Watch: Russian Soldiers Surrender To Gun-Wielding Robot; Humanoid Warfare Nears
Video footage circulating on X from the Ukrainian front shows a Droid TW-7.62 ground robotic system, roughly half the size of a Mini Cooper, forcing the surrender of three Russian troops during an active military operation. The incident suggests that war robots are rapidly maturing, moving beyond support and logistics into offensive roles.
Futurism reports that Ukrainian defense robotics firm DevDroid’s armed unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) forced the surrender of three Russian soldiers.
“The footage shows three Russian soldiers approaching one by one, removing their equipment, and lying down next to the UGV,” the tech outlet wrote in a note, adding the UGV has a ballistic computer and artificial intelligence for autonomous detection, capture, and tracking of targets.
What is clear is that wheeled combat robots on the modern battlefield in Ukraine, used for offensive operations, could soon transition into humanoid robotic platforms.
California-based robotics startup Foundation is developing the Phantom humanoid robot for both commercial and military use.
The firm has stated ambitions to build tens of thousands of these humanoids, capable of carrying payloads and various weapon platforms, for use in dangerous missions, such as breaching buildings, and has secured defense contracts and interest from U.S. military programs.
Unlike other robotics companies such as Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, Unitree, and Figure AI, all of which have stated that their humanoids will not be used in military or defense applications, Foundation has stated otherwise.
Foundation’s Phantom MK1 has been trained on the 9mm pistol.
CEO Sankaet Pathak confirmed Phantom MK1 has had weapons training in a recent conversation with tech blog Humanoids Daily.
According to Forbes, Foundation deployed 40 robots in 2025, with manufacturing expanding this year to 10,000, then to 50,000 by late 2027.
Given that Foundation is one of the very few, if not only, robotics firms in the US with a DoD contract specifically for an offensive humanoid combat robot, it wouldn’t be a surprise if these bots were found on the Ukrainian battlefield for testing later this year.
Great time for a Polymarket bet on when Skynet arrives …
“… a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy …. To the evil of monarchy we have added hereditary succession … the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves … the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on posterity.”
– Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”
On Jan. 10, 1776, Robert Bell did something that could have landed him in prison for treason against King George III of England.
In his small shop on Third Street in downtown Philadelphia, Bell printed an incendiary 47-page pamphlet, published anonymously, calling for rebellion against the Crown and independence from Great Britain.
Its author was a little-known Englishman who had befriended Benjamin Franklin in London two years earlier.
Franklin was impressed with the man and recommended that he emigrate to the colonies, which he did that same year.
Arriving in America just five months before shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, Thomas Paine had a front row seat as the American Revolutionary War was unfolding.
Despite “the shot heard ’round the world” on April 19, 1775, calls for independence were relatively muted throughout the colonies, historians estimating that only about 25 percent of citizens supported the move.
That changed after “Common Sense” hit the streets, being widely read and discussed openly in taverns and coffeehouses throughout the land.
Within approximately one year, an estimated 100,000 copies were sold—a remarkable feat considering the population of America was only about 2.5 million.
After its widespread distribution, Paine’s words proved highly persuasive to tens of thousands across the colonies, nudging support for independence to well over 50 percent. Paine followed it up with an even more persuasive clarion call—“The American Crisis”—in December 1776, its words so grippingly effective that General George Washington had it read out loud to his troops in an attempt to keep his Army together:
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
An Incredibly Risky Wager
As America had a miniscule Army and ineffective Navy in 1776—versus Great Britain with the most powerful Army in the western hemisphere and a colossally-equipped Navy, only the most aggressive wagerer would have made the bet that the colonies could prevail.
After the move for independence was put into writing on July 4, 1776, the die was cast.
The members of the Second Continental Congress understood that what they were hoping to achieve would be a “long shot” by any reasonable standard.
Early Losses, but Some Victories
King George III and his senior military officers had a lot to be optimistic about early on. The city of Boston was surrounded, then Crown forces took control of another major port—New York—and Washington’s troops were not only on the run—they were ragged, nearly starving, and dangerously low on supplies.
Retreating across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania, Washington knew he had to be bold to survive. With the help of financier Robert Morris and others, Washington received enough cash and materials to forge not only one, but two attacks that would change the way people viewed the war.
The Battle of Trenton on Dec. 26, 1776 and the Battle of Princeton on Jan. 3, 1777 were brilliantly conceived and stunningly successful victories at a time when the Commander knew his Army was near collapse. Being a deeply religious man who often visited local churches during the war, Washington was convinced that a “higher power” had kept his dream—what he called “the Cause”—alive.
A Leap in the Dark
Historian John Ferling captured the essence of this tumultuous era effectively in “A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic.” In the book, Ferling describes the “behind the scenes” workings of all the major players, noting their strengths, their weaknesses, and their own doubts about whether they could possibly succeed.
That Washington’s Army was desperate for a victory to end the conflict is an understatement.
Most days they were just hoping to find food and stay on their feet. Though the Continental Army had eked out a few wins, the odds still favored the British. The war would drag on until British General Cornwallis found himself in deep trouble in Virginia, getting surrounded by Washington’s as well as France’s troops and warships leading up to the climactic Battle of Yorktown in October 1781.
A World-Changing Event
Though it may be apocryphal, when Cornwallis surrendered, it has been reported that the British troops were so stunned, they played the English ballad “The World Turned Upside Down” as they relinquished the battlefield to Washington—who literally “by the grace of God” had managed to survive.
The soldiers who had stood by Washington from the beginning, through the defeats in New York and Philadelphia, the horrendous freezing Winters at Valley Forge and Morristown, surely felt in their veins what those assembled in downtown Philadelphia had written on July 4th: “… with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Considering the overwhelming odds against us, it is not a stretch to say that the words to the tune written decades later were true: “America! America! God shed His grace on thee …”
Looking back 250 years, it becomes clear that the sacred fire of liberty which burned in those hearty souls was not only a flame that couldn’t be extinguished—it was an idea which was destined to change the world.
Revolving Green Door: Former Biden Officials Landed Jobs With Environmental NGOs After Funneling Money To Them
As the Trump administration’s Department of Energy moves to wipe out over $83 billion in “Green New Scam” loans and conditional commitments approved in the final months of the Biden administration, a new analysis reveals that not only did the rush to spend accelerate right after Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024 debate with now-President Donald Trump, senior Biden officials landed roles at organizations that received agency funding. In some cases, money was steered to NGOs that the officials worked for before joining the government – where they then returned following the cash bonanza.
Following the debate where Biden revealed how cooked he is, nonprofit watchdog Democracy Restored found that billions of dollars began rushing out the door to over a dozen environmental and climate-focused NGOs, including that Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Climate United Fund, the Ocean Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and Rocky Mountain Institute, according to Just the News.
Using data from USASpending.gov, Democracy Resorted found that federal agencies had obligated more than $600 million in taxpayer money to these organizations since July 1, 2024. The obligations began to drop the day after the election. Obligations to these same organizations since Nov. 5, 2024 fell to $246 million.
While various agencies were providing millions in support to these organizations, high-level officials within the agencies either went to work for them after Trump took office, or they had previously worked for them prior to assuming key roles at the agencies under Biden. -JTN
Using data from USASpending.gov, Democracy Restored found that federal agencies obligated more than $600 million to environmental and climate-focused nonprofits beginning July 1, 2024 — including the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Climate United Fund, Ocean Conservancy, Nature Conservancy, and Rocky Mountain Institute.
That flow of taxpayer cash slowed dramatically after the election. Since Nov. 5, 2024, obligations to the same organizations dropped to $246 million, according to the watchdog group.
At the same time, Democracy Restored identified a pattern that raised eyebrows: senior federal officials moving into roles at organizations that received agency funding — or having previously worked for them before holding key government posts.
I think the money being shoveled out after President Biden’s debate and the apparent revolving door of appointees going to recipients of these federal funds raises many questions about the timing of the money, the impact of special interests in the Biden administration and the general ethics surrounding this behavior,” said Houston Keene, director of Democracy Restored, in comments to Just the News.
Loan office under fire
Scrutiny has focused on the Department of Energy’s Loans Programs Office, now renamed the Office of Energy Dominancy Financing.
InAugust 2024, the DOE awarded theWorld Resources Institute a $1 million grant aimed at supporting school bus fleet electrification training and collaboration.
Two former senior DOE officials are now senior fellows at the institute: Jigar Shah, who served as director of the Loans Programs Office, and Jennifer Wilcox, who was principal deputy assistant secretary at the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
Shah’s tenure has drawn particular attention. The Washington Free Beacon reported in May that the Loans Programs Office approved a loan to Plug Power, a New York-based green hydrogen company, in May 2024.
According to the repoprt Shah’s private equity firm previously invested $100 million in Plug Power, and the company once described the firm as a “longstanding partner.” Shah told the Beacon that he did not work directly on Plug Power’s loan and said the company applied before he joined the office.
An Office of Inspector General audit released in December found that 20%of Loans Programs Office employees reviewed had a potential conflict of interest – or the appearance of impaired impartiality – while performing their duties.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright testified in May that the office issued roughly $40 billion in loans over the prior 15 years, but that figure ballooned to $100 billion in just thefinal 76 days of the Biden administration. Wright said those rushed loan agreements lacked safeguards traditionally required by the DOE.
The revolving door keeps spinning
Democracy Restored’s review identified other examples of officials cycling between government agencies and nonprofit recipients.
Renee Stone, formerly in senior leadership roles at NOAA, now serves as vice president of climate for the Audubon Society. During the Biden administration, Audubon received nearly $4 million across three grants for habitat restoration projects.
Monica Medina, another former NOAA official, is now a distinguished fellow at Conservation International, which received a $9 million grant in 2023 for an ecosystem restoration project in Hawaii.
Chetan Hebbale, once a policy adviser in the White House, later joined the Nature Conservancy as a climate and conservation finance policy adviser. The organization received more than $6 million in federal funding during Biden’s term.
Federal ethics law restricts certain post-government actions by former senior officials, but it does not prohibit them from accepting employment with private or nonprofit organizations — even those that received government funding.
Keene emphasized that there is no evidence any of these individuals directly worked on the grants in question, but said the relationships warrant closer examination.
Offshore wind ties raise questions
The Biden administration’s aggressive push for 30 gigawatts of offshore wind also drew scrutiny.
Oceans Conservancy, a vocal supporter of offshore wind expansion, received nearly $6 million in two grants from NOAA during the Biden years. The group has also received support from Orsted, a major offshore wind developer.
Susan Ruffo, who previously served as managing director of international initiatives at Oceans Conservancy, later worked for NOAA and other federal agencies.
“I think it says a lot about the stewardship of tax dollars under the Biden administration,” Keene said. “If you were an organization that agreed with the administration politically, they weren’t afraid to cut you a check. That’s a problem for the taxpayer.”
Clintons Bend The Knee To Comer, Agree To Testify In House Epstein Inquiry
Just hours after Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) rebuffed Bill and Hillary Clinton’s attorney’s last-ditch conditional offer, the former president and former secretary of state appear to have acquiesced and agreed to key demands from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee to testify about Jeffrey Epstein in a closed-door deposition.
The initial correspondence, obtained by CNN, revealed that the Clintons’ team has been in search of an off-ramp for days.
Attorneys for Bill and Hillary have been in discussion with the Republican-led committee multiple times since lawmakers from both parties voted in January to hold the Clintons in contempt for refusing to appear for in-person depositions as part of the panel’s investigation into Epstein.
“It has been nearly six months since your clients first received the Committee’s subpoena, more than three months since the original date of their depositions, and nearly three weeks since they failed to appear for their depositions commensurate with the Committee’s lawful subpoenas,”Comer wrote.
“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency.”
As CNN reports, according to the letter dated January 31, the Clintons’ lawyers laid out the terms under which the former president would sit for a voluntary, transcribed interview.
He would sit for four hours in New York City for an interview limited to the scope of the Epstein probe, they said.
Lawmakers from both parties and their staff could ask questions, and the lawyers said both the Clintons and the committee could have their own transcriber present, according to the letter.
Comer rejected the offer from the Clintons’ attorneys as “unreasonable” and said he could not accept such terms.
He could not agree, he said, to changing the interview from a sworn deposition to a voluntary interview, and rejected the way in which the attorneys sought to limit the interview’s scope.
“But given that he has already failed to appear for a deposition and has refused for several months to provide the Committee with in-person testimony, the Committee cannot simply have faith that President Clinton will not refuse to answer questions at a transcribed interview, resulting in the Committee being right back where it is today,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.
By rejecting the Clintons’ initial offer, Comer had all but ensured that the House would hold a final vote this week on the contempt resolutions.
“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday that was also obtained by The New York Times.
In an email sent to Mr. Comer on Monday evening, attorneys for the Clintons said their clients would “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates” and asked that the House not move forward with a contempt vote, which had been slated for Wednesday.
However, it was not immediately clear Monday evening whether Comer would accept the Clintons’ terms and, subsequently, whether the contempt votes would still take place.
Comer said:
“The Clintons’ counsel has said they agree to terms, but those terms lack clarity yet again and they have provided no dates for their depositions. The only reason they have said they agree to terms is because the House has moved forward with contempt.”
“I will clarify the terms they are agreeing to and then discuss next steps with my committee members,” Comer said in a statement.
For Mr. Clinton to testify in the Epstein investigation would be nearly unprecedented.
No former president has appeared before Congress since 1983, when President Gerald R. Ford did so to discuss the celebration of the 1987 bicentennial of the enactment of the Constitution.
When Mr. Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 by the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, after he had left office, he sued the panel to try to block it. The panel ultimately withdrew the subpoena.
It was a victory for the Republican chairman, shifting the focus of his panel’s Epstein investigation onto prominent Democrats who once associated with the disgraced financier and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Throughout the Israel Defense Forces’ post-Oct 7 war on Gaza, the State of Israel and its collaborators and sympathizers around the world have ridiculed the alarming death toll maintained by Palestinian health authorities, dismissing the count as a gross exaggeration aimed at maliciously demonizing Israel. Now, after more than two years of casting doubts, the IDF has finally admitted its own estimates match the Gaza Health Ministry’s accounting of some 70,000 confirmed dead.
It’s a grand example of Israel’s long-running practice of vehemently denying accusations — and vilifying accusers — before eventually acknowledging their validity. Those acknowledgements usually come after overwhelming evidence has been produced, by which time the denials have provided some degree of protection for Israel’s standing. Where the Gaza death toll is concerned, the IDF’s capitulation seems to some extent preemptive, in anticipation of an eventual opening of Gaza to journalists from around the world. However, the long string of denials helped muddy the waters, giving Israel and its allies a degree of cover as the IDF’s astonishing death-and-destruction blitz was carried out.
The IDF’s admission came in a Thursday briefing given to reporters by a senior military official. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said approximately 70,000 people have died in Gaza since the Oct 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by Hamas militants. As of Sunday, Gaza health officials say 71,795 have died.
Importantly, both the IDF official and the Gaza Health Ministry says these numbers do not include bodies yet to be discovered under the incomprehensible volume of rubble across Gaza. The Gaza ministry says its numbers only reflect deaths directly resulting from military fire, excluding those who’ve died from disease and malnutrition.
Neither party has yet broken down the death toll into combatants and civilians. However, leading up to the October ceasefire, the IDF said it had killed at least 22,000 combatants in Gaza. Placed atop this week’s 70,000 denominator, that claim now suggests that civilians account for a significant majority of those killed by the IDF. Netanyahu has boasted that the Gaza campaign has achieved the “lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the history of modern urban warfare.” However, an IDF report leaked in August concluded that 83% of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were civilians.
The mere fact that the Gaza Health Ministry is part of a Hamas government was all that Israel’s and its proxies and supporters needed to promote the assumption that the ministry’s death tally was a lie — and to buy time for Israel to continue its shattering of Gaza, with financial, military and diplomatic backing of the the United States and other Western governments.
“The Biden administration, Congress, and the U.S. media played along with Israel’s lies and deception about the horrific death toll in Gaza — over 80 percent civilians; over half, women and children — so that they could gaslight Americans into continued support for Israel,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of human rights group DAWN, told the Interceptafter the IDF’s capitulation on the death toll.
President Biden was among the first to who sought to discredit the fatality figures coming from Gaza. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” Biden told a reporter 18 days after Oct 7, when Gaza authorities had already reported more than 6,000 dead from IDF fire. “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
Attacks on the Health Ministry’s fatality reporting came from every type of Israel supporter, from politicians to network-TV “analysts” to think tanks and individual social media users. The Intercept’s Jonah Valdez assembled a catalogue of such criticism; here’s a sampling:
“Every day, Hamas churns out misinformation. They inflate casualty numbers and make false accusations to smear Israel’s reputation,” said Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer.
“The data that we hear from Hamas is way, way exaggerated, the number of actually purely innocent civilians that have been killed are a tiny fraction,” said Alan Dershowitz, the Israel-promoting lawyer and law professor.
“Validating the public health arm of Hamas is like validating the public health arms of Al Qaeda and ISIS or the public health arms of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan,” said New York Rep. Ritchie Torres.
Decrying the media citations of Health Ministry data, the Anti-Defamation League said the Hamas-controlled ministry “distorts information about the casualties in Gaza.”
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a thinly-disguised component of the sprawling Israel lobby, criticized the Biden White House for eventually giving some credence to the Gaza Health Ministry’s reporting. “As a result of trusting numbers from a Hamas-controlled entity, the Biden administration has become more focused on the restraints it can put on Israeli forces than how it can help accelerate Hamas’s defeat,” said senior fellow David Adesnik.
Efforts to suppress the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll went far beyond pointed rhetoric. In 2024, Israel-catering Republicans and Democrats in the US House passed an amendment that would have barred the State Department from citing the numbers. While it didn’t become law, a similar measure in the defense bill enacted later that year made it illegal for the Pentagon to cite the Health Ministry’s fatality numbers as “authoritative.” It’s doubtful that, in the wake of the IDF’s admission, a repeal is now in the offing.
Throughout the war, many third parties — from new bureaus to the World Health Organization and researchers at Johns Hopkins — deemed the Gaza Health Ministry numbers legitimate, based on analysis of the ministry’s detailed reporting, and the ministry’s record of accuracy over previous Israeli military campaigns.
Last summer, a Pentagon insider quietly said that, despite public statements by spokespeople and top officials, the US government believed the Health Ministry’s reporting too. “Along with the World Health Organization and United Nations, we (Department of Defense, Department of State and the U.S. Intelligence Community) consider the Gaza Health Ministry figures to be generally reliable (though not precise),” wrote Army Col Nathan McCormack in a comment exchange on X, using a semi-anonymous, personal account.
In a 2023 reply to another X user, McCormack wrote, “Israel’s responses always (always—not hyperbole) disproportionately target Palestinian civilians.” In June 2025, after Jewish News Syndicate publicized these posts and others that were sharply critical of Israel, McCormack was forced out of his Israel-and-Levant-focused role supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Beyond dismissing the top-line number of deaths reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel has also denied credible accusations that IDF soldiers have frequently and deliberately targeted civilians. In addition to the accounts of Palestinians, accusations have also poured forth from American and European doctors who’ve voluntarily traveled to Gaza and worked in its bombed and blood-splattered hospitals.
“I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately — and directly on the side of the head, in the same child,” Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon in North Carolina and vice president of the International College of Surgeons, told CBSSunday Morning. “No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper.’ And they’re dead-center shots.”
Surgeon, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, on what he witnessed in his first month in Gaza. On @CBSSunday
— Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا (@SMohyeddin) July 22, 2024
Twenty other visiting doctors confirmed Perlmutter’s characterization of the IDF’s conduct. One, also an American, said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing on CT scans — “that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.” Other groups of doctors have given similar testimonies to other outlets. Israel has said the claim of IDF soldiers targeting civilians is “entirely unfounded and is categorically rejected.”
Israel has also denied widespread reports —substantiated by video — that soldiers shot at civilians gathering at aid distribution points set up last May as malnutrition surged in Gaza and global outrage mounted. By August, more than 1,300 Palestinians were reportedly killed as they sought aid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called such claims an antisemitic “blood libel.” However, enlisted soldiers and officers told Haaretz that lethal fire was routinely used to control crowds. Said one:
“It’s a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”
Other whistleblowers said the IDF routinely killed civilians by dropping hand grenades from modified commercial drones on anyone who wandered into areas of Gaza that were declared off-limits by Israel — even though those forbidden areas weren’t marked on the ground. The IDF campaign has also been marked by attacks on hospitals and ambulances, including an incident where soldiers fired on Palestinian emergency vehicles without provocation, then crushed the vehicles and buried them with bulldozers. The IDF’s initial claim that the vehicles had acted suspiciously were belied by video captured by one of the men killed by Israeli fire.
Then there’s Israel’s relentless bombing that systematically rendered vast swaths of Gaza uninhabitable. The Israeli government condemned accusations that it was engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign, but those denials fly in the face of explicit statements by senior members of Israel’s government.
“Within a few months…Gaza will be totally destroyed,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich assured a West Bank settlers conference last May. “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
— International Defence Analysis (@Defence_IDA) July 3, 2025
After the Times of Israel and Haaretz reported the IDF senior official’s validation of Gaza’s death-toll numbers, an IDF spokesman attempted to deflect attention, using social media to say “the details published do not reflect official IDF data.” Stopping short of categorically refuting the official’s statements, the post seemed to reflect an IDF irked that an official prematurely spilled the beans without permission. “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels,” the post concluded.
If and when the IDF finally lets foreign journalists roam in Gaza, we’ll likely see even more validation of war-crime accusations. As international criminal lawyer Jonathan Meta wrote in a weekend opinion piece at the Times of Israel, “If, for two years, a number was dismissed as propaganda, and then, suddenly, treated as a close approximation, what else was waved away not because it was false, but because it was inconvenient?”
Musk’s SpaceX Combines With xAI At $1.25 Trillion Valuation
Confirming earlier reports, late on Monday Elon Musk said SpaceX has acquired xAI, a deal that combines his powerful rocket-and-satellite business with his artificial-intelligence startup that is facing steep competition. SpaceX confirmed the deal Monday, posting a memo Musk sent out about the arrangement on its website.
The deal gives SpaceX a valuation of $1 trillion, and xAI a value of $250 billion, Bloomberg added citing sources. The combined company’s valuation of $1.25 trillion was announced to employees in a memo on Monday.
“SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,
The deal brings together two of the largest closely held companies in the world. XAI raised funds at a $230 billion valuation in January, while SpaceX was set to go ahead with a share sale in December at a valuation of about $800 billion. Additionally, the combination will bring together a mature and dominant company in SpaceX, with one that is in a nascent stage. Musk’s xAI is also facing formidable competition from OpenAI, Anthropic and others to build large language models and big businesses around AI technology.
Terms of the offering including price and valuation weren’t disclosed in the statement on SpaceX’s website.
The company is still expecting to hold an initial public offering later this year, one of the people said. SpaceX had been planning an IPO that could raise as much as $50 billion, Bloomberg News reported earlier.
In his memo, Musk also said global electricity demand for AI can’t be met with data centers on the ground, and that space-based technology will be the only way to scale up AI over the long term (something we discussed in December, sharing several stock picks which have since more than doubled).
He pitched using solar power from space as a transformative option to ramp up computing resources needed for AI. The executive has been frequently discussing orbital data centers at events and on X.
Polymarket odds of a deal being formalized by June 30 initially came out around 20% on Jan 30 when the first reports of a combination emerged. They then spiked earlier today after the Bloomberg report, and are now trading at 100%.
*ELON MUSK’S SPACEX CONFIRMS MERGER WITH XAI IN COMPANY MEMO
On Friday, SpaceX said in a regulatory filing that it wants to deploy an orbital AI network with up to one million satellites over time. The company will need to secure regulatory permission to deploy that fleet. Even if it gets it, which will be problematic to say the least under any Democratic regime, it is unclear just how SpaceX will provide physical service for the airborne data centers.
It will also need to demonstrate further progress with Starship, a powerful two-stage rocket the company has been testing in flight since 2023. Starship hasn’t yet deployed an operational payload during the test missions, and SpaceX has grappled with setbacks during the development campaign.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported SpaceX and xAI were planning the tie-up, and other news organizations reported on discussions about the deal.
The deal further entangles Musk’s various business ventures. The billionaire acquired Twitter in late 2022, renamed it X, then merged the site with his artificial intelligence startup xAI in a $33 billion deal. XAI, which also operates chatbot Grok, is an expensive operation, burning around $1 billion a month in service of its stated ambition to gain “a deeper understanding of our universe.” A merger with SpaceX will pool capital and talent, while providing access to computing power.
SpaceX stands out as arguably Elon’s most successful and consistent business. The company, the only American one that can routinely send astronauts to and from the International Space Station, is a key rocket launch provider for both NASA and the US Department of Defense, which the White House has moved to rename the Department of War. The increasing revenue it’s generating from the Starlink network of more than 9,000 satellites is even more significant, now outpacing launch sales and presenting a potential source of funding for xAI’s capital-intensive business.
A UAE-backed investment vehicle quietly agreed to buy nearly half of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency startup linked to President Donald Trump, just days before he returned to the White House, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi entity backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, signed a deal in January 2025 to purchase a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million, the Journal said, citing documents and people familiar with the matter.
Half of that amount was paid upfront, sending $187 million to Trump family-controlled entities, with additional tens of millions flowing to entities tied to co-founders, including relatives of US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, per the report.
The agreement was reportedly signed by Eric Trump. The Journal reported that the deal had not been publicly disclosed, despite World Liberty later revealing that the Trump family’s stake had fallen sharply.
Tahnoon’s ambitions grow after Trump election
Tahnoon, the brother of the United Arab Emirates president and the country’s national security adviser, has been central to Abu Dhabi’s push to become a global leader in artificial intelligence. Under the Biden administration, his efforts to secure advanced US-made AI chips were limited amid concerns that sensitive technology could reach China, particularly through companies such as G42.
Following Trump’s election, those efforts gained momentum. Tahnoon met multiple times with Trump and senior US officials, and within months the administration committed to granting the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips annually.
The Journal reported that executives from G42 helped manage Aryam Investment 1 and took board seats at World Liberty as part of the deal, making Aryam the startup’s largest outside shareholder. Weeks before the US-UAE chip framework was announced, another Tahnoon-led firm, MGX, used World Liberty’s stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment into Binance.
World Liberty and the White House have reportedly denied any wrongdoing. Spokespeople told the Journal that President Trump was not involved in the deal and that it did not provide any influence over US policy.
World Liberty faces US probe calls
Last year, Democratic senators called on US authorities to investigate alleged links between World Liberty Financial’s token sales and sanctioned foreign actors. In a Nov. letter to the Justice Department and Treasury, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed cited claims that WLFI governance tokens were bought by blockchain addresses tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, as well as Russian- and Iranian-linked entities.
The controversy is heightened by WLFI’s ownership structure, which gives Trump family-linked entities control over the majority of token revenue. Lawmakers argue this creates a direct conflict of interest, as most proceeds from token sales flow to the president’s family.
California Plans “Mileage Tax” To Bleed Citizens For Even More Cash
Lawmakers in the California State Assembly have moved to direct the Transportation Commission to prepare a study on the effects of a road charge for delivery to the legislature. A road charge is a program that imposes fees based on the number of miles each citizen drives over a specified period, and is designed to offset gas tax losses from the wider use of electric cars on California roads.
In 2014, California passed Senate Bill 1077, authorizing a “Road Usage Charge Technical Advisory Committee” to explore whether the state could replace its gas tax with a mileage-driven tax. The project was based on the assumption that “cleaner vehicles” and a potential zero-emission future would lead to dwindling gas tax revenues.
The state has been running road charge pilot programs since 2016. Last year, a pilot project concluded where mileage rates were set at 2.5 cents per mile for light-duty vehicles, such as cars, and other vehicles weighing less than 10,000 pounds. The rate for heavy-duty vehicles is dependent on their weight.
Today, proponents complain that implementation is not going fast enough. The latest bill is being called an “extension” of the pilot project and not a move to pass the actual tax. Democrats assert that Republicans are interfering with the project and misrepresenting its intent. However, taxes based on climate ideology are often kept on the shelf by exploratory committees, waiting for politically opportune moments to pass them quickly with minimal public opposition or debate. The Democrats are simply biding their time.
It is not clear yet when the mileage tax will be made official or if it will replace the gas tax; it is far more likely that both taxes would ultimately exist in tandem. Republicans argue that the tax is unfair to residents of rural counties where driving distances are much greater and gas vehicles are common. The tax is useful, though, for climate “re-wilding”: The globalist idea of forcing people to abandon rural areas and move into population centers so that large swaths of the nation can be “returned to nature.”
California currently has the highest gas taxes in the country. Total state taxes and environmental fees frequently exceeding .90 cents per gallon, contributing significantly to the nation’s highest pump prices ($4.30 per gallon compared to a national average of $2.87).
Over the past few years Governor Gavin Newsom and Democrats have sought to deflect blame for the state’s exorbitant fuel costs by accusing oil companies of “price gouging” consumers; a claim which was ultimately proven false the government’s own investigations. State interference has led to multiple refinery closures and the loss of numerous small business gas stations; prices are expected to rise even further.
The relentless (and baseless) hostility towards the oil industry in liberal states is forcing citizens into electric vehicles, but officials have no intention of letting the public escape taxation. The concept goes well beyond the old school idea of toll roads. A charge for mileage could require intrusive surveillance technology, including “black box” GPS devices in every vehicle to track miles driven. Or, yearly inspections of odometers with arduous paperwork and bureaucratic red tape.
If they can’t tax the gas, they will tax residents simply for driving. Next comes a tax simply for breathing.
The Arrest Of Don Lemon: Journalists Cannot Also Be Activists
The line between journalism and activism has become excessively thin in the past ten years, and the problems associated with this trend are numerous. Media figures have long leaned toward the liberal side of the political spectrum; liberal bias among journalists is nothing new. However, direct participation in an activist insurgency to help it or lead or propagandize in favor of it crosses into the realm of criminality.
Just because someone declares they are a “journalist” does not mean they’re protected from consequences if they commit a crime. Furthermore, the political left seems to believe that the 1st Amendment gives them the right to disrupt the free speech of others as long as they are protesting: This is a dangerous fallacy.
It’s not clear yet if disgraced media pundit Don Lemon broke the law. Criminal guilt is for the courts to decide. He does appear to join with a horde of Anti-ICE protesters that invaded a Minneapolis church service with the plan to intimidate and antagonize Christian worshipers into declaring their opposition to deportation (A communist struggle session in the form of an ambush). There is more than enough evidence to warrant Lemon’s arrest and prosecution for civil rights violations, and a lot of it he filmed himself.
REMINDER: Don Lemon fully admitted that he planned to storm and disrupt a church service with the anti-ICE lunatics.
Lemon is not acting like an impartial journalist covering the event, he is acting like a participant in the operation while using journalism as a cover.
🚨 SICKENING: Anti-ICE mob just STORMED a church in Minneapolis during worship, desecrating sacred ground, harassing Christians mid-service!
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche alleged Sunday that journalist Don Lemon was included in the planning of a protest at a Minnesota church, days after the former CNN anchor was arrested and charged with conspiracy and interfering with a place of worship.
Citing an unsealed grand jury indictment, Blanche told host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Lemon is accused of being “part of the planning” of the protest and was “part of the decisions to make sure the police didn’t know this was happening and federal law enforcement didn’t know this was happening.”
Lemon, along with several activists, has been charged with violating the FACE Act, a federal law prohibiting the use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to intimidate or interfere with persons accessing reproductive health clinics (including abortion clinics) or places of religious worship. Obviously, the law was not originally intended to protect Christians, which makes Lemon’s arrest all the more ironic.
Lemon would go on to compare the church goers in Minneapolis to “White Supremacists” and accuse them of “entitlement”. In other words, he believes that the incident is justified because the church was largely white.
Don Lemon on church members upset that he stormed their church: “They’re entitled, white supremacists” pic.twitter.com/aMlXYBugwB
The “journalist”, basking in the glow of his newfound limelight, says he will never stop fighting and asserts that he only became the “face of the protest” because he is a “gay black man in America.” Liberals and some conservatives argue that the arrest is a political mistake and that it makes the Trump Administration look authoritarian, however, they’re looking at the situation with narrow vision.
The real question is, when does a journalist stop being a journalist? Don Lemon was not arrested for journalism and exercising free speech. He was arrested for allegedly violating the free speech of others. The “optics” of the situation are irrelevant and Don Lemon being a media personality is irrelevant. He should not be allowed to escape prosecution simply because the political left will inevitably spin the narrative.
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask instead what your country has been doing to you and is likely to keep doing to you for as long as it can buy with fiat money the votes of a majority.”
Gary North’s article focuses mostly on Woodrow Wilson’s influence on the inaugural addresses of Eisenhower and Kennedy and their meaning in the world of 2008. As he observed, we have had “one long war since 1917,” with Fed fiat money playing an indispensable supporting role.
Everything the government does costs money, and it produces nothing with which to acquire it. For 2025, it coerced a total of $5.4 trillion from taxpayers and dollar-holders but ended up spending $7 trillion, producing a “rolling” deficit of $1.7 trillion. The biggest fights have always been over whose ox gets gored to fund it. Almost no one wonders whether government as it stands should exist at all.
When Wilson decided to impose democracy on the world, he had the backing of two newly-created theft mechanisms that he signed into law in 1913: The income tax and the central bank. The first extracts wealth directly from those who own it; the second takes it surreptitiously, which, as Copernicus wrote in 1526,
…is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way.
There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Americans like to think of themselves as sharp, incapable of being hoodwinked.
If they get scammed a second time they blame themselves for not seeing it—“Fool me twice, shame on me.”
But most of them have missed the biggest scam of all: The Federal Reserve System.
Of the various reasons for missing it, the biggest one is the conviction that market economies are vulnerable to harmful forces that only the state and its central bank can avoid. Experts on the Great Depression such as former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke build their arguments on the grounds that markets sometimes violate the fundamental law of trade—production buys production (sometimes known as Say’s Law)—and need supervision and intervention to avoid this problem.
When the roof began to fall in August 1929, they were at a loss as to which intervention to pursue. They could’ve referred to the Depression of 1921 for guidance when the government watched as the Fed tightened then eased. As one economist explained, “During this period, there was nothing remotely like a fiscal stimulus package, a TARP program, or even a QE policy designed to prevent economic collapse.” Deflation—seen as the villain in the 1930s Depression—cured the earlier slump because prices had been inflated.
Most people who study economics at state-funded universities treat the Fed as a necessary institution, not a scam. Their acquired expertise will include the view that the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has undertaken the formidable task of determining interest rates that best promotes full employment and low inflation. The Fed has a superhuman challenge and if it sometimes fails to please everyone, who could do better?
But it goes deeper. According to a FAQ section posted by the Kansas City Fed, “The Fed has long viewed transparency as a fundamental principle of central banking that supports accountability.” If Fed operations are transparent, most people are blind. The Fed’s operations are largely a mystery to most people. And this is to its advantage.
How the Fed Conducts Its Mission
It is commonly said the Fed prints money when it targets a lower Federal Funds Rate. While this is true, it shrouds all the plumbing that makes it happen.
The Federal Funds Rate is “the interest commercial banks charge when they lend money to one another for extremely short-term periods—literally, overnight.” It influences other rates such as rates for mortgages, loans, credit cards, and savings.
The FOMC meets at least eight times a year to decide what to do about the current Federal Funds Rate. Their discussions are augmented by the Beige Book report of conditions in the 12 Reserve districts. Lowering the rate means the Fed will print more money (in its convoluted manner) to get the consumer price increases it wants. If it decides that prices are running too high, it will pull money out of the economy by selling some of its securities. This is how it attempts to lower or raise the Federal Funds Rate.
Influencing the Federal Funds Rate is “the interest the Fed pays on the funds that banks hold as reserve balances at their Federal Reserve Bank, which is the Interest on Reserves Balances (IORB) rate.” If banks make more keeping their reserves than lending them to other banks, the reason is likely a high IORB. Both the Federal Funds Rate and the IORB rate are considered important tools for manipulating market prices.
Actual market prices sometimes defy Fed intentions to raise them, as seen by the Moore’s Law effects on computer technology. Fortunately for consumers, innovation can outpace monetary debasement in specific sectors.
The Arsonist is Seen as a Firefighter
The Fed sets as a target a 2 percent inflation rate. It defines inflation as “the rate at which the price of goods and services increases over time.” In other words, its job is to increase prices. Price increases, not the Fed actions that increase them, are the measure of inflation. And while many judge the results by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the Fed relies on the Personal Consumption Index (PCI), presumably because it covers more consumer spending than the CPI.
In conducting monetary policy, we will remain highly focused on fostering as strong a labor market as possible for the benefit of all Americans. And we will steadfastly seek to achieve a 2 percent inflation rate over time.
It is pursuing, in other words, a steady 2 percent depreciation in the purchasing power of the dollar. The Fed has been exceptional in this regard: Since my daughters were born in 1982, consumer prices have risen roughly 235 percent. Its policy bias pushes people to spend rather than save, even if it means they go into debt. Savers get punished, as do people living on fixed incomes. Since savings are the pool from which investment draws, entrepreneurs are punished too. Yet investment is the springboard of rising productivity and higher living standards. It sounds like a predatory computer game but it’s Fed policy.
Inflation provides the wealth transfer. The interest-rate juggling is how it’s accomplished.
What was once a word that described a monetary cause now describes a price outcome. This shift in meaning has complicated the position of anti-inflation advocates. As a condition of the money stock, an inflating currency has but one origin—the central bank—and one solution—a less expansive money growth rate. But as a condition of the price level, which may have originated from a variety of things (including a depreciating dollar, rising labor costs, bad weather, or a number of factors other than “too much money”), the solution to—and the prudence of— eliminating inflation is much less clear.
Confusion accelerated after the publication of Keynes’s General Theory in 1936:
In addition to separating the price level from the money stock, the Keynesian revolution in economics appears to have separated the word inflation from a condition of money and redefined it as a description of prices. In this way, inflation became synonymous with any price increase.
The Fed thus escapes the public’s scrutiny when prices rise.
Fiat money is a politician’s best friend because it creates an invisible tax through the institutionalized depreciation of currency. We shouldn’t expect them to part with it—especially as their perpetual interest in war demands ever greater funding.
