Russia Struggles To Deliver Crude Oil As It Hits 135 Million Barrel Traffic Jam
Russia is struggling to deliver all of the crude it’s being forced to ship overseas in the face of escalating Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries.
Nearly 135 million barrels of Russian crude oil are currently stranded at sea as a result of Ukraine’s airstrike campaign targeting refineries with the intent to cripple crude processing. The offshore backlog is forcing Moscow to significantly ramp up export volumes according to OilPrice.com.
Intensive Ukrainian drone strikes, including recent hits on the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat and Afipsky processing facilities, have knocked out roughly one-third of Russian domestic refining capacity bringing it to ~3.91 million barrels per day, the lowest level seen since 2005.
As a result, Moscow is now being forced to divert more barrels to international markets despite the country pumping just 8.93 million barrels a day in June–roughly 830,000 b/d below its OPEC+ quota.
However, major export hubs are experiencing massive gridlock with limited buyers of sanctioned Russian crude, with Sokol and Sakhalin Blend cargoes facing week-long delays transferring from shuttle tankers to ocean-going vessels, while ESPO crude is piling up near the Kozmino terminal.
Russia’s shadow fleet tankers are now accumulating near Egypt’s Mediterranean coast and Indonesia’s Riau Islands. Many are masking destinations or sitting idle because international buyers increasingly refuse to touch sanctioned cargo due to secondary penalties.
Russia’s oil revenues are shrinking despite high export volumes due to a combination of lower global crude prices, widening discounts for Russian Urals and delivery delays.
Russia’s seaborne crude exports averaged 4.13 million barrels per day during the four weeks through June 28, the highest four-week rate since early 2022.
However, Russia’s four-week crude export revenues fell by about $200 million to $1.68 billion a week as Urals prices retreated sharply from their Iran-war highs. China and India accounted for roughly 1.8 million barrels per day of identified purchases, while Turkey and Syria imported about 160,000 bpd and 40,000 bpd, respectively, according to Bloomberg data. Another 1.9 million bpd was listed as “unknown destination” in Bloomberg’s tanker-tracking data, suggesting the final buyers were not disclosed while the cargoes remained in transit.
The Czech Supreme Court has upheld a suspended prison sentence imposed on a former dissident who publicly wore clothing displaying symbols associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to Echo24, botanist Pavel Křivka walked through Pardubice in April 2024 wearing a black sweatshirt bearing a large white letter ‘Z’ and the Russian words “For Victory.”
Lower courts convicted him of publicly approving a crime against peace and sentenced him to six months in prison, suspended for two years. An appeal to the Supreme Court has now been rejected.
“Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental rights of a democratic society, but it has its limits,” court spokeswoman Gabriela Tomíčková said.
“According to the Supreme Court, public support or approval of the most serious international crimes exceeds the limits of expression which is entitled to full constitutional protection,” she added.
The court said a person does not need to make a speech or explicitly attempt to persuade others to commit an offense. Publicly displaying symbols can itself constitute a crime when their meaning is sufficiently clear.
Judges also rejected Křivka’s argument that the Z symbol does not appear on an official list of prohibited imagery. They ruled that its meaning must be assessed in context and said the combination of the letter Z and the “For Victory” slogan could not reasonably be interpreted as anything other than support for Russian aggression.
The court said Křivka’s education and experience in public and political life meant he would have understood the symbolism. He had also repeatedly expressed opinions on Russia and Ukraine.
Prosecutors described the hoodie as “warmonger clothing” and argued that Křivka intended to stir hostility toward Ukraine and Ukrainians. His lawyer maintained that wearing clothing he liked was not illegal.
The letter Z first appeared on Russian military vehicles during the February 2022 invasion before becoming a wider propaganda symbol used at rallies, on billboards, on clothing and across Russian social media.
Křivka had previously criticized the rulings of the lower Czech courts. “I did not commit any propaganda for war or genocide or anything like that. I walked down the street in standard clothes, clothes that I bought in China when I was there to teach Czech. We have much more freedom in China than in the Czech Republic,” he said in February, as cited by Novinky.cz.
In The Law, published in 1850, Frédéric Bastiat made a case against “legal plunder,” the perversion of the law to violate liberty and property rights.
Nearly 100 years later in The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek warned that socialists, whatever their intentions, lacked the knowledge to command the economy.
Hayek also explained how the worst always get on top in socialist regimes, and after the German National Socialists’ Anschluss in 1938, he did not return to his native Austria. In 1983, President Reagan brought Hayek to the White House, and in 1991 President George H.W. Bush awarded Hayek the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman authored Capitalism and Freedom and became a national figure with the “Free to Choose” series on PBS.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell also upheld the virtues of the market over government command of the economy.
Those now proudly calling themselves “democratic socialists” seem unaware of these authors and show little if any inclination to engage in debate.
The surging socialists are even more unaware of works that show socialism as it actually existed under its most enthusiastic promoters. Consider, for example, the experience of Malcolm Muggeridge. His magisterial Chronicles of Wasted Time (1972) devotes a chapter to “A Socialist Upbringing.” The Muggeridge household jostled with politicians, scholars, and clergy dedicated to the cause, along with Labor Party stalwarts such as Ramsey MacDonald and Fabian socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Their collective efforts aimed to benefit “the workers,” who were never present at any of their events.
“A worker is someone for whom everything is done as long as he keeps off stage,” Muggeridge noted, and “the whole notion of a working class with a specific political or cultural, or even spiritual role qua working class is a fantasy invented by guilt-stricken renegade proletarians like D.H. Lawrence, or by renegade bourgeoisie on the run like William Morris or, for that matter, Marx and Engels themselves, or just by a sociologist looking for a subject and a job.”
After stints teaching in India and Egypt, Muggeridge wound up in the first “workers’ state,” the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), as the Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Correspondents ran contests to see who could pass off the most fatuous story to the regime’s foreign admirers. Muggeridge convinced Lord Marley that the long lines for everything were intended to give zealous workers a chance to rest. When a British lawyer asked if the Soviets practiced habeas corpus, A.T. Cholerton of the Daily Telegraph told him they strictly adhered to habeas cadaver.
Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture claimed more than a million victims in Ukraine, but Walter Duranty of the New York Times contended that there was no forced famine there. Muggeridge decided to see for himself. “This particular famine was planned and deliberate, not due to any natural catastrophe like failure of rain, or cyclone, or flooding,” he wrote. “There is not only a famine but a state of war, a military occupation… Peasants with their hands tied behind their back being loaded into cattle-trucks at gunpoint.” After breaking this story, Muggeridge was widely vilified while Duranty’s mendacious reports won a Pulitzer Prize.
In August, 1939, Stalin signed a pact with Hitler’s Germany. “I had been expecting such a development,” Muggeridge wrote, “never losing an opportunity to say that Bolshevism and National Socialism were the same thing, except that one was a Slav version and the other Teutonic.” Margarete Buber-Neumann described that reality in Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler.
The Potsdam native married Heinz Neumann, a rising star in the German Communist Party (KDP). The Communist International (Comintern) sent the couple on various assignments before bringing them to Moscow during Stalin’s purge campaign. Heinz Neumann was tried and executed the same day with no word to Margarete. She soon found herself in the Lubianka prison before being sentenced to five years in the corrective labor camps then holding 1.3 million prisoners.
In the vast Karaganda complex, Buber-Neumann was forced to perform “a certain labor quota” in the fields. “We were always hungry,” the prisoner wrote, and field workers were in the “fourth and worst category” when it came to food. In these conditions, Zena, a Gypsy girl, is told she should go to school and learn about socialism.“I don’t like it!” Zena shoots back “You can go and **** your mother with your socialism! I’m a free Gypsy.”
Preyed on by criminals, who were very cozy with camp bosses, Margarete manages to survive. During the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the secret police (GPU) changed her sentence to removal from the Soviet Union.
In early 1940 the Soviets put the prisoner of Stalin on a train headed for the Brest-Litovsk bridge into occupied Poland. There GPU men and SS officers jointly check the list of names. The prisoners were then “sent on in cattle trucks to Bialas” and “marched through the streets under SS guard.” Then it was on to Ravensbrück, the National Socialists’ largest concentration camp for women. In Under Two Dictators, Buber-Neumann describes the forced labor, torture, and executions in exacting detail.
“Historians have long regarded it as a standard work on Nazi camps and the Gulag,” notes professor Nikolaus Wachsman in his introduction. “But among a general readership in the English-speaking world, the book is virtually unknown.”
The fearful symmetry of German National Socialism and Soviet Communism doubtless caused journalists, academics and politicians deliberately to ignore the book.
Add these works to those of George Orwell, whose 1984 portrayed the totalitarian world of Ingsoc (English Socialism). In Orwell’s Animal Farm, the revolutionary victors proclaim that all animals are equal — but some more equal than others. In 2026 safe to say, all socialists are ignorant, but some more ignorant than others — and willfully so.
Arthur Koestler took note of Buber-Neumann’s experience in his contribution to The God That Failed, published in 1949. In Arrow in the Blue (1952) Koestler explained, “The well-meaning ‘progressives of the Left’ persist in following their old, outworn concepts. As if under the spell of a destructive compulsion, they must repeat every single error of the past. One can only watch in horror and despair, for this time there will be no pardon.”
Those who value their liberty must decide how that applies moving forward.
“Sub-Second Detect- To-Fire”: Futuristic Dome Turret Could Be US Military’s Answer To Drone Swarms
Picket Defense Systems is developing a next-generation counter-drone turret designed to eliminate the delays conventional systems face when targeting fast-moving, one-way attack drones or incoming swarms. This is a major vulnerability confronting the US military and allied forces as drone threats proliferate across modern battlefields that Picket plans to solve.
Its Inferno RTC uses a 54-barrel hemispherical array that continuously maintains 360-degree coverage, allowing the turret to select and fire the optimal barrel without needing to rotate and lock onto the target first.
“Fixed multi-barrel hemispherical array — no slewing delay. Sub-second detect- to-fire. No dead zones, no blind spots, no reaction time,” Picket wrote in a slide deck.
Defense Blog recently explained why Picket’s 54-barrel hemispherical array could represent the next evolution in turret design for defeating fast-moving drone swarms:
The aiming latency problem the Inferno is designed to solve is one of the most technically challenging aspects of close-in drone defense, and it has become increasingly urgent as adversaries have adopted tactics specifically designed to exploit it.
Conventional counter-drone gun systems, whether mounted on vehicles or fixed at a site, must physically slew a barrel to point at an incoming threat before firing, a process that takes measurable time even on fast-actuating electromechanical systems. Against a single drone approaching at moderate speed, that delay is manageable.
Against a coordinated swarm of fast-moving targets approaching from multiple directions simultaneously, it creates engagement sequencing problems that single-barrel systems have no mechanical solution for.
The Inferno’s continuously rotating architecture eliminates that sequencing problem by having a barrel already in approximately the right position for any threat vector at any moment.
Picket appears to be targeting the civilian counter-drone market with a dual-use turret designed for critical infrastructure, data centers, energy facilities, airports, stadiums, and commercial ports.
About a month later, we published a report that showed the first-ever data center in the world was hit by an Iranian attack drone in the Gulf region. This was a major wake-up call for the US, hyperscalers, militaries, and other governments that are now racing to harden airspace against these small but deadly threats.
What we suspect is coming down the pipe is a procurement supercycle for drone and counter-drone systems, which we believe is already in the early chapters and will accelerate in 2027. How to profit.
Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced a measure to screen U.S. armed forces members’ testosterone levels and offer therapy as a way to optimize the military’s performance.
“While we invest heavily in our weapon systems, platforms, and gear, our most decisive tactical advantage will always be the individual warfighter,” Hegseth said in a video, titled, “The High-T Department of War,” released on X.
“We have a sacred duty to maintain that advantage, which is why we must constantly look for new ways to optimize your performance, your resilience, and your long-term health.”
The hormone tests will be initiated for troops aged 30 and older, although soldiers under that age threshold can voluntarily get tested, the Pentagon chief said.
Hegseth explained that the new screening program will make sure that troops “have the right testosterone levels to operate at [their] absolute best because it’s well-established science that as we age, testosterone levels often naturally drop.”
“This initiative, it’s not about artificial enhancement. It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” he continued.
“We owe our warriors the absolute best medical care in the world. And this program delivers on that obligation.”
The screenings, he added, will be mandatory for service members who are eligible, but that treatment would be voluntary. “If treatment is recommended, it’s entirely your choice to receive testosterone replacement therapy,” Hegseth said.
The Department of War has not yet issued more details on when the screening requirement would be implemented or when more medical guidance will be released.
Hegseth, a former member of the National Guard and Fox News host, has initiated stricter fitness standards for the U.S. military, also working out with service members in videos posted on social media. In addition, he imposed a ban on most service members from having beards.
“By addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation—the absolute best,” Hegseth said Wednesday.
Testosterone levels in men decline naturally with age and have been linked to issues such as mood changes, weight gain, and a loss of muscle mass or hair. But health experts have debated for years how to diagnose the problems and whether they should be treated with replacement therapy.
Hegseth’s announcement comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Trump administration officials are moving to make it easier for doctors to prescribe testosterone. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed easing prescribing limits on testosterone gels, pills, patches, and injections.
Some studies have shown overall declines in young and adolescent males’ testosterone levels since the 1990s. An Israeli global study released earlier this month found that male testosterone levels have halved in the past 50 years, a researcher involved in the study told The Guardian in an article published July 7.
Another study published in 2020 by The Journal of Urology found that testosterone deficiency has a prevalence of 10 percent to 40 percent among adult males, and 20 percent among males aged 15 to 39 years old.
A Yale researcher involved in the study, Soum Lokeshwar, said that the overall decline in testosterone could be attributed to several factors including “an aging population with older males exhibiting lower testosterone levels” as well as an “increase in comorbidities, including diabetes, which may have cause this testosterone decrease nationally.”
Previously, the FDA had issued caution about using certain testosterone products, saying in early 2025 it was “adding a warning about the risk of increased blood pressure to the prescribing information of testosterone products that currently do not include this information based on the results of separate blood pressure monitoring studies.” However, the agency said it removed a previous warning about a possible risk of heart attack or stroke when comparing such treatments with a placebo.
Australia Slaps Power, Water, And Copyright Rules On Data Centers After Anthropic Lobbying Push
Over the last year or so, several US states have taken measures to regulate or prevent data centers from being built, citing local concerns over electricity and water use, pollution (noise and otherwise), and the fact that they’re a godawful eyesore. On Tuesday, New York became the first state to enact a one-year ban on data centers. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, is slapping heavy new regulations on them.
The revolt has gone worldwide – as Australia will impose mandatory national rules on large-scale artificial-intelligence data centers, requiring operators to minimize water consumption, fully fund their power needs and underwrite new electricity generation, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Wednesday.
The measures, part of a broader push to define AI’s “social licence,” come after extensive engagement with AI companies – including Anthropic – and reflect the government’s determination to balance investment attraction with protections for energy resources, the environment, creators, and national interests.
In a major speech at the University of Sydney, Albanese warned of a narrow window to set conditions before major foreign investments lock in – suggesting that the new rules are in response to intense industry lobbying and consultations, while rejecting softer approaches on copyright favored by some tech players.
He also gave assurances to Australian musicians, writers, artists and journalists, declaring that they must retain ownership and control of their work – including the right to name their price in any AI licensing deals.
“Anything less is theft,” he said. “No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control.”
The remarks push back against proposals from AI developers, including Anthropic, which had advocated for alternatives such as a shared creative fund. Albanese made clear the government would not dilute existing copyright principles. He told reporters he was unconcerned that the firm stance would deter investment, noting direct meetings with companies including Anthropic where the position was conveyed plainly.
“We’re confident the advantages that Australia provides will see significant investment here,” he said.
Anthropic’s general counsel, Jeff Bleich, responded positively, saying the company respects the process and takes seriously its responsibility to meet the Australian government’s terms for AI developers. He noted that societal-level solutions are needed given AI’s benefits and challenges for economies and national security.
Data-Center Rules Target Resource Strain
The mandatory standards, to be agreed at a National Cabinet meeting next month and legislated early next year, will replace fragmented state-level approaches. They will specify permissible locations for data centers and impose obligations on power and water use.
Operators must pay the full cost of grid connections, underwrite new generation capacity, and contribute at least as much energy to the grid as they consume – including renewables backed by firming power – so households do not bear the burden. Water use must be minimized, with companies covering additional infrastructure costs where needed.
Albanese framed the rules as essential for sovereign capability. “Our great country can be much more than a data warehouse for AI products made overseas,” he said.
The approach aims to provide investor certainty while preserving community confidence. South Australia already maintains a dedicated framework, while Queensland has expressed caution on national renewable-energy proposals.
Coordinated Oversight and Worker Input
A new Office of AI will be established within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to coordinate efforts across portfolios ranging from education and employment to energy, copyright and defence.
On the labor front, Albanese encouraged workers to engage actively in shaping AI deployment in their workplaces rather than being sidelined. Businesses could reap “massive productivity benefits,” he said, but employees have a stake in ensuring those gains translate into better conditions. ACTU Secretary Sally McManus welcomed the coordinated national approach and stressed employers’ duty to consult and mitigate harms.
The only question is – will New Zealand step up and protect Flight of the Conchords from AI replicants and copyright malarkey?
President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he is endorsing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell as the Republican candidate for Minnesota governor, saying he is one of “America’s greatest and most hard working Patriots.”
“Mike will be SPECTACULAR!!! He truly loves Minnesota, as do I, and wants to bring it back from oblivion and embarrassment. He can do it!” Trump wrote via his Truth Social platform, calling Lindell “the ‘Pillow Man.’”
The president added that “nobody has sacrificed more than Mike Lindell in fighting for our country, especially when it comes to Election Integrity.”
Trump was referring to backlash against the MyPillow brand in response to Lindell’s statements following the 2020 presidential election that significant fraud was involved in the contest.
In response, Lindell wrote on X that he is “honored” to have received Trump’s backing.
Lindell is part of a Republican field competing in an Aug. 11 primary for the state’s seat in a bid to replace outgoing Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection. The announcement came after scrutiny of his state’s handling of a widespread fraud scandal that also drew federal attention.
The GOP list includes Minnesota Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth. On the Democratic side, longtime Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) headlines the field.
In a separate post on Wednesday, Trump criticized Klobuchar as “corrupt” and “incompetent” before he accused Minnesota’s elections of being rigged against Republicans since President Richard Nixon won the state in the 1972 presidential election. He reiterated his support for Lindell in his post.
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Responding to Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, Klobuchar wrote in a post on X: “Mike Lindell is Donald Trump’s choice. I hope to be Minnesota’s.”
While the Trump administration and Republicans have focused on childcare and other welfare fraud accusations in Minnesota, Democrats, including Klobuchar, have focused on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that involved federal officers killing two Minnesotans earlier this year, which drew protests in Minneapolis. Klobuchar has mostly avoided direct mention of the childcare programs and fraud inquiries.
Walz, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate, has disputed the Trump administration’s characterizations and said that his administration has moved to tackle fraud in Minnesota, including a statement in December that they “have made systematic changes” to the state’s government.
The Department of Justice has charged dozens of defendants in Minnesota fraud-related cases, and a large majority of them are of Somali origin, with dozens of convictions. The FBI also launched numerous investigations into allegations of fraud at state healthcare and home care providers accused of criminal activity.
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In June, Lindell told a local radio station that, to win the state’s governor’s race, Republicans “need name recognition, which I have.” Previewing a possible battle between him and Klobuchar ahead of the midterm election, he added, “You don’t have the marketing I have and the money I have to raise to market this against Amy [Klobuchar] come fall.”
Klobuchar’s office did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
In a sudden and very surprising Wednesday evening development, President Trump announced that Iran has released an American woman from prison who had been deemed wrongfully detained since December 2024.
“Iran has allowed an American Citizen, who was wrongfully detained in December of 2024 under the ‘presidency’ of Sleepy Joe Biden, to leave the Country. She is now safely outside of Iran, and in good condition,” Trump said on Truth Social. And then most surprisingly: “The United States of America appreciates this gesture of Goodwill by Iran!” Trump added.
She’s been identified in a breaking report from The Hill:
The American citizen was later identified as Dena Karari by her lawyer Jared Genser on the social media platform X. He said his client has been trapped in Iran since December 2024 “on bogus charges” and that “this would not have happened but for the extraordinary and relentless efforts” of President Trump.
“Dena is now safe and traveling back to the United States,” Genser concluded.
The New York Times reported last year that an Iranian American woman who was first imprisoned and prevented from leaving the country in December 2024, but released from custody, “works for an American technological company and runs a charity for underprivileged children in Iran”.
After the US joined Israel in bombing Iran in 2025, she was charged with espionage.
Trump has further confirmed, “She is now safely outside of Iran, and in good condition.”
There’s a possibility the White House could use this as an ‘opening’ with Tehran, in order to get diplomacy back on track, after days of bombing – especially Trump just appeared to give a rare positive shoutout to the Iranians.
Could this signal a move toward de-escalation?
President Trump announced that Iran has allowed an American citizen, who had been wrongfully detained since December 2024, to leave the country.
— Wladimir van Wilgenburg (@vvanwilgenburg) July 15, 2026
Pentagon Announces Another Wave of Strikes Later Wednesday
It is night time in Iran, and apparently the US ‘break’ is over, and bombing resumes: (CENTCOM) “At 3 p.m. ET, U.S. forces launched operations for a second wave of strikes today against Iran. The strikes are targeting Iranian military capabilities used to threaten vessels freely transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway vital to global commerce. The U.S. military is holding Iran accountable at the Commander in Chief’s direction.”
Without doubt these attack waves are getting heavier, but so is Iran’s ‘retaliation’… from earlier: Kuwait Hit By Worst Iran Attacks in Weeks As War Escalates (Bloomberg).
Meanwhile an interestingly ambiguous admission from President Trump Wednesday afternoon:
US President Trump says oil price will yo-yo for a while; thinks inflation at year-end will be lower than now. Would like to see rates go down but better to pause than hike
Later into the night, the US military disabled an unladen oil tanker attempting to sail toward an Iranian port in the Arabian Gulf:
U.S. forces enforced naval blockade measures against Iran, July 15, by disabling an unladen oil tanker attempting to sail toward an Iranian port in the Arabian Gulf.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces observed Curacao-flagged M/T Belma transiting international waters toward Kharg Island. The commercial vessel ignored multiple warnings as it attempted to violate the U.S. blockade. A U.S. aircraft disabled the vessel after firing hellfire missiles into the ship’s smokestack. The ship is no longer transiting to Iran.
Trump: Strikes Will ‘Expand’
Earlier in the day, within hours after the morning’s 90-minutes salvo of latest US strikes on Iran was completed, President Trump once again claimed that Iran is desperately seeking diplomatic talks. However Iran was quick to respond that it has “no plans” for returning to the negotiating table.
With this, President Trump is ready to escalate militarily, telling FOX that strikes on the Islamic Republic will “expand” next week – though some are wondering why he is signaling the delay.
President Trump tells Fox News that strikes against Iran will expand next week as the Middle East braces for what comes next. pic.twitter.com/zOwaGc44KF
De-escalation seems nowhere on the horizon, also as the more ‘hardline’ influence within Iran seems ascendant, per Al Jazeera:
The Iranian government is releasing the statistic of the seven soldiers killed in US attacks “very deliberately” to solidify its popular support through the war, says Mehran Kamrava, professor of government at Georgetown University Qatar.
“What we have seen in Iran … is a resurgence of Iranian nationalism, and by highlighting the fact that Iranian soldiers are dying and giving their lives for defending the country, what the government is trying to do is to ensure that that popular support remains intact,” Kamrava told Al Jazeera.
That support is important as there is little doubt the country is struggling with high inflation, unemployment, and $270bn in damages to the economy, he said. Meanwhile, the Iranians are aware that they cannot go “toe-to-toe militarily with the Americans, so they are turning the conflict from a military one into an economic one, hence the attacks on shipping,” Kamrava said.
Attack Waves Halted, For Now…
The Pentagon opened Wednesday morning (US time) by announcing yet another round of strikes on Iran, in what looks like sustained action – also increasingly expanding to include civil and energy infrastructure of the Islamic Republic.
“At 6 a.m. ET today, U.S. Central Command forces began launching a wave of strikes against Iran,” Centcom announced. “The strikes are designed to further degrade military capabilities Iranian forces have used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”
The US military further indicated it launched a “seven-hour wave” of strikes overnight – and followed during the next day (Wednesday) by a 90-minute wave. Also the evening prior, the US reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and alongside launching its fourth consecutive night of strikes on the country, also as President Trump freshly warned that if Iran does not return to the negotiating table, “next week it gets really bad for them, because next week comes the power plants.“
“You better make a deal, or you’re not going to have anything left,” Trump has warned. “Ultimately, we’ll hit energy targets in Iran. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all of their power plants. We’ll knock out all of their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
US Strike Hits Iranian Military Barracks
Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani announced that at least 30 civilians have been killed across the country over 260 people wounded by American strikes of the last few days.
Airstrikes also reportedly took out an Iranian military barracks in southeastern Iran, leaving seven dead. The Associated Pressdetails that “One strike targeted a barracks for Iran’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which operates tanks and armored vehicles, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state television reported.”
“The report said the Americans fired at least 13 missiles in the attack and that the seven dead included conscripts and career soldiers,” AP continues. “A number of troops were wounded.”
Heavy bombardments have focused on the coastal areas, with US strikes reportedly having hit a civilian maritime control tower in Chabahar, southern Iran – location of country’s only deep-water port outside the Strait of Hormuz, which allows Iran direct access to the Indian Ocean without passing through the Gulf.
US strikes hit a civilian maritime control tower in Chabahar, southern Iran.
Chabahar is strategically critical for Iran.
It’s the country’s only deep-water port outside the Strait of Hormuz, giving Iran direct access to the Indian Ocean without passing through the Gulf.… pic.twitter.com/NYNoy0azAI
As expected, Iran’s IRGC has continued launching a wave of retaliatory strikes targeting critical US military infrastructure across the Gulf and even reaching into Jordan.
The list of targets hit, according to an array of regional sources, include – Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base, the US Navy’s 5th Fleet support facility, Kuwait’s Ali Al-Salem and Camp Buehring, and Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.
Also, Emirati sources have reported strikes on the critical Fujairah Port, while Kuwait confirms one of its navy vessels was struck, leaving four crew members injured. Additionally, social media is awash with unverified footage showing Shahed kamikaze drones striking Kuwait, as well as massive plumes of black smoke rising from burning facilities in Kuwait. US 5th Fleet HQ locations in Bahrain also show signs of damage from inbound projectiles.
The IRGC has insisted that the “export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one.”
The Iranians have continued to tout their nationalist defiance and have at no point shown signs of backing down as is hoped by Trump:
Addressing the Civilized and Courageous Nation of Iran with derogatory language does not diminish its Greatness.
Iranians are known for their civility, culture, and strong moral values. We do not answer vulgarity with vulgarity, but with action: fearlessly and with great valor.
President Trump continues facing pressure over what’s next or what the ultimate objectives are. Related to this, he was pressed by Fox News Wednesday night about taking Kharg Island. Trump responded:
“We already hit Kharg Island, as you know, twice. Even three times. I said hit everything but just leave that little area from 25 yards out because I don’t want that in terms of the world economy. As far as taking it is concerned, if we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would do that.”
But Iranian forces show no signs of backing down. Instead a message from its army command via state TV says that “a decisive response to this aggressive action by the American enemy” will keep coming.
Footage, reportedly taken during Iranian drone and missile strikes against Kuwait earlier, shows a Shahed-136 impact. The U.S. continues to trade strikes with Iran, as targets inside Bahrain and Kuwait are now bearing the brunt of Iranian fires. pic.twitter.com/AC07mtqi96
Missile alert warnings have continued to sound in Bahrain and Kuwait early Wednesday amid the Iranian fire, which has at this point grown to a daily occurrence.
Meanwhile, strikes on nuclear plans return?
Video US air strike which destroyed an Iranian 35 mm Samavat anti-aircraft gun (Swiss Oerlikon GDF-001 copy) stationed to protect Bushehr nuclear powerplant.
Geo-located by @GEOIMINT at 28.83027, 50.87936. pic.twitter.com/RXrnCO9TJA
US President Trump said in a pre-recorded Fox News interview that they are beating up Iran badly and Hormuz has to stay open, while he added that strikes will continue until he says it is enough, as well as stated they will save energy targets for last and will ultimately hit energy targets. Trump also said they will hit Iran hard on Wednesday night, and that next week will get really bad for Iran, in which they will hit Iran’s power plants and bridges next week unless Iran comes to the negotiating table. Furthermore, he said US officials spoke to Iran on Tuesday and told Iran that it better make a deal.
US Central Command forces began launching an additional round of strikes against Iran at 15:00EDT/20:00BST on Tuesday, to continue degrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, while CENTCOM later announced the completion of strikes against Iran.
US struck Qeshm Island in southern Iran, and explosions were heard in the maritime area of eastern Hormozgan and Sirik, while explosions were heard in Bandar Abbas and Hengam Island. Explosions were also heard in Bampur and Chabahar in Iran, although Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim noted officials denied reports of explosions in Chabahar, while explosions were reported in Iran’s port city of Bandar Imam Khomeini, and a mineral water plant in Deloran was hit by three projectiles. Furthermore, reports noted that air defences around the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran became active.
IRGC said it targeted enemy weapons and parts storage in Bahrain and Kuwait, while it targeted a drone ramp in Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem air base and targeted US positions at Jordan’s Azraq base, as well as the US Fifth Fleet Command HQ, fuel facilities and equipment in Bahrain. IRGC said as long as the US evil stays in the region, not a drop of oil and gas will be exported from the region, and that US aggression will have no result other than delaying the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran will respond to the US attacks, Tasnim reported.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi said the US is making a mistake if it thinks its military attacks and blockade will force them to request negotiations, but also commented that Iran’s return to negotiations and tolerance regarding the Strait of Hormuz is possible. Furthermore, he said the MoU effectively no longer exists and that no country should expect Iran to continue implementing the terms of the memorandum.
Israeli PM Netanyahu is reportedly to travel to Washington on Saturday evening, aiming to meet with US President Trump, Yedioth reported.
A University of California advisory board suspended the much-celebrated planned review of the system’s admissions policies to bring back standardized testing requirements for undergraduate applicants. The decision of the academic senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools is not surprising to many of us who have been critical of the system in abandoning objective standards for admissions.
Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of the system’s academic senate, confirmed that the faculty group was ”revising its timeline” for ”a comprehensive review of standardized testing in admissions.”
As various schools reversed the disastrous abandonment of standardized testing, the California system continues to slow-walk the process. Many of the advocates of abandoning standardized testing to advance diversity in admissions are relatively silent in the face of falling academic standards. However, there was still a successful effort behind the scenes to delay any restoration.
As I have previously written, the University of California system was an early supporter of this disastrous move. It was heralded as a way to preserve diversity after voters in California repeatedly rejected race-based admissions and the Supreme Court appeared ready to bar such practices (commonly proven with reference to standardized test differentials among applicants).
Now, many professors in the California system have come to the same conclusion as some of us who denounced the move years ago. They have witnessed the drop in academic skills and abilities among incoming students.
The value of standardized testing was well established years ago. The claim that additional time is needed to contemplate the change is consistent with the university’s prior record. It previously studied the question and then ignored the findings to end the use of standardized testing.
These tests not only have the greatest predictive power for performance but also play an important role in advancing minority students. Former University of California President Janet Napolitano, however, overrode those conclusions.
Napolitano responded to such criticism with a Standardized Testing Task Force in 2019. Many people expected the task force to recommend the cessation of standardized testing. The task force did find that 59 percent of high school graduates were Latino, African-American, or Native American, but only 37 percent were admitted as UC freshman students. The Task Force did not find standardized testing to be unreliable or call for its abandonment, however.
Instead, its final report concluded that “At UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and about as good at predicting first-year retention, [University] GPA, and graduation.”
Not only that, it found: “Further, the amount of variance in student outcomes explained by test scores has increased since 2007 … Test scores are predictive for all demographic groups and disciplines … In fact, test scores are better predictors of success for students who are Underrepresented Minority Students (URMs), who are first generation, or whose families are low-income.”
In other words, test scores remain the best indicator for continued performance in college.
That clearly was not the result Napolitano or some others wanted. So, she simply announced a cessation of the use of such scores in admissions.
The system would go to a “test-blind” system until it developed its own test.
Ending standardized testing had an obvious secondary purpose: to frustrate new legal challenges to the use of race in college admissions.
We have also seen the dismal decline in standards at elite universities like Harvard, where faculty have been compelled to teach high school-level math classes to students.
Various schools have now reversed this ridiculous move pushed by faculty and administrators in the cause of racial diversity. The proponents of the change, such as Napolitano, have said little after they decimated the academic integrity and standing of their schools.
The UC faculty cited the UC San Diego Senate–Administration Workgroup on Admissions report, which found that 70 percent of these students are performing below a middle-school level.
Like Harvard, faculty are now teaching high-school-level math.
The trust of the new push to restore standardized testing has focused on STEM subjects. In a June 5 open letter, STEM faculty raised the alarm that UC has regularly admitted students who cannot complete college-level coursework.
UC Board Chair Maria Anguiano insisted that they just needed more time before reintroducing testing that it required by the vast majority of schools: “The goal of this review is not to rehash old questions or data but an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we define and evaluate college readiness in a rapidly changing world.”
For many critics, this comes off as a state academic system contemplating its collective navel as academic standards plummet. Neither the public nor many of the faculty want to continue on the terrible course taken under Napolitano. However, even on this easy and straightforward question, the faculty is dragging its feet to study the matter further — after previously disregarding the results of a study supporting standardized testing.
Indian Companies Increasingly Turn To Chinese LLMs Due To “Unsustainable” US Token Bills
Several weeks ago we laid out the increasingly attractive proposition for global enterprises that are Chinese LLM: 95% of the latest US frontier model capabilities and 10% of the cost. Why pay the premium, when one way or another someone will steal your IP, be it Dario Amodei or Beijing? India, it appears, agrees.
According to the NIkkei, Indian companies are increasingly leaning on Chinese large language models – developed by DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI (the same LLMs which we said recently are poised to overtake US models as the best “value proposition“, and profiled here) – to contain their artificial intelligence spends, in the process extending India’s reliance on China for cutting-edge technologies despite a long history of standoffs between the neighbors.
A schematic of China’s AI/Hyperscaler ecosystem is shown below (excerpted from here).
Puneet Kumar, CEO at Mirae Asset Venture Investments India, said that several consumer technology startups that he has met since mid-2025 use such Chinese open-weight LLMs — those that rely on publicly accessible parameters — which help drive down costs by an “order of magnitude.”
Because these parameters are publicly available, users can download and modify them on their own computers, in contrast to the proprietary offerings by US frontier labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The Chinese open-weight LLMs can be accessed in India through service providers such as Microsoft at a fraction of the price of their American counterparts, thanks to their low cost of development. And thanks to reverse engineering distillation, Chinese models have almost caught up with US frontier models in terms of capabilities.
“The US models are expensive, and for a lot of basic things, you don’t need them,” Gupta said. “It’s overkill, like trying to drive a sports car on a crowded city road.”
For the DeepSeek models that Microsoft makes available in southern India through its Foundry platform, charges range between 19 cents and $1.74 per million input tokens, while the price per 1 million output tokens varies from 51 cents to $5.40. Input costs for Moonshot’s Kimi go up to 95 cents and output costs up to $4.
In comparison, input costs for OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 series range from $5 to $12 per million input tokens, while output costs hover between $30 and $54.
The adoption of Chinese LLMs comes at a time when the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic are opening offices and expanding their offerings in the South Asian nation. Both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei showed up at the India AI Summit earlier this year, underscoring the importance of India as a market, thanks to its large number of programmers, who have emerged as by far the most active users of AI. Anthropic has bagged Tata Group-owned airline Air India, software maker Cognizant and payment processor Razorpay as customers, while OpenAI counts India’s largest software maker, Tata Consultancy Services, as a client. However, unless their token costs crater, the companies can spend billions on marketing and still nobody will use them.
The cost pressures driving the soaring popularity of Chinese LLMs in India are mirrored globally, with major companies including Tesla, Amazon, Uber and Walmart capping AI usage to arrest soaring technology spends as focus shifts from indiscriminate usage, called tokenmaxxing, to return on investment. Chinese LLMs are emerging as winners with aggressive pricing, with their usage more than doubling to 25 trillion tokens in the final week of June from the end of May, according to Open Router, a marketplace for AI models. That was 78% more than U.S. models, a sharp reversal in fortunes from the start of the year, when usage was less than half that of their American counterparts.
Companies like Coinbase, DoorDash and Airbnb have publicly said that they have begun using Chinese models.
Vidya Madhavan, founder of Elevation Capital-backed dating app Schmooze, said that possibilities of “substantial” savings, coupled with wider uptake of open-weight LLMs globally and their ability to deliver a satisfactory performance in comparison with their American peers, encouraged her to deploy Alibaba’s Qwen models after some initial hesitation.
“Our approach has been to use solutions from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs, etc., to start with, so that we have a sense of what great looks like, and then use a combination of open source plus our tuning to achieve the same outcome and save money wherever applicable,” she said.
Nikhil Narendran, a partner at law firm Trilegal, sees startups and developers as early adopters in India, though larger firms are also deliberating over the deployment of Chinese LLMs.
“The token bills are a serious issue — it is increasingly becoming unsustainable,” he said.
Adding to the appeal of open-weight LLMs is that, by virtue of being locally hosted, data stays in India, Narendran said, although “there might be unverified deployment artifacts such as malware or trojans, which is a concern.”
“Unless the token-intensive nature of the US frontier AI models changes, the Chinese are likely to take a significant lead over the Americans,” he said. “Since it’s mainly the trust factor that goes against them, I am sure Chinese developers understand that risk, and hence are likely to be extra careful.”
The incursion of Chinese models into India is raising questions about the South Asian nation’s ambitions around AI sovereignty, even as companies such as Sarvam and Gnani build LLMs in Indic languages.
In 2024, India earmarked about 104 billion rupees (about $1.1 billion at current exchange rates) for the technology over a five-year period, but this pales in comparison to China’s public investments “running into tens of billions of dollars annually,” estimates research firm Bernstein. Moreover, disbursals have been patchy, with actual spending in the fiscal year ending March 2025 totaling 190 million rupees, against an allocation of 5.52 billion rupees, while expenditure for the following fiscal year stood at 3.79 billion rupees, versus an allocation of 20 billion rupees. Government officials have said that disbursals will increase in sync with use of graphics processing units, which have taken time to procure but are crucial to developing AI models.
The risk of being cut off from foreign AI models amid a fragile geopolitical situation has increased the pressure on India to develop its own capabilities. Washington has already prevented Anthropic from giving foreign entities access to its latest models, Fable and Mythos, though the restrictions were lifted late last month. In addition, Reuters reported earlier this week that Beijing is now considering restricting overseas access to advanced Chinese AI models.
Analysts warned that India’s dependence on China — which is also evident in other advanced technologies like electric vehicles and lithium-ion cells — is risky, given the two nations’ recent history of tensions, particularly over a territorial dispute in the Himalayas. In 2020, New Delhi tightened restrictions on Chinese investments after an outbreak of fighting there, although these were eased in March this year.
Sameer Patil, director at the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation think tank, said India’s ambitions with sovereign LLMs are restricted to domestic usage, unlike the U.S. and China, which are eyeing global dominance.
“Deepening the dependence on the foreign tech, whether American or Chinese, is a concern because access can be shut down overnight and you will be left in the lurch,” Patil said. “Therefore, we have to develop that kind of resilience.”
