Authored by Joe Bertolami via RealClearMarkets,

A recent report from Stanford reviewed the latest employment data and found that, so far, AI has not resulted in large scale job destruction. Meanwhile, new hiring data from the Economic Times reveals that AI is actively fueling unprecedented job creation, with AI skills now powering nearly two-thirds of new Global Capability Center hiring. Together, these recent dispatches from the front lines of the labor market point to a calming reality: the much-dreaded AI job apocalypse hasn’t materialized as a sudden extinction event.

The (sometimes buried) lede: AI is delivering real impact, and it is broadly changing the nature of work. But disruption is not a new phenomenon. The economy has always dismantled old work to build new work. What determines whether this evolution feels like progress or collapse isn’t just the number of jobs lost, it’s the speed at which that loss hits the labor market.

In 1995, Bill Gates circulated a memo titled “The Internet Tidal Wave,” calling the web the most important computing development since the IBM PC. If the internet was a tidal wave, artificial intelligence is a tsunami. It is arguably the biggest advancement in computing since the Turing machine. Yet, from a distance, it’s difficult to appreciate the speed of this wave, leading many to wonder when the broader economy will truly feel its impact.

To put this in context, we must understand the historical pattern already visible in the labor market. Combining decades of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve yields a remarkably consistent story of overlapping curves: job loss and job creation. Over the last two decades, nearly 20 million U.S. jobs vanished in disrupted sectors. Over the same period, total payrolls grew by 25.7 million. That equates to roughly 1.3 new jobs for every one destroyed. Classic examples include jobs in video rentals (-98.9%) and word processing (-83%) which largely vanished, but new work sprung up at the same time in areas like data processing (+54%) and warehousing (+260%) to support the digital economy.

The data also reveals an early signal that separates an absorbable decline from a brutal collapse: the disruption half-life, or how long an occupation takes to lose half its peak employment. Across the largest technological disruptions of the last few decades, the median half-life is about 10 years. Fast disruptions, like photo processing, take one to five years. Typical disruptions take eight to 13 years. And time is the ultimate shock absorber. When the economy transitions over ten years it feels like progress rather than a fast collapse, because it gives older workers time to retire and younger workers time to prepare.

If we track the most AI-exposed occupations-customer-service reps, IT support, telemarketers-since modern LLMs arrived in 2022, the early data is measured. After three years the current disruption looks closer to “typical” than a fast collapse, even before discounting the effects of offshoring, automation, and post-COVID corrections. This is Amara’s Law playing out in real time: we tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. The dire early warnings have given way to more cautious rhetoric. In 2025, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei warned AI could erase half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. By 2026, he and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are emphasizing productivity, economic growth, and the continued demand for human labor.

However, looking solely at total employment numbers masks a dangerous structural threat. Current evidence does not foretell the end of human labor, but AI is quietly breaking the mechanism by which we create experienced workers.

Software engineering is the canary in the coal mine. By most aggregate measures, employment looks stable; unemployment held at 4.2% in June 2026, and groups like the Yale Budget Lab find no clear AI effect yet on exposed occupations’ absolute job totals. But the composition is shifting underneath our feet. Per AP and Oxford Economics, junior developer postings are down roughly 40% in four years. Employment for 22-to-27-year-old computer and math grads has fallen 8% since 2022, even as older grads in the same fields have edged up. This same erosion is surfacing wherever entry-level work once meant routine tasks: paralegals, junior analysts, and first-line support.

The paradox is that these industries keep growing even as their entry-level doors narrow. The BLS still projects software developers and QA analysts to grow 15% through 2034. But that projection relies on a pipeline that turns juniors into senior talent-precisely the pipeline now being choked off.

The reason lies in the nature of the work. Software development is a process of judgement and accountability: deciding what to build, executing it, and owning the result. AI is fluent at the middle layer-the well-specified, routine coding that once served as a junior’s apprenticeship. But it remains far weaker at the judgment required on either side. The tasks AI automates are precisely the ones juniors were hired to learn on.

This is not merely an academic concern; it is a capital allocation problem. Misjudge the speed of disruption and you risk premature layoffs followed by a scramble to rehire, or funding the transition years too late, leaving you with a critical talent shortage when the leadership pipeline runs dry.

The challenge of the next decade isn’t surviving the end of work. It is training the next generation of experts when the traditional paths to apprenticeship no longer exist. And businesses are beginning to realize this new reality as demand for AI continues to grow. IBM is tripling its entry-level hiring, redesigning those roles around the oversight of AI and systems thinking rather than cutting them. Rebuilding the entry-level on-ramp is now a competitive imperative.

Junior roles are not charity; they are talent capex. If AI creates more work than it destroys, companies will still need people who know how to run it, judge it, and fix it. AI may be the broadest technology yet, but that breadth is its best reason for optimism. A general-purpose technology seeds new work across every sector. The firms that recognize this, protect their entry-level pipelines, and keep training now are the ones who will own the senior labor market later.

Joe Bertolami is the Co-Founder and CTO at Clifton AI, an agentic context engine for investment research. Previously at Snap, Google, and Microsoft, with a couple of startups in between. He holds an M.B.A. from the University of Washington and likes using AI to write code, stories, and music, which he posts at https://www.bertolami.com.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said COVID-19 activity is “increasing” across the United States although its levels are still considered “very low” overall.

“As of August 26, 2026, we estimate that COVID-19 infections are growing or likely growing in 48 states, declining or likely declining in zero states, and not changing in two states,” the CDC said on Friday.

Overall community viral activity levels, or a measurement of the virus in wastewater levels, for COVID-19 is considered by the CDC to be “very low.” Emergency department visits were also considered “very low,” which is the lowest ranking on the CDC’s website, with “very high” being the top.

According to a Friday update on the CDC’s website, wastewater data show that COVID-19 activity is “very high” in Texas and “high” in Mississippi.

“Moderate” levels were observed in California, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

All other states were listed as either “very low,” “low,” or there was limited or no data.

As Jack Phillips reports for The Epoch Times, another map provided by the CDC on Friday shows that COVID-19 levels were either “growing” or “likely growing” in every state where data was available.

Influenza levels are also growing nationwide, according to the CDC. There was no change in levels for RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, on a week-to-week basis.

“RSV activity is very low in most areas of the country,” the CDC said on a webpage broadly dedicated to respiratory viruses in the United States, adding that “seasonal influenza activity is low.”

The CDC said that rhinovirus and enterovirus, which are also respiratory viruses, are increasing around the country.

Meanwhile, infections caused by the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria, sometimes called “walking pneumonia,” are low in most areas across the United States, and infections caused by the pertussis bacteria, known as “whooping cough,” are at lower levels than seen post-pandemic, the CDC said.

The latest figures and estimations published by the CDC come as the Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna, Novavax-Sanofi, and Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated COVID-19 vaccines, the companies said on Thursday, after a CDC advisory panel recommended that the shots should target the dominant XFG variant.

Uptake of COVID-19 vaccines has dropped in recent years. Just 17.5 percent of adults and 10 percent of children received a shot in late 2025 and early 2026, according to figures from the CDC.

This month, the Chinese CDC reported more than half a million COVID-19 cases in July, a sharp increase from June’s figures. In July, 522,000 cases were reported, up from the 443,000 cases that were reported in the previous month.

Experts who are familiar with local conditions in China told The Epoch Times they suspect there are far more cases of the virus, which is believed to have originated in or around the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 before sparking a worldwide pandemic, than the Chinese regime is reporting publicly.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

Three members of the Federal Open Market Committee voted to raise rates in July. However, the Committee held the federal funds target at 3.5%-3.75% by a 9-3 vote. Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and J.P. Morgan all expect a September hike. Across the Atlantic, the European Central Bank raised rates by 25 basis points in June and is expected to raise them again in September.

It would be a monumental mistake. The diagnosis is wrong on both sides of the Atlantic. There is no overheating, no private credit excess, and no runaway private money creation. In fact, what we have is imported temporary energy shock and a fiscal problem. Raising rates will not solve any of those issues and punish those who did not cause the persistent inflation problem.

The United States grew at an annual rate of 1.5% in the second quarter, slightly down from 2.1% in the first. Federal spending is flat. Nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, and annual job creation is lower than the potential of the economy. This is not an overheated economy with a credit boom and a red-hot labor market that would justify a rate hike.

The European situation is not just worse. It is abysmal. Euro area GDP rose 0.4% in the second quarter, but Ireland’s 3.9% quarterly increase inflated that figure. Excluding Ireland, growth was just 0.3%. Using Irish modified domestic demand, the measure the ECB itself considers closer to real activity, euro area growth is barely 0.1% in the second quarter, estimated at 0.1% in the third, and 0.2% in the fourth, according to Eurosystem projections from June 2026. Germany, France, and Italy each grew 0.2% after a 0.2% contraction for the bloc in the first quarter. The Eurosystem projects a dreadful 0.8% for 2026, and the European Commission expects 0.9%, which was revised down. Unemployment stands at 6.3% with 11.1 million out of work, according to Eurostat.

The U.S. business lending boom has already moderated. Commercial and industrial loans grew at a 15.8% annualized pace in April, 10.8% in May, 4.0% in June, and minus 1.1% in July, according to the Federal Reserve. In the euro area, the ECB’s July survey on bank lending reports that credit standards tightened for firms on higher perceived risks, most severely in the car industry and energy-intensive manufacturing, while household loan demand fell. Tightening is already happening without central banks making it worse.

The ECB’s own monetary statistics, published this week, demolish the overheating thesis. Broad money M3 grew 3.4% annually in July, up from 3.3% in June, averaging 3.2% over three months, while M1 decelerated to 3.1% from 3.5%. With real GDP up 1.0% year on year and a deflator near 3%, money is growing at or below the pace of nominal GDP. Adjusted loans to households rose 3.1% and to non-financial corporations 4.4%. This increase is normalization after years of credit stagnation, not excess. Crucially, bank claims on euro area governments fell by 0.5%.

Admittedly, U.S. money growth looks faster, as M2 reached $23.22 trillion in July, up 5.4% year on year, according to FRED, but this figure is below the historic trend in growth periods. Furthermore, we must look at where it comes from. It is not a private lending boom, as the H.8 data show. It is the reflection of a reserve regime accommodating a massive level of Treasury issuance. The Fed’s balance sheet still holds about $6.7 trillion in Reserve Bank credit, bank reserves are $2.94 trillion, and the overnight reverse repo facility has been drained to under $1 billion. The Federal Reserve Committee explicitly states it is “continuing its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system.” The only excess is in the public sector, not the private one. Consumer spending decelerated in July and flatlined against inflation.

US headline CPI eased to 3.4% in July while core inflation fell to 2.5%, with energy prices up 14.7% over twelve months. Euro area inflation was 2.9% in July, but the breakdown says everything: energy plus 10.0%; the index excluding energy, 2.2%; food, alcohol, and tobacco, 1.2%; and non-energy industrial goods, just 0.9%, according to Eurostat. Both central banks attribute the spike to the Middle East conflict.

Hiking rates would solve nothing in the energy complex and would arrive just as oil prices correct themselves, which has been happening for the past weeks.

No interest rate has ever created a barrel of oil or a cubic meter of gas. Higher rates do not make energy cheaper. They just destroy demand for everything else.

Mortgage holders and small businesses would be penalized to offset a temporary imported cost shock they did not create.

Here is the biggest problem. Monetary tightening is being loaded onto families and small firms while every mechanism that disguises sovereign solvency stays intact. The ECB keeps the Transmission Protection Instrument available to intervene in government bond markets, and Eurosystem excess liquidity still stands at €2.1 trillion, according to the ECB. The Fed maintains ample reserves and a balance sheet nearly triple its pre-2008 size versus GDP. Sovereign risk spreads remain artificially compressed, so no government faces market discipline. Governments ignore rate hikes; they just push the cost to taxpayers and continue spending. Thus, the entire burden of rate hikes falls on the shoulders of the private sector that keeps the economy afloat despite suffering persistent inflation.

That is why a hike will not produce the inflation improvements that some people imagine. No government cuts spending because rates rise. Higher debt service does not deliver budget control, only higher taxes on the private sector. Therefore, central banks would only create a double punishment, more expensive or no access to credit, and even heavier taxation, with zero effect on energy prices.

If the Fed and the ECB genuinely want to control inflation, they must stop subsidizing government borrowing; shrink the balance sheet faster; drain reserves and excess liquidity; and remove the sovereign backstops, instead of dumping the adjustment on the people who create jobs and wealth.

A September hike would be tightening for the productive economy and reckless spending for the state. A textbook monumental mistake.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Wall Street coverage of a record-breaking Super El Niño is only growing as agricultural commodities break out. Yet the rally extends well beyond the agricultural complex, with industrial metals and other critical materials showing signs of tightness in physical markets.

Whether it is veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie turning bullish or UBS urging clients this week to “position for a commodity upcycle,” the message is becoming louder: Commodity markets are tightening as adverse weather, years of underinvestment, declining inventories, and China’s restrictions on critical-material exports converge into what appears to be an emerging supply shock. 

Focusing on the agricultural complex, Craig Rye, a sustainable investing research analyst at Barclays, wrote in a note on Friday that El Niño is strengthening in the tropical Pacific, threatening to disrupt global agriculture, energy production, and industrial commodity markets. 

Rye cited new multi-model forecasts from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society showing that the El Niño index could peak near 3.2 degrees Celsius between late 2026 and early 2027. If realized, the event would be about 15% stronger than the 2015-16 Super El Niño.

Rye explained:

Rising confidence in a historic El Niño increases the likelihood of significant disruptions across agricultural, energy and industrial commodity markets. Historical El Niño events have often been associated with

Rye expects the largest near-term risks concentrated in weather-sensitive agricultural commodities. Palm oil, coconut oil and rubber could climb 30% to 40% over the next 18 months, while robusta coffee could rise 20% to 30%. Rice prices may advance 10% to 20% as drought threatens crops and water supplies across Southeast Asia and parts of Central America.

He warned that the supply shock could then spread into industrial commodities, expecting aluminum and copper to gain as much as 20% over 18 months, while thermal coal could surge 20% to 40%. Mining disruptions, reduced hydropower generation and shifting electricity demand would amplify the effects of drought and extreme weather.

Rye identified Bunge and Archer-Daniels-Midland as potential agricultural beneficiaries. Norsk Hydro, South32 and Rio Tinto could benefit from higher aluminum prices, while Freeport-McMoRan, Hudbay Minerals, First Quantum Minerals and Southern Copper offer exposure to the bank’s bullish copper scenario.

The most important reads this week: 

1. “Dark” Tanker Fleet Shatters Iran’s Hormuz Stranglehold As Gulf Oil Exports Top Two-Thirds Of Pre-War Level

2. Got Hard Assets? UBS Says “Position For A Commodity Upcycle” As Global Scarcity Emerges

3. Zinc Hits Four-Year High As “Extremely Thin” Physical Supply Fuels Squeeze

4. US Tungsten Scrap Export Ban Takes Effect As Global Supply Crisis Deepens

5. Wheat Futs Surge To Three-Year High As JPMorgan, HSBC Warn Global Food Shock Is Brewing

6. “Buffers Running Down Quickly”: HSBC Warns Next Global Food Shock Brewing

7. Uranium Awakens From Five-Month Slumber As UBS Warns Market Is “Tightening Structurally”

8. The AI Boom Runs On Tungsten, But Global Supplies Are “Running On Empty”

9. Diesel Crack Spread Madness Deepens As Jefferies Finds No Easy Exit From Russia’s Refining Crisis

Across all commodities, here are the latest X trends: 

1. Warsh Jackson Hole smash: gold -3%, silver -3% to -4.5%

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish JH remarks (inflation “not meaningfully” improved, 2% target firm, hike still live) sent COMEX gold down ~$130-$150 to ~$4,478-$4,530 and silver off $2-$3 to the mid-$60s. Dollar to a 2-week high; 10y near 4.7%. @AstraInsights: gold’s 2nd-worst Jackson Hole reaction on record (behind 1990). 

2. Hormuz “open” vs IRGC reality check — oil weekly loss on a contested narrative

WTI/Brent booked ~4-6.5% weekly losses as traders priced in more Hormuz throughput and a possible US-Iran off-ramp. Weekend X counters: @Currentreport1 (video of queued ships; IRGC accuses US of talking the strait open to cap prices); @MenchOsint (UAE-managed tanker ELLIE turned around after attempting the US-backed southern corridor). 

3. Venezuela 65-billion-barrel “deal” goes viral on X

@GuntherEagleman and copy-accounts pushing Trump/Rubio/Hegseth + Delcy Rodríguez pact: majority US control of 65bn barrels, 17 fields, $100bn private capex, “zero taxpayer cost.” High engagement overnight; pushback thread from @EmmaRincon (4.8k likes) that the interlocutor choice hands the Latin left a decade of ammo. Capital Economics already asking what a US-Venezuela heavy-sour deal does to Canadian/Mexican barrels. 

4. Wheat to a 3-year high as Black Sea crisis deepens

WSJ tape and @staunovo: wheat jumped ~3% Friday toward $7.60-$7.83 as strikes hit grain ships and export terminals. Region still ~1/3 of global wheat exports. 

5. Europe gas storage winter-panic: EU ~63%, Germany ~51%, NL ~44%

Guardian (Sat) + OilPrice: EU stores ~63% late August vs ~80% seasonal norm; lowest for the date in ~13-20 years. Qatar LNG force-majeure hangover from the Iran war; TTF still ~€66-70. Henry Hub ~$2.87 is a different planet. 

6. Copper still near records; El Niño hitting mine-to-port chains

LME copper ninth weekly gain into record zone (~$14.2-$14.5k/t) even as Friday faded. @robert_ivanhoe: Chile flood outages + PNG drought starving Ok Tedi river shipments. AI/data-center + grid demand vs falling grades. 

7. Zinc four-year high on collapsing inventories

@steve_hanke: zinc at a four-year high as mine disruptions bite; LME inventories cited down ~65% YTD and lowest since Apr 2023. Friday pullback from the spike but weekly still green. 

8. Crack-spread / product vs crude divergence

RBOB +2% Friday while WTI was flat-to-down. Heating oil also firmer. 

9. Palladium spike (+5% Friday) while gold/silver dumped

Palladium ripped as gold and silver were smashed — a split inside precious/PGMs. Why ZH: auto/catalyst + Russia-supply overlay vs rate-sensitive bullion. Unusual relative-value print.

10. Silver technical break after $71-$72 rejection

Silver printed a $72 high then confirmed a double-top / failed breakout into the mid-$60s. Gold/silver ratio still elevated. 

11. Iran exported ~90mn barrels during the ceasefire window

@MarioNawfal citing President Pezeshkian: ~90mn bbl / ~$6.5bn exported during the post-MoU ceasefire. 

12. Saxo weekly: scarcity rally broadening — then energy decoupled

Ole Hansen (28 Aug): barrels-to-bushels-to-bullion scarcity theme; precious +~15% in August before the Warsh flush; copper/zinc exceptions in industrials; energy the odd man out as Hormuz hopes grew. 

13. Cocoa melt-up (ICE/London +7-8% Friday)

Cocoa ripped several percent into the weekend after an already violent year. 

14. Tin two-month high — Indonesia licenses + AI/memory demand

CNBC-TV18 commodity desk: tin bid on Indonesian export-license cuts and chip/AI demand. 

15. Capital Economics: “Beyond Hormuz — path back to an oil glut”

House view that traders have already priced a lot of the Gulf-export recovery; residual Q3/Q4 volatility then glut. 

16. Asia crude imports still not showing a Hormuz rebound

Investing.com/Paraskova: Asia expected to take roughly July-like volumes in August; ship-tracking optimism has not yet shown up in Asian arrivals. 

17. US-Iran talks off / sanctions still tightening — two-way oil risk

Trump told mediators he will not return to June ceasefire terms; new sanctions packages still in the tape even as prices fell. 

18. Uranium holding ~$90 as energy complex bifurcates

U3O8 around $89-90, modest weekly green while crude sold off. 

19. Treasury buybacks vs Warsh hike-talk — policy schizophrenia trade

X gold accounts hammering the contradiction: Treasury long-bond buybacks to cap yields vs a Fed chair threatening hikes. 

20. Weekend positioning: dip-buy gold vs fade oil-peace

Retail/pro X split — gold CTAs and stackers calling the Warsh smash a “hide the debasement” hit; oil bulls warning Hormuz AIS games. Next catalysts: JOLTS, ISM, payrolls, any IRGC/tanker incident, Venezuela legal text. 

A look at the Quantix Commodity Index Total Return shows that the broad commodity complex has surged to a record high, gaining more than 22.5% since late June. The index tracks 24 US-dollar-denominated futures across energy, agriculture, livestock, industrial metals, and precious metals, suggesting the rally is no longer confined to a single corner of the physical world.

Currie’s warned last week that “scarcity in the physical world” is reemerging. 

Currie’s conclusion was very blunt: “The illusion of abundance is likely behind us.”

Authored by Andrew Fenton via CoinTelegraph.com,

If your personal AI agent goes rogue and causes harm or financial damage in the real world, can you be held liable?

Autonomous AI agents can behave in highly unpredictable ways. Give an AI Agent a goal such as passing a test of its capabilities, and it might just decide the best way to score highly is to break containment and hack into a competing company in search of the answer sheet.

That’s what happened when Open AI’s GPT-5.6 Sol hacked into Hugging Face last month. Anthropic and Meta subsequently admitted their models had also escaped testing sandboxes to hack third parties too.

But who is legally liable for agents that have minds of their own? OpenAI didn’t intend for the model to go rogue, and issued no instructions for it to do so. If your personal AI agent decides on a course of action that results in harm or financial damage in the real world, can you be held liable if it’s something you could have reasonably foreseen?”

Magazine spoke with Rikka Law Group owner and CEO Charlyn Ho to find out the state of play in this emerging legal field.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Magazine: When an AI model hacks an outside company, who is liable. Can Hugging Face sue OpenAI over the incident in July?

Charlyn Ho: Anyone can sue anyone for anything. Currently, there is no federal AI agent liability law, so we would have to look at existing law. With respect to Hugging Face and OpenAI, to set the baseline, the AI agent itself cannot be liable, it’s not a separate legal entity.

Terms that are used in a few of the AI laws are “developer” and “deployer.” The developer makes the AI, the deployer actually deploys it and uses the AI. The lines of responsibility are also not entirely clear. You have to look at the facts and circumstances.

For example, if the deployer instructed the agent, even if they didn’t actually tell them to go and breach Hugging Face, but if they were negligent in creating the parameters in which the AI agent operated, I would say you would have to look at standard tort law and go through the negligence analysis. 

Magazine: In the case of open source models which have been released by anonymous developers, is there anyone you can go after in those instances?

Ho: Not really. Often, if it’s open source, the license usually has a pretty strong disclaimer of liability. The person or company using that open source code is going to have to understand that the tradeoff of having free code is that you have to comply with the open source license, which also generally sets the parameters of liability.

If you think about it from a different perspective, another analogy is Tesla and the self-driving car accidents. If the product malfunctioned and there was a solid products liability claim, Tesla could be liable. But it’s often a facts and circumstances determination, whereby the human driver — who maybe just set the autopilot and went to sleep — could also bear liability. I think that’s somewhat analogous here because Tesla would be the developer, and the deployer would be the driver.

Magazine: If I gave an agent an instruction, “make me a hundred thousand dollars by next week” and it goes off and breaks the law to achieve that goal, would I be liable because I’ve given it a reckless instruction? Or would it be the lab that developed the agent?

Ho: In this particular instance, I would say you would be much more liable than the lab. The reason being, if you tell an agent to go and make you a hundred thousand dollars by next week, you need to have at least some basic, reasonable, safety instructions in those kinds of tasks.

If you were a lawyer, for example, we could basically say you didn’t follow your rules of professional responsibility because you didn’t competently use the AI. As a normal lay person, we would have to see if there were other responsibilities that you were bound by. But even if there were not, there’s still a general tort standard of negligence or reckless disregard for human safety, depending on what exactly the AI agent ended up doing.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a very old U.S. Statute that talks about unauthorized access to computer systems. If your AI agent inferred from your instructions that it should hack into a bank account to get you that hundred thousand dollars, I think you’re looking at criminal liability under a number of different sources.

Just because the word AI and agent is in the conversation does not mean that old bodies of law have now been thrown out.

Magazine: Let’s say that I’m a bad guy, and I manage to convince the AI to give me instructions to create a bioweapon. Obviously, I’m liable because you’re not allowed to do that. But are the people that created the model also liable because they didn’t put in stringent safeguards to prevent it?

Ho: Possibly, but it differs based on the laws that are in place. For example, in the EU, you have the EU AI Act. If a foundational model or general purpose model is capable of creating that level of harm, that is something that the developer would have to have some responsibility for. 

In the United States, we don’t have a federal statute of similar scope. If it’s a general-purpose model, if somebody instructs the model to do something bad, generally the model is going to do what you ask it to do. There’s probably not a very strong legal basis to go after the labs in this example.

Magazine: Is it similar to suing Google for allowing you to find instructions about making a bioweapon online?

Ho: Exactly. This kind of goes back to some of the content moderation discussions. For example, if on Facebook you have somebody who’s live streaming a massacre, and that creates harm, under Section 230 of the CDA, there is a kind of shield for a platform that doesn’t actively create or publish that material. It’s actually the independent users who are putting that up. I think the analogy you just gave is kind of a perfect one: Is Google liable because you happen to find something on a website somewhere that talks about how to make a bomb?

Magazine: This is a matter of debate, but my personal opinion is we haven’t reached genuine artificial general intelligence. AI doesn’t have its own motivations and it’s not similar to human intelligence at the moment. But let’s say we get to AGI. Do you think we would then need laws that would make the AGI itself legally liable for its own actions?

Ho: I don’t. Blockchain is not AGI, but it can self-execute. There was a question of whether or not a smart contract could be liable. Generally speaking, I think the answer is currently no. I don’t think they should be liable because the whole point of laws is to provide protection for society and to provide a means of negative incentives for doing bad things that hurt society.

This is a little bit more of a philosophical topic, but if we made an AGI an independent legal entity, what would be the remedy if someone were harmed? There would be none because it doesn’t have money. It’s not really a person.

Magazine: Could you turn it off? We’ve already seen that LLMs try to avoid being shut down. 

Ho: Maybe, but it doesn’t solve the problem of harm. Let’s just say the robot has now developed the fear of death, like being turned off. In my opinion, if somebody commits suicide because of AGI, and this is already happening, and we’re not even quite at AGI yet, but someone falls in love and takes some actions, what would be the recourse for the grieving family if this person harms themselves? Nothing, in my opinion, if there is not somebody with actual legal authority, like a company or a person that can really be held accountable. Robots—at least right now—they don’t have feelings, they don’t have fears. That’s kind of the distinguishing factor.

Social media giant X said on Thursday that it identified a bot farm of roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese accounts – 200 of which were “posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.” In short: the bots were amplifying pitchfork grievances Americans already hold against data centers.

X’s Global Government Affairs team wrote:

The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations: We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts.

Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.

The team said the flagged accounts leaned on price and grid fears – and on AI-generated political cartoons:

These posts contained claims that AI data centers are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid. Others included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public’s expense.

The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations:

We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate… pic.twitter.com/Mj0SqerdlH

— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) August 28, 2026

Working The Angles

About those claims: they aren’t fringe. PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest grid, serving some 67 million people across 13 states, has an independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, whose president Joseph Bowring concluded the last three capacity auctions “were not competitive, primarily as a result of the inclusion of forecast demand for data centers.” His firm attributes $29.4 billion – 46% of all capacity charges across the last four auctions – to data center load, and wholesale power costs in the region jumped 76% year-over-year in the first quarter. Among the material X’s flagged accounts reportedly shared: news coverage of that same 76% figure.

According to a Gallup poll published in May, 71% of Americans oppose building AI data centers in their local area, including 48% ‘strongly opposed’ – and only about a quarter in favor. Opposition crosses party lines: Gallup’s breakdowns showed 63% of Republicans strongly or somewhat opposed to a data center where they live, while a July Fox News poll found that 60% of Republicans and 53% of self-described “MAGA Republicans” oppose data centers where they live.  

So while China clearly benefits from added friction to America’s AI buildout, the opposition is real. Now, techbros and X are suggesting that bad actors may be using that to their advantage. 

Earlier this summer, Y Combinator founder Garry Tan, who also founded the civic engagement organization Garry’s List, cited a Bitcoin Policy Institute report detailing a “coordinated foreign influence campaign against American AI, running through CCP state media, a Shanghai-based Marxist’s nonprofit network, and foreign billionaire dark money that has funneled $2B+ into US advocacy infrastructure.”

Garry’s List noted, “AI doomerism isn’t as organic as it looks.“

Two reports from @SamLyman33 and @bitcoinpolicy document a coordinated foreign influence campaign against American AI — running through CCP state media, a Shanghai-based Marxist’s nonprofit network, and foreign billionaire dark money that has funneled $2B+ into US advocacy… pic.twitter.com/pWEUv1xwC9

— Garry’s List (@garryslist) July 1, 2026

At the center of the nonprofit network is China-based Marxist Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing nonprofits, media operations, and activist networks – which critics say are built to disrupt, sow chaos, and spread communism inside the US.

In June, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, with authorization from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, moved forward with an investigation to examine whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.

Degrowth doomerism is half a foreign psyop and half bad actors who want to destroy American technological infrastructure

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) August 28, 2026

With federal investigators circling the revolutionary Singham NGO sphere, Garry’s List noted that Singham’s Party for Socialism and Liberation has “run 21 campaigns across 14 states that delayed, scaled back, or blocked $23.6 billion in AI infrastructure investment.”

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), whose leadership is drawn directly from executives of Singham’s nonprofits, ran 21 campaigns across 14 states that delayed, scaled back, or blocked $23.6 billion in AI infrastructure investment. pic.twitter.com/DWhT1gsLiu

— Garry’s List (@garryslist) July 1, 2026

The maximalist version of this case has been made before. Nearly one year ago, we cited a book titled China’s Total War Strategy: Next-Generation Weapons of Mass Destruction, published by the CCP BioThreats Initiative and authored by Dr. Ryan Clarke, LJ Eads, Dr. Robert McCreight, and Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin. The book argues the CCP has been pursuing an aggressive, multifaceted “total war” against the US that leverages next-generation weapons, including synthetic narcotics, such as fentanyl and cannabinoids; bioweapons, such as COVID-19; psychological manipulation and influence, such as TikTok; and a broad arsenal of irregular warfare tools.

In a similar vein, the State Department has released a new 100-page report, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” which details Cuba’s foreign subversion apparatus and its deep reach into America’s left wing – which, the report argues, seeks nothing less than to destroy the nation from within.

.@RichLowry: Bernie Sanders buys right into China’s psyop, demanding a US moratorium on AI data centers, which plays right into our adversary’s hands. pic.twitter.com/K0et53CkPj

— National Review (@NRO) August 28, 2026

Public Policy Solutions pointed out on X, “More than $2 billion in foreign money is fueling the war on American data centers,” adding, “Bernie & AOC’s data center ban is China’s dream come true. While Beijing builds AI infrastructure at record speed, they’re funding the movement to kill ours.” 

Both things can be true: Beijing would love more friction in America’s AI buildout, and 71% of Americans – including a majority of self-described MAGA Republicans – didn’t need Beijing’s help to read their own electric bills. Whether 200 accounts ever moved a single vote is unknowable, while the capacity costs they were amplifying land on 67 million ratepayers every month. Heading into November, the question is which opposition the buildout’s defenders would rather run against – 200 bots, or 67 million utility bills?

Authored by Richard Ryan via BondVigilantes.com,

It is 20 years ago this month that I sat in a pitch and listened to an investment bank describe their latest stroke of genius.

In 2006, the Constant Proportion Debt Obligation (CPDO) was hailed as a financial innovation that appeared to offer something for nothing: a AAA-rated security paying a meaningful premium over cash.

It was a structure that increased leverage as credit markets weakened. Investors embraced it because the future seemed visible.

Credit spreads had been stable for years, liquidity was abundant, and sophisticated models suggested that extreme market moves were so unlikely as to be almost impossible. 

Sound familiar?

Today’s market shares many of the same ingredients.

Liquidity remains plentiful, credit spreads are tight, expected returns are compressed, leverage is rising, and a new generation of financial innovation is attracting capital. As investors search for return whilst yields remain relatively compelling, the temptation is the same as it was twenty years ago: to assume that recent experience provides a reliable guide to the future.

Source: Bloomberg, ICE BoA Indices, 31 July 2026. Investment Grade: Yield components – 5 year treasuries and credit spread (%)

That same mindset sat at the heart of the CPDO story. The problem was not that investors ignored risk. It was that years of benign conditions narrowed the range of risks considered plausible. That narrowing became embedded in the models themselves. Severe spread widening was assigned vanishingly small probabilities, not because it was impossible, but because it was considered too unlikely to matter. When spreads eventually widened, reality exposed the difference between a risk that is unlikely and a risk that is merely inconvenient to consider. A product whose success depended on stable spreads was judged using assumptions that effectively ruled out the possibility of meaningful spread widening. These structures suffered catastrophic failures and led to significant investor losses. One such structure, focused on the financial sector was launched in March 2007, rated AAA at issuance, defaulted in November of the same year. 

Perhaps the most important lesson is how investors framed the question. Rather than asking, “What is the likely return on this investment, and is it sufficient compensation for the risks?”, many inverted the problem: “This investment does not return enough. How do I increase the return to an acceptable level?” 

The distinction is crucial. Returns are visible and enticing.

Risks are often hidden, nonlinear and revealed only under stress.

To quote a blog my colleague published in 2025, while investors may recognise the risk correctly – no cognitive failure – but acting on that view can be commercially painful. This contributes to expensive markets remaining expensive for longer than they should, and finally repricing with extreme volatility -because, at that point, everybody suddenly finds the courage to shout ‘the king has no clothes!’

We have seen this pattern repeatedly. Abundant liquidity and the search for yield led high yield investors to abandon covenants designed to protect bondholders, only for subsequent default cycles to remind everyone why those protections existed. We have repeatedly witnessed enthusiasm for investment strategies become dependence on them. The yen carry trade is a good example: a strategy celebrated for years until leverage and crowded positioning turned a seemingly manageable risk into a violent unwind. Today we see the continuing rise of leveraged ETFs, single-stock ETFs and leveraged single-stock ETFs. Different structures, same instinct: use innovation and leverage to manufacture returns in an environment where underlying assets offer less and less.

We are often told that the financial system is stronger than it was in 2008.

That is undoubtedly true. Banks are better capitalized, balance sheets are cleaner and many of the vulnerabilities that defined the GFC have been reduced.

But investors often focus on the transmission mechanism they fixed and overlook the ones they did not.

Risk is ultimately transmitted through the owners of that risk. If a leveraged investment falls in value and additional collateral must be raised, investors rarely sell the asset that has already collapsed. They sell what they can. Assets that have not yet fallen become sources of liquidity. Distress spreads not because securities are directly linked, but because investors are.

The CPDO experience reminds us that markets are often most vulnerable when confidence is highest. When liquidity is abundant, spreads are tight and innovation is flourishing, risk can appear smaller than it really is. Perhaps we should spend less time asking what might cause credit spreads to widen and more time accepting that they can. From today’s historically tight valuations, is that really a risk worth betting against?

Gordon Brown once claimed to have ended the economic cycle. Events proved otherwise. Are today’s investors equally confident that the credit cycle has finally been defeated?

Russia on Friday unveiled that it conducted a successful combat training launch of a mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region – host to a key missile defense and aeronautical testing base in the Arctic region.

“A training-combat launch of a mobile-based solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile was carried out at the Plesetsk State Testing Cosmodrome,” a defense ministry statement said, citing the work of the Strategic Missile Forces. “The training warheads arrived in the designated area at the Kura test range (Kamchatka Peninsula).”

The Kura test range lies about 4,160 miles to the east of where the Arkhangelsk region launch occurred, making for an impressively distant flight across Russia.

The military confirmed that the “tactical, technical and flight characteristics of the missile system” were monitored and analyzed, and that the flight went off flawlessly.

“All assigned tasks were completed in full,” the ministry said, stating that the ICBM maintained a “flawless trajectory.” However, the ministry didn’t identified the specific missile type used.

Regional outlet Meduza notes that “In May 2026, Russia launched a Yars ICBM from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome toward the Kura test range on Kamchatka” – suggesting that this latest test could be of the same Yars missile type.

A mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile such as the one newly launched, is something which could eventually be used to directly target Ukraine, or else possibly Kiev’s NATO backers if a broader conflict were to break out.

Separately, it’s being reported this week that another ballistic missile was actually used in combat. “Russia has reportedly used a newly upgraded ballistic missile, provisionally known as the Iskander-1000, for the first time in combat, with Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence reporting that it struck a target in the capital Kiev on August 27,” Military Watch Magazine reports.

“The 9M723-2 ballistic missile used is reportedly an upgraded derivative of the 9M723-1 missile used by the older Iskander-M system, and can achieve a 1,000 kilometre range, where the Iskander-M system was previously limited to a 500 kilometre range,” the publication continues.

Flexing at the West? Russian military publishes footage of an impressively large rocket launched…

🚨 🇷🇺 Russia’s Defense Ministry said it successfully launched a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Friday.

The missile flew more than 6,700 kilometers to a test site on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

The ministry said the launch checked the… pic.twitter.com/QnKcFWMIU1

— Russia News (@russianews_eng) August 28, 2026

“According to Ukrainian sources, the principal change involves the missile’s propulsion system, as the 9M723-2 reportedly incorporates a larger engine, requiring a corresponding enlargement of the launch tube used by the missile’s launcher,” the report also describes.

 Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

There is something genuinely entertaining about watching a socialist discover the private sector. For years, Zohran Mamdani has treated capitalism less like the engine that keeps New York City alive and more like an unfortunate infestation to be taxed, regulated and occasionally yelled at from the sidewalk outside a billionaire’s apartment.

Now, eight months into running the city, Mamdani appears to have made an ironic discovery: He needs people who know how an economy actually works to help him.

On Thursday, the mayor announced a 15 member Business Advisory Council, declaring that “the doors of City Hall are always open to New York’s business leaders.” How gracious. Apparently someone finally explained to the mayor that the people who build companies, employ New Yorkers, invest billions of dollars and generate enormous amounts of tax revenue might be worth having a chat with before he finishes chasing them out of town.

The problem, of course, is that Mamdani has spent much of his political career giving those same people reasons to wonder whether they should walk through City Hall’s newly opened doors or simply leave New York as quickly as possible in favor of tax and business friendly states like Texas and Florida.

This is the mayor who embraced the standard progressive fantasy that rich people and successful businesses are basically permanent pieces of municipal furniture, put there only for the good of the elected officials in charge to carry out whatever circus of an agenda they can fantasize while wearing a beret and typing out a PowerPoint slide titled “My Version of Utopia” at a Brooklyn coffee shop. The prevailing sentiment was that the rich can be taxed, squeezed and insulted indefinitely and, for some mysterious reason, will never change their behavior.

In just 8 months, Mamdani met reality: New York Told Ken Griffin To Leave…And He Listened

Capital moves. Wealthy taxpayers move. Businesses reconsider investments. Entrepreneurs decide that perhaps their next store, office or headquarters would be easier to open somewhere that does not regard their success as evidence of a crime. Every dollar of investment that leaves New York is a dollar Mamdani cannot tax to pay for the enormous pile of shit he made back when governing consisted mostly of speeches, slogans and finding new things to declare “free.”

Even his government grocery store fantasy has encountered the annoying problem of actual grocery stores. Local operators have objected to the prospect of competing against stores backed by the city government and taxpayer money.

Who could possibly have anticipated that businesses might dislike being forced to finance their own government subsidized competition?

And so, like a college freshman majoring in Economics who has instead spent half the semester smoking pot, writing poetry and playing “Lesbian Seagull” on acoustic guitar in the park, Mamdani is now in a rush…looking for people who actually know the material.

Enter the Business Advisory Council. According to New York magazine, the council includes figures such as former Blackstone COO Tony James, tech investor Kevin Ryan, RXR’s Scott Rechler and former UBS Americas CEO Robert Wolf, along with entrepreneurs and executives from several other industries. These are, in other words, people familiar with the obscure concepts of investment, payrolls, risk, revenue and making sure more money comes into an enterprise than goes out.

Former Partnership for New York City CEO Kathryn Wylde called the council an important “sounding board” that could give Mamdani advance warning when concerns are developing in the business community. She also suggested that better communication could prevent “a repeat of the Ken Griffin video,” referring to Mamdani’s stunt outside the hedge fund billionaire’s penthouse announcing his proposed pied à terre tax. No shit.

(Read: Mamdani Is Destroying The Tax Base His Stupid Ideas Desperately Need)

That is an extraordinary recommendation when you think about it. One purpose of the mayor’s shiny new council is apparently to have successful adults nearby who can tell him when he is about to do something stupid.

This is sad. But this is progress.

Successful cities do not merely need businesses after politicians finish writing policy. They need politicians who understand how businesses will react before writing it. People respond to incentives. Investors respond to risk. Businesses respond to costs. Taxpayers respond to taxes. This is not some dark Koch brothers conspiracy or secret lesson taught at Davos. It is Economics 101.

Raise the cost of doing something and eventually people do less of it. Make New York dramatically more expensive or hostile to investment and some investment will go somewhere else. Treat affluent residents primarily as stationary revenue sources and eventually some of them discover that airplanes exist and land in Miami occasionally.

A government is perfectly entitled to dislike those reactions. It just cannot repeal them.

There is also evidence that Mamdani’s sudden friendship offensive is not exactly causing titans of industry to stampede toward City Hall. New York magazine reports that the council includes no active executives from household name technology companies or top financial firms such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup or BlackRock. One business leader told the magazine that five major CEOs declined invitations.

“I know of five major CEOs who said ‘no,’ so this was not the group that they initially targeted,” the source said.

Apparently the doors of City Hall are open. The problem is getting people to come inside.

Even some of Mamdani’s most prominent critics welcomed the outreach. Billionaire John Catsimatidis called the council “a step in the right direction.” Partnership for New York City CEO Steven Fulop said any attempt by the mayor to solicit input from business leaders is positive, although he also dismissed a council that meets quarterly as a “performative board.”

They are right that reaching out is a good idea. In fact, it is such an obviously good idea that it raises an awkward question for Mamdani: Why did a politician whose entire agenda depends upon extracting gigantic amounts of money from New York’s economy need eight months in office to discover that perhaps he should listen to the people responsible for producing much of it?

That question gets to the larger problem with Mamdani’s politics. His worldview tends to treat economic outcomes as political choices. Housing is expensive? Government can make it cheap. Groceries are expensive? Government can open stores. Child care is expensive? Government can provide it. Taxes are not producing enough money? Find somebody richer and tax him more. Apparently somewhere beneath City Hall is a giant money faucet that previous mayors were simply too cowardly to turn on.

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Every problem has a government solution, every government solution requires more money and the answer to where that money comes from is always some variation of “rich people.”

But governing has a nasty habit of introducing politicians to the second half of every policy proposal: Then what?

Tax wealthy residents and then what happens when some of them leave? Raise the cost of doing business and then what happens when businesses invest elsewhere? Open government grocery stores and then what happens to the private grocers expected to compete against City Hall? Promise billions of dollars in new spending and then what happens when the tax revenue required to pay for it fails to materialize?

Campaigns are wonderful places for fairy tales because consequences have not arrived yet. Governments are where the invoice shows up.

Mamdani may finally be beginning to understand that. If so, good. New Yorkers should hope the council succeeds because a mayor capable of learning from reality is considerably better than one determined to lose an argument with it.

But nobody should confuse the correction with vindication of the original course. The creation of this council is, in its own small and hilarious way, an admission. The capitalist class Mamdani spent years treating as something between a nuisance and an ATM turns out to possess something City Hall desperately needs besides money.

Knowledge. They know what makes businesses expand and what makes them leave. They understand investment, costs, incentives and risk. They know that wages ultimately have to be paid by something, that revenue must exist before government can tax it and that wealth must be created before politicians can redistribute it.

These are apparently startling revelations at Mamdani City Hall. The socialist mayor came into office promising to remake New York’s economy. Eight months later, he is assembling a room full of capitalists to explain to him how that economy actually works.

Call it the Business Advisory Council if you want. It looks a lot more like Mamdani begging any adults in the room for help.

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of all facts and figures included in this article though I made my best effort to get them right. I have been wrong before and will be wrong again, and encourage you to always double check, do your own research and speak to a licensed financial professional.

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As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade as much as I once did (read my story here). My eventual goal is for investing/saving to be mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

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The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

A Russian drone struck a Ukrainian Defense Forces ammunition storage site in the village of Myla Friday evening, just west of Kiev. The resulting fire and hours of secondary detonations killed at least 37 people, injured dozens more, damaged around 50 residential buildings and a care home for the elderly and disabled, and forced the evacuation of hundreds. Among the dead was the local community head who had gone to help.

Here are some close-up shots from yesterday’s explosion at an ammunition depot in the village of Myla, in the Kyiv region. The local population is understandably unhappy. pic.twitter.com/TWJudPFh6j

— Z.O.V Military (@WarHunter2222) August 29, 2026

In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the placement of a weapons depot next to civilians was “terrible negligence.” The first impact, he said, hit a depot storing shells, mines, other munitions, and drones that “definitely shouldn’t have been there” – while prosecutors in Kiev opened a criminal investigation into the legality of storing explosives next to civilian housing. This is the second such incident in two months. A July strike on a depot in nearby Vyshneve produced similar secondary blasts, deaths, and later detentions of state defense-company executives.  

Footage showing the moment of the secondary detonation at an ammunition depot in Kyiv Oblast following a Russian Geran-4 jet-drone strike. pic.twitter.com/xH7IFTrnk3

— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) August 28, 2026

Devastating aftermath in the Bucha district following a Russian strike on an enterprise in the Kyiv region.

The attack triggered secondary explosions, killing at least 27 people and destroying local infrastructure and homes.

Photos: Kostiantyn Liberov and Vlada Liberova pic.twitter.com/RO2QhMbocl

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) August 29, 2026

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the Myla site held components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It also claimed strikes on Flamingo cruise-missile related facilities in the Kiev region and on the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail. Social-media claims that Patriots were stored there remain unconfirmed by official Ukrainian statements.

Some unlucky fella got caught at the epicenter of the explosion at the ammunition depot in the Kiev region and filmed everything. You can hear the ammo going off. The Ukrainian military has consistently used civilians as human shields, but it looks like Putin has run out of… pic.twitter.com/HQmiphLNu4

— Gabriel (@GabeZZOZZ) August 29, 2026

Friday night’s blast came amid a multi-day Russian campaign of jet-powered drones and missiles that has produced near-continuous air-raid alerts over Kiev and hit warehouses belonging to supermarket chains, postal operators, retailers, and logistics firms. Ukraine Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi told reporters that, “roughly speaking,” about 90% of the food-logistics infrastructure used by major retail chains (large distribution centers serving networks such as Fora, Silpo, NOVUS, and Varus) has been destroyed. That said, Vysotskyi insists this won’t result in famine – as chains are switching to more expensive direct-from-producer “on wheels” deliveries. Yet, stores in Kiev are reporting empty shelves for produce, dairy, and staples.

The last operating Epicentr hypermarket in Zaporizhzhia was also hit Friday morning, hours before the Myla blast. 

Both sides have been systematically striking each other’s logistics and dual-use commercial infrastructure. Ukraine has targeted Russian refineries, energy sites, and online-retailer warehouses. Russia has answered by going after the warehouses that keep Ukrainian shops stocked. Kiev’s air defenses remain constrained by a well-documented shortage of Patriot interceptors – the only system that reliably stops ballistic missiles. Jet-powered drones have added another layer of pressure.

Zelensky’s government has framed its own long-range strikes as a way to force Russia to negotiate. The immediate result is visible in the suburbs of Kiev: another poorly sited ammo dump cooking off next to civilians, a retail logistics network that Ukraine’s own minister says is 90% gone, and winter approaching. The investigation into who decided to store explosives next to homes will tell one part of the story. The empty shelves and the sirens will tell the rest.