

It indicates that the plans focus on a short, intensive military operation that could last approximately three days – though we’ve all seen how ‘trustworthy’ these war timelines have been.

The NYT report notes, “As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S. officials said.”

There has been increased aerial activity spotted over Iraq and Syria over the last days as well. These are speculated to be practice bombing runs.

For all the planning, even the NYT must point out: “Still, there are reasons to be skeptical that a renewed war would be any more successful than the first phase of intense U.S.-Israeli strikes between February and April. Those rounds of fighting drove up energy prices and inflation around the world, eroded security in the Middle East and severely strained the Pentagon’s supply of missile interceptors.”

This seems yet more ‘bombing campaign in search of a strategy’. It remains anything but clear what the admin’s ‘mission accomplished’ endpoint in Iran will be.

Israeli jets violates Iraq’s sovereignty to fly near Iran’s borders, sending a message and Iran responded by testing a new missile, sending a similar message: come, we are ready. https://t.co/L1IX5g9U8P

— Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 (@ejmalrai) October 21, 2026

Iran’s top security official, Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and personal representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has stated the following to Drop Site News:

“If the question is whether Iran still has the ability to continue missile and drone operations, the answer is yes,” Rezaei said in an exclusive written interview. “The United States has valuable assets in the region. In the event of war, cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities could also come within range. If the conflict begins again, we will have a broader plan.”

“Everyone must understand that action against Iran carries a cost,” he added. “If diplomacy can bring about that understanding, we prefer diplomacy. But if the war continues, Iran has the tools it needs to keep responding.”

President Trump declares that the US is not negotiating with Iran, says something will happen “soon.” https://t.co/9Gi4aXmST8

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 22, 2026

So whatever US-Israeli attack plan is triggered, it is very unlikely to be confined to a mere few days, as US officials are claiming once again.

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk…

• For most of the war, Iran had an invaluable cushion: dozens of oil tankers holding millions of barrels of crude sitting safely in waters in Asia. Tehran steadily sold the oil to China, bringing in billions of much-needed cash. Now, that floating storage is gone. By mid-October, the reserves were fully depleted, according to analysts at Kpler, as a U.S. naval blockade prevented Iran from replacing the crude it normally sells to Chinese refineries. WSJ

• The US ordered some diplomats and their families to leave Saudi Arabia because of the threat from Houthi militants, as the Iran-backed group carried out more strikes from Yemen; four people were killed in two attacks on an Aramco oil field and an airport in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. BBG

• The US and Israel have drawn up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after the midterm elections, with targets likely to include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities and missile and drone arsenals. NYT

• Aramco told staff to leave its headquarters in Dhahran and work remotely. RTRS

• Iran’s IRGC threatened US bases in the region if Washington keeps escorting ships through what it calls an “illegal” Hormuz route. BBG

• Saudi Arabia is in talks with foreign governments to give state-owned Aramco access to their strategic oil storage, as the kingdom seeks to make its supplies to customers more resilient during disruptions, Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser said. BBG

Wolfe Research downgraded Netflix early Thursday, warning that “bears are winning the engagement debate” and that the subscription-based streaming service “has lost its mojo.”

“Engagement failed to respond to rising investment, and last week’s content leadership changes convince us that solutions require patience & lower incremental margins. Attention economy competition is rampant. Consensus estimates look fair,” analyst Peter Supino wrote in a note on Thursday morning.

Supino estimates that engagement in the US and Canada was flat to down in the first half of 2026, even as programming investment increased. YouTube continues to gain television viewing share, while competitors including Amazon, Apple, Disney and HBO are increasing spending.

“Despite $3B of content expense growth over the last 2 years, Netflix has lost its mojo. YouTube keeps gaining TV share,” the analyst wrote.

The lack of major new hits is a key driver of Netflix’s stalled subscriber growth. Aside from the final season of Stranger Things, Supino said the streaming platform has struggled to sustain viewership growth for its biggest shows and films.

Last week, chief content officer Bela Bajaria was abruptly booted and will be replaced later this month by veteran entertainment executive Peter Rice in hopes of delivering content that subscribers actually want to watch.

Netflix has transformed into a woke programming operation for kids…

Back to Supino: he noted that Netflix’s valuation of about 17.5 times projected 2027 earnings makes shares look relatively inexpensive for a streaming platform expected to deliver double-digit revenue growth. However, he sees limited upside at this point unless Netflix can deliver global hits. 

He also lowered his 2027 revenue forecast to $56.27 billion from $56.68 billion, implying 10.1% growth. He lowered his earnings estimate to $3.67 a share from $3.73.

Supino lowered his rating on the stock from “Outperform” to “Peer Perform” and removed his $95 price target. Analysts tracked by Bloomberg have 45 “Buy” ratings, 18 “Hold” ratings, and just two “Sell” ratings.

The average 12-month price target among analysts tracked by Bloomberg is about $85 a share.

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

Years ago, I called Antifa the Keyser Söze of the left, after the character in “The Usual Suspects.” In the film, the character Virgil explains how Söze stayed in the shadows to be portrayed as a myth: “becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night.” The strategy was too simple: “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”

Democratic leaders have long fostered the myth around Antifa, the largest and most violent group on the political left. For years, they have denied the existence of the group even as members were charged with crimes (including terrorism). Now, the French authorities have found that the nonexistent group is the largest of three “ideologically distinct groups” responsible for the violence in France. It appears that either the entire French security system is delusional or the trick is up for the American left.

I have testified before Congress about Antifa, run columns on the organization for over a decade, and written a book discussing Antifa. Yet, Democratic members continued to insist that there is no such group, while other leading Democrats have praised Antifa for instilling fear in MAGA.

It was a curious claim even then, when other Democratic leaders were actively pandering to the violent group.

Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison – now the Minnesota attorney general – proclaimed that Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.

However, Democratic leaders and pundits have repeated the mantra that there is no such group despite political violence on the left spreading across the country.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) dared anyone to name a single member of Antifa despite the charging of Antifa members with various serious crimes.

Former House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) was widely ridiculed for denying the existence of Antifa.

Others on the left have joined Goldman in this absurd claim. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel devoted part of his monologue to assuring viewers that Antifa is no more than a mythical “chupacabra.” “You understand there is no Antifa,” he said. “This is an entirely made-up organization.”

The denials continued even as FBI Director Christopher Wray debunked deniers like Goldman. “Antifa is a real thing.” European countries have banned Antifa site due to their criminal conduct while Antifa candidates have been elected to office as members of the group.

Now, French authorities identified Antifa as the largest of three “ideologically distinct groups” responsible for the violence in France. It appears that Keyser Söze is in the open, but Democrats maintain the FBI, Justice Department, and various countries are simply delusional.

The problem is when the myth becomes reality. Left-wing pundits and politicians are caught in this denial web where they have to maintain the absurd idea that Antifa is just an idea.

Some of us have been writing about Antifa for years after watching them intimidate and threaten faculty and students on campuses. One such student came from my campus and proclaimed that Antifa was winning after his arrest for property destruction.

When another radical was arrested after taking an axe to a congressional office, he self-identified as a member of Antifa.

Before Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, implanted an IED device outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery, he put up stickers reading “support your local Antifa.”

Numerous Antifa members have been arrested, including some who claimed to be journalists.

Many protesters belong to Antifa groups that have names like “Rose City Antifa” and offshoots like Love and Rage and Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. Antifa members have been elected to the French and European parliaments.

Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” called by some the “Antifa bible,” explains that the group is united in its opposition to free speech. “Most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists,” he writes. “From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Yet, Democratic leaders seemed to be adopting the 1967 ‘Guide for the Married Man’ when caught with Antifa allies or associations:

The number of American filing for unemployment benefits for the first time dropped (again) last week to 194k – basically in line with 60 year lows…

Michigan saw the largest rise in initial claims last week while Ohio and Tennessee saw the biggest decline…

Continuing Claims ticked up but remains very close to 3 year lows…

The cleanest way to reconcile it is that this is a “low-fire, low-hire” labor market, with employers hoarding labor, not shedding it.

Of course, claims remain a poor gauge of how hard it is to get hired, since new entrants, re-entrants, and gig workers mostly can’t file.

Low firing plus low hiring means insiders feel secure while anyone outside the job market is stuck.

Of course, sentiment remains disastrously low, but we’d argue it’s mostly a prices story wearing a jobs costume (impacted by political bias within the polling).

The bottom line is that claims tell you a recession isn’t imminent, payrolls tell you momentum is fading, and sentiment tells you the median household is getting squeezed by prices rather than layoffs.

The risk is that this equilibrium breaks non-linearly: low-hire markets can flip to firing quickly once margins compress, and claims would be the last of the three to flag it, not the first.

European natural gas futures climbed for a second day as countries began drawing on stockpiles already at exceptionally low seasonal levels.

Brussels is now left hoping that Greta Thunberg’s global warming narrative is real to ease pressure on the region’s fragile energy balance. Even then, one or two severe cold snaps could accelerate inventory depletion, intensify competition for LNG cargoes and push the energy-stricken continent toward another winter crisis, particularly if disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz continue to constrain LNG supplies.

Gas Infrastructure Europe data showed that EU NatGas inventories declined for the first time this year.

Storage sites are about 74% full, well below the 15-year average for this time of year and, according to Bloomberg data, at the lowest seasonal level in records dating to 2009. Germany’s gas storage sites are just 61% full.

Dutch front-month futures, Europe’s benchmark, breached 90 euros a megawatt-hour around 9:42 London time. Prices reached their highest since late 2022 earlier this week (read report) and have nearly tripled compared with last winter, increasing pressure on industry, freight and, of course, households.

The smaller buffer leaves Europe increasingly dependent on the international market, where it must compete with Asian buyers. This suggests TTF prices will have to rise sharply as the Hormuz maritime chokepoint remains chaotic.

Mild October weather across the bloc has eased heating demand and allowed utilities to stockpile additional reserves. The latest forecasts show warmer conditions returning to northwest Europe next week, though temperatures will fall next month, offering a warning of what lies ahead as the Northern Hemisphere enters the winter period. 

Perhaps Europe will experience a slightly warmer-than-average winter because of strong El Niño conditions. But now is when elites in Brussels, who endlessly pushed the global warming narrative for years, must hope they are right. If they are not, all it could take is several cold snaps this winter to deplete inventories across the bloc to dangerously low levels, leaving less cushion to absorb shocks.

Goldman Sachs commodities expert Daan Struyven warned earlier this week that EU natural gas prices could soar to 150 euros if Gulf LNG exports remain at just one-quarter of normal levels and a more severe winter boosts heating demand. The full report can be read here.