Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

The eyes of the world have been fixated on the war in Iran for the past six months, meanwhile, the single-most dangerous flashpoint on the planet has gone mostly ignored. Until, that is, waves of Ukrainian drone strikes activated a run on global diesel markets. Suddenly, everyone is paying attention again…

Russia is the second largest diesel exporter in the world next to the United States, supplying around 12% of total global exports (the US supplies 22% of exports). To put this in perspective, only 10% of global diesel exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz under normal conditions – And that supply is coming from seven different oil producing nations including Iran.

After western sanctions, Russian diesel shipments have gone primarily to Turkey, Brazil, India and China. However, because Russian supplies continued to circulate on global markets, these countries did not have to draw fuel from alternative sources.

Conditions have now changed, and not for the better. Constant Ukrainianian drone strikes on Russian refineries have forced the Kremlin to stop all diesel exports and retain their existing supply for the population and the war effort.

If you want to know why diesel prices have been hit hard since July, Russian export cuts are the reason. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has steadily climbed since July according to independent satellite tracking confirmation (anyone using AIS transponder data alone will have a low and inaccurate count). It’s the Russian refinery issue that has inflated diesel prices in recent months.

With Russian sources completely cut off, multiple nations will have to draw from other producers. Meaning, the pie is shrinking, but everyone still wants the same size slice they’ve always had. If the US also stops diesel exports in response, it would be a disaster for foreign markets and result in true supply shortages (Europe would be hard hit; half of their diesel imports come from the US).

In 2024 I questioned why the Ukrainians kept going after odd targets such as nuclear early warning radar stations rather than key resources like oil refineries in order to stop Russia’s attrition strategy. Well, it looks like the Ukrainians finally figured it out.

Russia’s attrition strategy has been highly effective in grinding down Ukraine’s troop strength (to the point that they were recruiting mostly men over 40), but the key flaw of a slow moving front line and a protracted offensive is that it requires a large stockpile of resources. Ukraine’s drone attacks have a low success rate, but if they send a thousand UAVs to attack a refinery and a couple get through, then that’s still a win in the long run because it drags down Russia’s lumbering attrition-based operation.

The Trump Administration has asked Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries due to the instability to global markets, but Zelensky has ignored the request. It’s not surprising; they’ve finally found a tactic that works.

Of course, now the rest of the world is being affected by diesel supply shortages when this was not the case a year ago. One would think the Europeans, who have been particularly throttled by price hikes on fuel and energy, would be in a rush to end the war. And maybe they are about to intervene, but not in the way we might hope…

I think it’s fair to say that the Ukraine war would have ended a long time ago had it not been for the interference of European governments propping up Ukraine and encouraging them to NOT make a deal. Ultimately, Russia is going to keep the Donbas region whether Ukraine likes it or not. But Zelensky refuses to accept this outcome, so, the war rages on much longer than it needs to.

The situation gets much more dangerous, though,with the push by European elites to put boots on the ground. They seem to want to start a world war. Beyond the diesel resource problem which puts a timetable on the war for both sides, European governments have increased troop movements to eastern borders and it’s starting to look like they’re getting ready for something big.

Poland has been building extensive trenches and fortifications using German combat engineers on the border of Belarus. Germany has established a 5000-man armored brigade in Lithuania, the first time the Germans have stationed permanent combat troops abroad since 1945. NATO has launched a 9^th multinational battle group with regular exercises in Finland near the Russian border. Multiple nations are sending rotating brigades to Latvia, Romania and Estonia. Even the Canadians are sending troops.

Recent weeks have seen repeated Polish and Baltic fighter activations due to alleged drone or aircraft activity near alliance airspace. Allies are pre-positioning equipment and planning much larger stockpiles of ammunition and resources in frontline states. NATO has also published extensive contingency planning for the eastern flank.

There has been a surge in political and civil-preparedness messaging for civilians. Polish warnings about possible disguised drone/missile incidents. French measures to protect critical infrastructure after hybrid-attack briefings. German military-hospital capacity planning. Lithuanian plans for evacuation routes. UK public preparedness bulletins including recommendations for civilians to stock up on food and supplies..

Even Switzerland has been posting security and preparedness messages for citizens, indicating a “deteriorating security situation” in relation to the military build up.

All of this could be viewed as a defensive posture and not necessarily planning for direct engagement with the Russians; but consider for a moment that Russia has not once threatened to attack European or NATO targets and has consistently said that their only interest is Ukraine. Yet, Europe has removed their “trip wire” defense strategy and replaced it with a permanent front. It sure does seem like they are getting ready for an event which might provoke the Russians to strike targets outside of Ukraine.

What would that event be?

To be clear, I’m not a big fan of the Russian government. Evidence suggests that they engage in regular psy-ops in the US and there are far too many conservative influencers who kiss Putin’s ass. That said, I’m not a fan of Ukraine or the Europeans either, and I suspect the EU elites would LOVE to trigger a world war if they thought they could get away with it.

Why? Well, here’s my theory…

Europe has been the primary target of a decade long cultural replacement operation. Mass immigration has been utilized to undermine the stability of economic and social structures. For years I have been warning that these third world migrants are being imported as a mercenary army to control the locals and prevent rebellion against future leftist agendas.

We are already seeing confirmation of this in the UK, where migrants are being integrated into police forces to subdue conservative protesters.

The thing is, this invasion plan has sparked an enormous counter-movement of European patriots in countries like Britain and Germany. Anti-immigration and conservative parties like Restore in the UK and the AFD in Germany are seeing wild success in membership and elections. Meaning, time for leftists/globalists is running out and they need to do something quick before they lose direct governmental power.

A world war sure would come in handy, right? All kinds of restrictions on the populace can be put in place, along with a perfect excuse to delay or eliminate normal elections. Would the progressives actually go that far just to prevent conservatives from taking government?  We all know that they would.

So, we have two running clocks that did not exist at the beginning of the Ukraine war: We have a diesel shortage clock, specifically for the Europeans. And, we have an avalanche of conservative movements with major elections happening from 2026 through 2029.

My concern is that the leftists are about to go for broke in an effort to keep power. I don’t think they’re crazy enough to want a nuclear war, and perhaps the Russians want to avoid this as well. If that’s the case, then the result would be a large multi-region conflict that MIGHT turn nuclear if either side feels like they are losing.  The main goal of the EU elites at that stage would be to lure the US into the fray.

In any case the aftershocks would be disastrous. Let’s hope that conservative and populist movements in Europe can pull the rug out from under their far-left governments before the situation on the eastern front escalates any further.

Ten months, one tariff threat and several “sleepless nights” later, South Korea has finally found somewhere to put the first piece of the $350 billion it promised to invest in America. The winner is a gas-fired power complex in Encinal, Texas (population 540, where real estate is about to ballistic), and it is built to feed the one thing Washington can never get enough of: electricity for data centers and chip fabs.

According to the FT, Seoul this week chose the proposed $22.3 billion, 6.3-gigawatt complex. The White House could announce it as soon as Wednesday, possibly with Trump announcing it himself, depending on how preparations for Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington go. Trump and President Lee Jae Myung met for 30 minutes on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The deal still needs final US approval.

Yonhap reported that the plant will be built in stages: an initial 1.4GW of simple-cycle gas turbines, followed by roughly 4.9GW of more efficient combined-cycle generation. However, in the first whiff of even more vaporware, no customers have been confirmed. Korea’s KED Global adds that there is no power purchase agreement yet, with signing targeted for 2027. It also reports that the Trump administration asked for a roughly 25% increase in the project’s size, which would take it to about $25 billion.

How the money works

Under the November 2025 agreement, Seoul supplies $200 billion in upfront capital for projects in “strategic industries,” capped at $20 billion a year, plus a separate $150 billion for shipbuilding. Project cash flow is split 50/50 with Washington until Korea recovers its principal and interest. After that, Korea’s share drops to 10% and the US takes 90%. It is a generous arrangement, just not for the side putting up the money.

Korean officials told the National Assembly that Encinal could generate $43 billion to $45 billion of revenue over 20 years, which they say is enough to recover principal and interest. Those numbers deserve a closer look:

• $43 billion to $45 billion works out to roughly $2.2 billion a year, or about twice the upfront capital. That is gross revenue. It comes before fuel, operations, maintenance and financing costs, and pretty much everything else… and gas is the main input cost of a gas plant.
• Korea receives only half of the project’s cash flow until it is repaid. On a plain reading, recovering $22 billion plus interest from a 50% share would take distributable cash flow well above the capital invested. Seoul has not yet published a breakdown showing how revenue of about 2x capex achieves that.
• The official line is that every project must be “commercially reasonable.” But as Haeyoon Kim of Korea Tech and Trade Watch told the FT, the US-led Investment Committee decides what counts as commercially reasonable, and Trump makes the final call. Seoul can object, but objecting risks higher tariffs.

Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the government had “been negotiating intensely with the U.S. in order to pursue commercially viable projects,” and that the goal was to expand Korean companies’ entry into the US market. Lee said last week the talks had given him “sleepless nights.”

Following Japan’s lead

Tokyo went first. As we reported in February, the opening $36 billion tranche of Japan’s $550 billion pledge was led by SB Energy’s 9.2GW gas plant in Ohio (which as we reported last night is suddenly having major issues, having delayed its IPO), which Commerce Secretary Lutnick called “the largest natural gas generation facility in history.” Japan has since added up to $40 billion of small modular reactors in Tennessee and Alabama.

If Seoul was looking for a template, it found one. The cost per unit of capacity is almost identical. At $22.3 billion for 6.3GW, Encinal comes to about $3,540 per kilowatt. At about $33 billion for 9.2GW, the Ohio plant comes to about $3,590 per kilowatt. Both are well above what US combined-cycle plants cost before the AI boom, which is what happens when every hyperscaler on earth wants the same megawatts at the same time.

The real constraint: turbines

Money, it turns out, is the easy part. As we detailed earlier this month, large gas turbines are effectively sold out through 2030. Applied Digital’s CEO warned that orders placed today may not arrive until 2032. Some developers are so desperate they are going back to 19th-century technology, boilers and steam, just to get power online sooner. Encinal’s plan, 1.4GW of fast-to-deploy turbines first and then 4.9GW of combined-cycle capacity, means getting in line for the same heavy-duty equipment every hyperscaler is already chasing.

Goldman’s latest research on the power problem (available to pro subscribers) published just hours before the FT story, shows why Washington wants these megawatts. In a Carbonomics note on Wednesday, Michele Della Vigna’s team said that with power availability “emerging as a key constraint on AI infrastructure deployment” and grid connection times in the US and Europe expected to lengthen, they “raise our outlook for BTM [behind-the-meter] power generation from 40GW to 67GW by 2030.”

Goldman now expects on-site gas generation to meet about 28% of US data center power demand by 2030. Its preferred beneficiaries of conventional gas generation are GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, Mitsubishi Heavy and INNIO. Not a Korean name among them, which leaves an awkward question for Seoul: how much of the equipment spending on a Korean-funded plant will actually end up with Korean suppliers.

The competition for that equipment is not only American. The same Goldman research flags that Alibaba Cloud is targeting 20GW of data-center power by 2032, which is more than three Encinals for one Chinese cloud provider alone.

Then there is the question of who ends up buying the electricity. The obvious candidates are the hyperscalers, and they are not short of cash to spend. Goldman credit strategist Amanda Lynam last week raised her forecast for hyperscaler investment-grade bond issuance to $420 billion in 2027, “more than a 60% increase vs our full-year 2026 estimate of $250 billion,” with 65% to 75% expected to be placed in the dollar IG market.

In other words, the would-be customers for Encinal’s power are borrowing record sums to build data centers that need exactly this kind of plant. The bull case for Seoul is that one of them signs a PPA by 2027. The bear case is that Korea has fronted $22 billion on the assumption that someone will, while the AI capex cycle that Goldman’s own economists say has companies “over-earning” is nearing its peak.

The bigger picture

The project comes as the US-Korea relationship is under strain on several fronts:

• Iran: Trump has pressed Seoul for help in the war against Iran, and Lee has ruled out sending forces in a combat role.
• Submarines: Seoul wants US help building nuclear-powered submarines. Washington agreed last year to cooperate on technical requirements and fuel, but there has been almost no progress since.
• Linkage: One Korean official told the FT that US counterparts had signaled further progress on the submarines would come only after Seoul announced some of its promised investments. Pay first, then we talk.

Nuclear projects and a scaled-down Alaska LNG project are expected to follow Encinal. Korea is also negotiating a stake of about 7% in Westinghouse, down from the 15% it originally sought, according to KED. For now, the first check is going to a Texas gas plant with no customers, no power purchase agreement, turbines that may not show up this decade, and revenue projections that still have to be squared with a 50/50 cash-flow split. That leaves $328 billion to go.

Hurricane Polo weakened to a Category 4 storm early Wednesday after strengthening into an “extremely dangerous” Category 5 storm and churning 210 miles south of Zihuatanejo, Mexico, in the Pacific Ocean. The storm risks disrupting critical maritime shipping lanes along Mexico’s Pacific coast.

FreightWaves reports that Mexico’s Navy restricted major container port Manzanillo to ships of at least 500 gross tonnage beginning Tuesday morning, allowing container ships to continue operating while barring smaller craft. Ships already docked at the container port were advised to reinforce mooring lines as winds, rainfall and waves intensified.

Polo’s slow track up the western Mexican coast is complicating complex global maritime supply chains as navigation restrictions continue to broaden.

According to local outlet La Jornada, smaller vessels have so far been restricted at Acapulco, Puerto Marqués, Zihuatanejo and Lázaro Cárdenas in Michoacán.

Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas are two major cargo ports on Mexico’s Pacific coast and are considered major maritime gateways into North American markets. Both connect ocean shipping with inland road and rail networks. Disruptions can delay imported manufacturing components and consumer goods.

Bloomberg forecast data shows Polo tracking north toward Cabo San Lucas early next week, potentially adding further supply chain complications at ports such as nearby Puerto San Carlos, where disruptions could affect regional fuel deliveries, seafood operations and agricultural shipments.

Supply chain risk hinges on how long restrictions last and whether they expand to larger vessels. With Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas connecting Asian cargo flows to Mexico’s industrial base, a prolonged shutdown could delay components, slow factory output, and raise logistics costs for the region. 

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

China has added more chemicals to its export control list for drug precursor substances ahead of a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington.

The Chinese commerce ministry announced on Sept. 22 that it added two new substances to the list of chemicals subject to export controls, requiring exporters to obtain licenses to ship to the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

The move comes ahead of Xi’s state visit to the United States. Xi is due to meet with Trump at the White House on Sept. 24, marking their second meeting this year.

The two leaders last met during Trump’s visit to Beijing in May, when they agreed to build a “constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity,” according to the White House.

Following the meeting in Beijing, China expanded its drug precursor export control list by adding three more chemical substances. Its National Narcotics Control Commission also issued a notice warning of eight chemicals that could be used to make synthetic drugs.

The Trump administration has repeatedly urged Beijing to do more to stem the flow of precursor chemicals for synthesizing the deadly opioid fentanyl into the United States.

China is a major source of precursor chemicals used to produce illicit fentanyl. After returning to the White House for a second term last year, Trump imposed fentanyl-related tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada over their alleged failure to stem the flow of illicit drugs into the United States. The tariffs were subsequently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in February.

Fentanyl deaths in the United States rose steeply around 2016. Then deaths skyrocketed from 2021 to 2023 along with a record surge of border crossings, and at its peak, the fentanyl crisis was linked to 76,226 deaths in 2022, more than quadruple the figure from 2016. The United States started seeing a reversal in 2024, coinciding with changed border policies, and fentanyl-linked deaths in 2024 were estimated to be 48,422.

The United States has also been engaging Chinese officials to counter the fentanyl crisis since the mid-2010s, resulting in the restriction of several chemicals over the years.

Notably, Beijing broke off all major engagement with the United States in 2022, citing then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit to Taiwan, including ceasing cooperation on curbing fentanyl-related exports. It resumed engagement in November 2023 after the United States removed sanctions on the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science for human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

In November 2025, Beijing imposed export restrictions on 13 fentanyl precursor chemicals to the United States, Mexico, and Canada after Trump met with Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea.

It remains unclear whether the upcoming meeting in Washington will address the flow of precursor chemicals into the United States, as neither Beijing nor Washington has specified which issues will be on the leaders’ agenda.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters after a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Manila, Philippines, on July 22 that he expects Xi to have a positive visit.

Rubio acknowledged the major differences between Washington and Beijing and emphasized that it is their job to manage them to ensure “they never get out of control.”

“We’re, obviously, always going to defend our national interest,” he said at the time. “And I expect they’ll do the same, as they define it. But I think there are some areas of potential cooperation.”

Michael Zhuang, Catherine Yang, and Reuters contributed to this report.

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for a 2006 sex crime.

The Sept. 23 sentencing was for the sexual assault of then-TV production assistant Miriam Haley, and comes after Weinstein’s 2020 conviction was overturned.

A jury found Weinstein guilty at last year’s retrial.

In 2024, Weinstein’s conviction for this same crime, which was handed down in 2020, was erased due to a judge’s determination that the jury had heard testimony that should not have been admitted.

The judge ruled that the now-convicted assailant was denied a fair trial due to the admission of testimony from women whose allegations weren’t a part of the Haley case.

The 74-year-old faced up to 25 years in prison for the assault of Haley, and he has already served six years.

Haley testified about the 2006 assault, which took place at Weinstein’s Manhattan apartment, three times: at two trials and again in court just before the sentencing.

The former Hollywood insider has been embroiled in legal troubles for almost 10 years, starting in 2017, and has been a centerpiece in the cultural #MeToo movement that prompted victims to speak out about sexual assault.

Once a powerful figure in the entertainment industry and a major political donor, Weinstein took part in the production of award-winning movies such as “Shakespeare in Love,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Chocolat.”

Weinstein has been accused by more than 100 women of sexual assault, misconduct, and harassment. He has denied the charges.

Among his accusers are Hollywood actresses and others in the film industry.

The producer and one-time influential political donor was found guilty of sexual assault while simultaneously being acquitted of a rape charge from 2013.

Weinstein, who cofounded the Miramax studio, was initially convicted of rape and sexual assault in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Two years later, he was also convicted of raping and sexually assaulting an Italian actress in 2013, for which he was sentenced to 16 years.

The second sentencing, which took place in California, required that he serve that term separately from the New York sentence.

While in jail, Weinstein was treated for a type of slow-growing blood cancer – chronic myeloid leukemia – as well as heart issues, diabetes, and other issues.

Among the more interesting parts of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech before the UN General Assembly on Wednesday afternoon was when he lashed out at North Korea.

Zelensky said while issuing leveling a litany of charges against Russia for its war that “The leader of North Korea sent his troops to Russia to support the weak points of the Russian army.“

He questioned why a faraway southeast Asian country would be so willing to sacrifice its troops for a Russian endeavor. 

Zelensky said: “You probably saw the broadcast from Pyongyang when they honored those who were killed. And this is madness, too. Why should Koreans give their lives in a war against Ukraine?“

He further accused Kim Jong Un of using his own citizens “like currency” in return for “improved ballistic missiles and Pyongyang’s much [upgraded] drone capabilities.” Likely these barbs will only cause Kim’s regime to double down, and keep up its military support to Moscow.

By some estimates, hundreds or possibly even thousands of DPRK troops have died so far in the Ukraine conflict. Pyongyang and Moscow have increasingly openly acknowledged the deaths, with North Korea even having held patriotic state funerals for slain troops.

Elsewhere in the address, Zelensky sought to portray his country as essentially ‘winning’ the war, claiming immense but unverifiable Russian losses on the battlefield, also while Ukraine’s long-range drones unleash destruction on Russian energy infrastructure. 

Zelensky:

Just this year, from January through August, the Russian army lost 248,964 people on the battlefield in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/luHxIwp2Au

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 23, 2026

Concerning the energy war, Zelensky went on to assert that “Oil itself is not Ukraine’s target, not our target, not gasoline or diesel, not factories or ports … Our target is Russia’s ability to finance this war, to drag it out, to make it more brutal and more destructive.”

“Russia’s finances and Russia’s production are what must be stopped if Putin is to be stopped,” Zelensky added. On this front, he presented Ukraine’s risky long-range strikes as victorious. But he has also this week expressed willingness to agree to a joint energy ceasefire.

On sanctions, he pointed to Russia’s budget deficit as now being “bigger than in any other year” – claiming that “Russia planned major operations on the front this summer; all of them failed.”

Zelenskyy at the UN: “Ukrainians understand that this winter could be very harsh for us, but in response we will have no choice but to make it harsh for Russia too” pic.twitter.com/xAOZvFgRro

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 23, 2026

Zelensky also used the speech to try and rally Western countries to not grow weak on punishing Russia and keeping its global isolation in place.

“Something always seems to stop Putin from saying, ‘That’s it. Enough, Peace,’” Zelensky said. “Can you even imagine him without war? He is ‘Patient Zero’, the one from whom war keeps spreading further. … ‘Patient Zero’ must be stopped.”

He said Russian assets must “remain a target,” arguing that “when someone in the world weakens sanctions, weakens sanctions against Russian oligarchs, it may make life more comfortable for rich Russians, but it also gives Putin more time, to send his people into the kill zones.”

Xi Jinping lands in Washington for a state visit today, but as Bloomberg sums up the mood in one line: the two leaders “may find common ground on AI safety, but neither is willing to give ground in the technology race.” And right on schedule, the FT reports that Beijing has started counting Broadcom switches.

According to the FT, China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which oversees the country’s state-owned companies, has spent recent weeks surveying how much Broadcom switching gear is installed in state-controlled data centres. The count came back… high: “The survey found that the penetration rate of Broadcom switches among state-owned companies could be as high as 90 per cent, one of the people said.”

The exercise supports Beijing’s “domestic chips for domestic use” campaign. The initial findings could lead SASAC to issue “informal guidance” telling state data centres to cut back on Broadcom. In Beijing, informal guidance tends to carry the weight of a formal order.

Why switches, and why now

Switches get little attention in the AI boom, but they decide whether 10,000 accelerators work together as one training cluster or sit around as 10,000 very expensive heaters. Broadcom’s merchant Ethernet silicon dominates that layer worldwide. Nvidia and Huawei also sell high-end switches in China, but Nvidia is already barred from state-backed data centers. That leaves Broadcom as the last major American supplier embedded in China’s state AI build-out.

SASAC is also looking at how Broadcom sells, not just how much. Per the FT, the agency is checking whether Broadcom used its market lead to bundle products or require purchase commitments of up to tens of thousands of switch chips. Those terms allegedly limited how much H3C and Ruijie Networks could buy from other vendors such as Huawei. H3C and Ruijie are the preferred vendors on the procurement lists behind billions of dollars in annual public-sector IT spending. If that line of questioning sounds familiar, Beijing used the same approach last year when it found Nvidia had breached antimonopoly law over its Mellanox deal. Mellanox is, notably, a networking business.

Two caveats from the FT story: 

• Private operators are exempt. ByteDance and Alibaba are not covered, so the rule doesn’t reach the companies doing most of China’s frontier training.
• Nothing gets ripped out. Existing gear stays in place. One rack-maker sales rep described the policy as “part of a broader policy to ‘nationalise the supply chain’.” In practice, that means a replacement cycle rather than a purge.

The stakes for Broadcom

According to its latest 10-K, 17% of Broadcom’s FY2025 revenue (about $10.9bn of $63.9bn) came from shipments to China including Hong Kong. That was down from 20% a year earlier. Much of that figure is ship-to accounting for contract manufacturers assembling gear for non-Chinese customers, so true Chinese end-demand is smaller. AVGO rose about 0.5% on the headline, which suggests traders don’t see much damage. Sure enough, while the near-term P&L hit is modest but the strategic cost is bigger: switching is set to become a multibillion-dollar market inside China, and it is being set aside for domestic suppliers.

The bigger picture: Goldman’s numbers on China’s self-reliance push

Goldman’s recent research shows how quickly the domestic stack is filling in:

• The demand side is large. Goldman’s desk points out that China’s domestic AI chip market is “quietly gearing up for a staggering 69% compound annual growth rate through 2030.” GS Research’s CHIPS IV forecasts China semiconductor capex rising +13% / +15% / +15% in 2026–28, driven by memory and advanced-node capacity.
• The foundry is full. In the SMIC note (available to pro subs here), Allen Chang says SMIC grew revenue 20% QoQ in 2Q26. That was the fastest among the global top-10 foundries, whose aggregate growth was 11.5%. Chang attributes it to “China’s strong AI demand and customers diversifying their suppliers to better secure capacity.” Utilization is expected to stay above 95% through 2H26, new wafer pricing takes effect in 3Q26, and 54–71% of capex goes to 7nm and advanced nodes. Goldman expects no ASP declines because there’s no spare capacity to discount.

• The private sector is localizing without being told to. In the Alibaba note after the Apsara conference (available here for pro subs), Golman analyst Ronald Keung forecasts capex of Rmb209bn / 243bn / 260bn for FY27–29E and a cloud power footprint of 20GW by 2032, supported by “unique cost advantages from its custom T-head silicon.” Alibaba is exempt from the SASAC push, yet it is building its own chips anyway.
• Policy points the same way. Goldman chief China economist Hui Shan writes that policymakers are “focused on advanced manufacturing rather than broad-based easing.” So while consumers deal with a housing slump, the fabs keep getting funded.

Put Goldman’s research next to the policy timeline and the pattern is clear:

• August 2025: New data centers told to source at least 50% of chips locally.
• September 2025: Big tech told to stop buying Nvidia’s China-specific chips, and regulators issued the Mellanox antitrust finding.
• November 2025: State-funded data centers banned from using foreign AI accelerators (Reuters).
• June 2026: A reported ~2 trillion yuan ($295bn) national compute plan through 2028 with an 80% domestic-content target (TechTimes).
• September 2026: The survey of switches, one of the last foreign-made layers left.

On the supply side, Huawei used last week’s Huawei Connect to lay out an Ascend roadmap of the 960 in 2027, 970 in 2028 and 980 in 2029. It also showed an Atlas 960 SuperPoD that links 4,096 NPUs over its proprietary UnifiedBus interconnect, which means its networking is in-house too (Irish Times). DeepSeek reportedly plans to deploy at least 160,000 Ascend 950DTs. Huawei has raised 950DT prices by 60%, citing “tight component supply,” which suggests pricing power is not an American monopoly either.

The catch: domestic gear costs more to run

Industry experts told the FT that Huawei’s switches are less energy-efficient than Broadcom’s, which means higher power bills for users. That matches Goldman’s SMIC work: with utilization above 95% and no price cuts coming, “domestic” currently also means “capacity-constrained and not cheap.” China’s workaround is to build power generation faster than anyone else, which they’ve done this admirably.

And unlike the US, China has the electrical capacity to build all of this. China has 4000GW of total power generation and growing 20%. The US is at 1200GW and flat (with PJM and ERCOT nearing capacity) https://t.co/mEwD3LzvXs pic.twitter.com/p0xFKqeEAB

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 23, 2026

Bottom line

Export controls were meant to keep China a generation or two behind in AI hardware. They did slow progress in places, but they also gave Beijing both a reason and the political cover to replace every layer of the stack: accelerators, foundry, memory, interconnect and now switches. Each layer runs slower and hotter than its US counterpart, but it is Chinese-made. The market Broadcom has lost is small this year and likely to shrink further. Goldman’s 69% CAGR figure describes a market growing quickly, and US suppliers are increasingly shut out of it.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The dispute over Missouri’s new congressional map returned to the Supreme Court for the third time, with justices considering whether the state can use the GOP-backed map in the midterm elections.

The new map could help Republicans gain an additional U.S. House seat in the Nov. 3 elections.

The Supreme Court has twice prevented the state from using the redrawn congressional map, most recently on Sept. 10, when it granted the opponents’ bid to stay a federal judge’s order allowing the state to use the map in the midterm elections.

People Not Politicians, the group opposing the redrawn congressional map, filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 22 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that using the 2022 map in the Nov. 3 general elections would be unconstitutional, as the state had already used the redrawn 2025 map in the August 2026 primaries.

In a Sept. 21 ruling, the Eighth Circuit ordered U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark to enter a permanent injunction barring Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins from using any congressional map other than the one the Legislature approved in 2025.

The federal appeals court stayed its ruling until Sept. 28 to allow time for a Supreme Court review.

Opponents asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling, saying it undermined the court’s previous injunction blocking the use of the 2025 congressional map.

“The Eighth Circuit’s order does not merely undermine this court’s stay order; it requires the district court to issue a permanent injunction granting the exact same relief this court stayed in the exact same case,” the motion stated.

The motion asks the Supreme Court to clarify that its Sept. 10 stay “precludes enforcement of the replacement injunction – or any additional federal court injunctions contrary to the stay order – so long as that stay remains in effect.”

Opponents also argued that the Eighth Circuit lacked jurisdiction to enter the ruling.

“The Eighth Circuit cannot disrupt an imminent election after ballots have been cast by issuing relief that this court has already foreclosed and that it lacked jurisdiction to grant, all based on a merits theory of the panel’s own invention,” they said.

The Supreme Court gave supporters of the new map until midday on Wednesday to respond to the latest appeal.

The 2022 map, drawn by the General Assembly after the 2020 census, was designed to give Republicans a 6-2 edge. The 2025 map, drawn as part of a mid-decade redistricting, was designed to give them a 7-1 advantage.

Missouri held primary elections on Aug. 4 using the 2025 Missouri First map approved by the Republican-controlled General Assembly. President Donald Trump supported the redrawn map.