Authored by John Walter via Substack,

There is a moment before the fall. You will miss it. Everyone does.

The shelves still hold food. The lights still work. The news still talks about politics, sports, the usual noise. But somewhere in the background, something has shifted. The supply chain that moved your breakfast cereal every Tuesday for twenty years now operates on thinner margins than the quarterly reports acknowledge. The water treatment plant built in 1967 still runs, but the replacement parts that once took three days to arrive now take eighteen months, if they arrive at all. The pension checks clear, but the funds backing them have been borrowing from themselves since 2008, and the actuarial projections no longer align with the demographic reality. They just haven’t stopped clearing yet.

This is not collapse. This is the pre-collapse.

The period when preparation remains possible, when geography can still be chosen, when the window sits open but narrowing.

Most Americans live in places that will not survive prolonged systems failure. Not because the people are weak, but because the infrastructure is brittle by design. The Northeast Corridor depends on just-in-time delivery networks with three-day margins that assume trucks will always run and bridges will always stand. California’s cities exist in permanent water deficit maintained only by imports traveling hundreds of miles across earthquake faults and political fault lines. Florida’s peninsula offers no lateral escape when the storm surge comes, only northward highways that become parking lots. The desert Southwest operates on energy budgets that cannot be sustained without continuous fuel delivery to power plants that cannot function without water that no longer exists in sufficient quantities. The Industrial Midwest is already experiencing municipal bankruptcy that will soon make basic services – police, fire, snow removal, water treatment – unreliable or absent.

These are not predictions. They are observations of systems already stressed beyond design parameters, running on inertia and denial.

What follows is not a guide to bunker construction or food storage. It is an examination of five regions where the conditions for long-term survival exist – not because these places are easy, but because they are hard in ways that matter. They possess water, space, soil, and social structures that function without constant external inputs. They demand physical toughness, tolerance for isolation, and willingness to abandon the conveniences of contemporary life. They offer no guarantees. But they offer possibility, which is more than can be said for the places where most Americans currently live.

The selection rests on data: population density, water source reliability, agricultural capacity, energy independence, legal frameworks for self-defense. But it also rests on something harder to quantify – the persistence of skills and social patterns that predate industrial dependence. Some places remember how to survive without the grid. Others never forgot.

The window for relocation narrows daily. Land prices in these regions rise as awareness spreads. Communities that once welcomed newcomers now view them with suspicion that borders on hostility. Infrastructure that could support additional population strains under those already arriving. The question is not whether to move, but whether you will move before movement becomes impossible, before the roads clog with those fleeing the same crisis you saw coming, before the locals decide they have accepted enough outsiders.

Here are the five places.

Interior Redoubt

Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming contain approximately 3.3 million people spread across 270,000 square miles. Average density: twelve persons per square mile. In some northern counties, the figure drops below five.

Space you can breathe in.

Beneath southern Idaho lies the Snake River Plain aquifer. A USGS hydrologist explained it simply: enough water exists there to support populations hundreds of times larger than current levels, for centuries, even under drought conditions that would devastate other regions. Wells hit water at fifty to one hundred feet. In many places, the pressure is sufficient that pumps become unnecessary – gravity does the work, pushing water to the surface through artesian flow.

Montana holds the headwaters of three major river systems: Missouri, Columbia, and Mississippi. The state averages fifteen to thirty inches of precipitation annually. This water does not arrive through distant bureaucracies or engineering projects requiring political negotiation. It falls from the sky and runs off mountains that have not yet been drained by overuse because the population has never been large enough to drain them.

Wyoming has 580,000 residents. It is the least populated state. You can drive for hours and see no one. You can buy land by the hundred-acre parcel for prices that would not purchase a garage in San Francisco. The game populations – elk, deer, pronghorn, bear – are managed for sustainability rather than exhaustion. A resident can hunt them without competing with millions of others because millions of others are simply not there. They are elsewhere, packed into cities, dependent on systems that will not sustain them.

Winters here are brutal. Twenty below zero is common. Snow blocks roads for weeks, sometimes months. The growing season runs ninety to one hundred twenty days. The soil in mountain zones is thin, rocky, difficult to work. These are not inconveniences to be solved with better technology. They function as filters, keeping out those who lack the physical capacity or psychological tolerance for genuine hardship. They select for people who can survive when comfort disappears.

Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming all recognize constitutional carry. No permits are required for concealed or open carry. All three recognize Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground. A property owner faces no legal obligation to retreat before an intruder. These laws reflect a culture where self-reliance is expected, not merely permitted – a culture where waiting for police to arrive is understood as a luxury that may not always be available.

Communities here are not homogeneous. Some welcome newcomers with skills and capital. Others view outsiders with hostility that can last generations, rooted in experience with those who arrived with plans to transform rather than to join. Integration is slow. It requires demonstrating utility, respecting local norms, contributing before expecting acceptance. Those who arrive with intentions to make these places into versions of what they left will be resisted, sometimes violently. Those who arrive to learn and to work will eventually find their place, though “eventually” may mean years rather than months.

Life in the Redoubt demands tolerance for isolation that many cannot manage without psychological breakdown. The nearest hospital may be hours away. The nearest specialist may be days away. Preparation for winter cannot be improvised when the first storm hits in October and does not lift until April. Yet for those who meet these demands, this region offers something increasingly scarce: genuine autonomy, the possibility of building a life that does not depend on distant systems controlled by people who do not know you exist.

Water security is local. Food production is possible, though limited by climate. Defense is legally and culturally supported. Population density is low enough that resource competition will not become lethal for generations, even under severe conditions. Infrastructure is old but decentralized, simple but repairable with hand tools and knowledge that persists in the community.

A planner in Montana noted that some eastern counties have lost so much population that schools have closed, postal service runs only a few days per week, and emergency response is measured in hours rather than minutes. Some see this as demographic decline. Others see opportunity. The infrastructure exists. The land is there. The water flows. What is missing are people willing to do the work.

Ozark Plateau

Beneath the limestone and sandstone of the Ozarks lies one of the world’s largest accessible aquifer systems. It covers 68,000 square miles across Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The water sits shallow. In most places, fifty to one hundred fifty feet of drilling brings you to water that does not require heavy pumps or significant energy to extract. You dig. You hit water. You drink.

A 2024 USGS study confirmed what locals have known for generations: recharge rates remain sustainable. Unlike the Ogallala Aquifer, being depleted across the Great Plains, or the Colorado River basin, over-allocated by politics and climate change, the Ozark system continues to refill naturally from precipitation averaging forty-five to sixty inches annually. This water has been there. It will likely remain there long after other sources have failed.

Missouri’s state average density is ninety persons per square mile. This figure misleads. Wayne County, in the southern part of the state, holds thirteen people per square mile spread across 774 square miles of forested, hilly terrain difficult to farm with industrial machinery. This difficulty has protected it. It has not been converted to monoculture corn and soy. It remains a patchwork of small holdings, woodlots, and family farms that have survived despite agricultural economics rather than because of them.

Arkansas adds nineteen million acres of forest. Hunting is abundant: squirrel, rabbit, whitetail deer, black bear, wild turkey. A resident who learns to hunt and process game can provide protein for a household without depending on supply chains that may break without warning. Forests also provide timber for construction and fuel, foraging for mushrooms and berries, and cover dense enough to make large-scale surveillance or control practically impossible without resources no collapsing government will possess.

The climate is humid subtropical. Summers are hot and wet. Winters are mild compared to the north. The growing season runs one hundred eighty to two hundred days at lower elevations. Two crops per year become possible with planning and labor. Rainfall is consistent enough that irrigation is unnecessary for most gardening, eliminating dependence on pumps and electrical infrastructure that may fail.

Land costs are among the nation’s lowest. Twenty acres with water access and building rights can be purchased for under fifty thousand dollars in many counties. This is not an investment opportunity promising returns. It is a price point that permits people of modest means to achieve property independence without mortgage debt that would force continued participation in the wage economy, continued dependence on systems that may not survive.

By conventional metrics, the Ozarks are poor. Incomes are low. Educational attainment lags national averages. Health outcomes are worse than the nation as a whole. But these metrics measure integration into a system that may not survive. They do not measure the ability to feed oneself, to build shelter, to repair machinery, to survive without external inputs that require functioning supply chains and stable currencies. By those measures, this region possesses wealth that cannot be quantified in dollars and cannot be seized by institutions that may fail.

Scots-Irish immigrants settled this region, bringing traditions of self-sufficiency that have persisted through centuries of economic marginalization. People still can vegetables, smoke meat, build with timber they have felled themselves, repair vehicles with hand tools, deliver babies without hospitals. These skills are not romantic anachronisms. They are practical capacities that become essential when the industrial infrastructure stops functioning, when the trucks stop running, when the grid goes down and does not come back up.

Social structure is tight, kinship-based, suspicious of outsiders. Family networks extend across counties. Reciprocity is expected and enforced: you help your neighbor raise his barn, he helps you bring in your harvest. Those who violate these norms find themselves excluded from the networks that provide security and mutual aid. Those who respect them, who contribute before claiming membership, may eventually find a place, though the process takes years and cannot be rushed by money or credentials.

Health care is inadequate by urban standards. Economic opportunities are limited to agriculture, logging, and tourism that will likely disappear when the economy contracts. Isolation can become crushing for those accustomed to urban stimulation and constant connectivity. Yet for those willing to work within its constraints, to accept lower material standards in exchange for genuine autonomy, the Ozarks offer water security, food production capacity, and social infrastructure that functions without dependence on distant systems.

Appalachian Highlands

Eastern slopes of the Appalachians receive more than sixty inches of annual precipitation in many zones. While the American West dries under climate change pressure, these mountains remain green, wet, breathing. Water flows from springs that have run for centuries, feeding creeks and rivers that require no pumping, no treatment plants, no distant infrastructure vulnerable to interruption. For a prepared household, that abundance can mean the difference between dependence and self-sufficiency.

Eastern Tennessee, particularly the Cumberland Plateau and the Unaka Mountains, combines this water abundance with moderate climate. The growing season exceeds two hundred days at lower elevations. The soil, though often rocky and steep, is fertile when worked with knowledge rather than machinery. Terrain is difficult – steep slopes, narrow valleys, limited road networks that become impassable in winter storms. This difficulty has protected the region from the development that has flattened other areas, turned them into suburbs and strip malls and dependent populations.

Wayne County, Tennessee, contains over two thousand documented springs. Many remain unexploited, flowing from hillsides on properties that have not been developed because the terrain made development unprofitable. A property owner who finds one has a water source that requires no electricity, that resists contamination by industrial activity, that will likely continue flowing as long as the mountains stand and the climate remains wet. Hydrology here is local. It does not depend on political agreements hundreds of miles away or engineering projects requiring maintenance by specialists who may not be available during institutional breakdown.

Western North Carolina offers similar conditions. The Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains create a precipitation capture effect that keeps the region wet even when surrounding areas experience drought. Forests are dense deciduous hardwoods – oak, hickory, maple – providing timber, fuel, and forage. Streams hold trout. Hunting is adequate, though not as abundant as in the Midwest or West. Terrain makes large-scale agriculture impossible but small-scale intensive cultivation viable for those who know how to terrace slopes and work with gravity rather than against it.

West Virginia has lost sixty percent of its population since the coal peak of the mid-twentieth century. Infrastructure built for two million people now serves fewer than seven hundred thousand. Empty houses dot the hillsides. Schools have closed. Roads are maintained minimally if at all. Some interpret this as failure. Others see opportunity. Land is cheap. Water flows from springs and wells that have not been exhausted because the population that would exhaust them has left for cities that will likely not survive systemic disruption as well as this abandoned region will.

Winters here are real. Temperatures drop below freezing for extended periods. Snow falls, sometimes heavily, closing roads and increasing isolation. But the climate is not arctic. Survival is possible with preparation that is demanding but not extreme, with wood heat and stored food and clothing adequate for cold that kills the unprepared but merely inconveniences those who have prepared.

Social fabric is complex, damaged by poverty and the opioid epidemic that has devastated communities already marginalized by economic change. Educational resources are limited. Medical care is inadequate by urban standards. But there is also a resilience that does not appear in economic statistics, a capacity for mutual aid that has never stopped functioning because it was never replaced by government services that might fail.

When floods hit in 2024, the response came not from FEMA but from neighbors with excavators and chainsaws, churches with shelter space and food stores, hunters with meat to share. Networks functioned because they had never stopped functioning, never been fully outsourced to institutions that collapse when funding disappears. They were still there, still operating on reciprocity and kinship, ready to activate when crisis came.

Terrain provides natural defensive advantages that should not be underestimated. Narrow valleys limit access to single roads that can be blocked or observed. Steep slopes prevent easy surveillance from a distance, make large-scale movement difficult, provide cover for those who know the land. Dense forests hide movement and shelter. Surveillance is difficult. Control is practically impossible without massive resource expenditure that no collapsing government will be able to muster. Historical precedents – from Civil War guerrilla operations to Prohibition-era resistance to federal authority – demonstrate the region’s capacity to harbor autonomous populations against forces that technically possess superior power but cannot effectively deploy it in such terrain.

Suspicion of outsiders runs deep, often justified by experience with extractive industries that took resources and left poverty, with government programs that promised development and delivered dependency. Those who arrive with money and plans to transform the region into something else, something more like the places they fled, will face resistance that can become dangerous. Those who arrive with humility, with willingness to learn, with skills to contribute and patience to wait for acceptance, may eventually find a place. The process is slow. It cannot be rushed by credentials or capital.

Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Sixteen thousand five hundred square miles. Three hundred thousand people. Simple math: there is space here. Space between settlements. Space between people. Space to disappear, to operate without observation, to survive without constant interaction with systems of control that will likely not survive prolonged instability.

Surrounding the UP are the largest freshwater reserves on Earth. Lake Superior alone contains enough water to cover the continental United States to a depth of one foot. Rivers flowing into it are numerous and, in most cases, clean enough to drink without treatment that requires chemicals and equipment that may not be available during infrastructure failure. Water is not the problem here. It is the solution to problems that will kill people elsewhere – dehydration, thirst, conflict over shrinking supplies.

The growing season is short: ninety to one hundred twenty days. Agriculture is limited, challenging, requiring crops suited to cold climates and short seasons. But the UP is not a desert. Potatoes, root vegetables, cold-hardy grains can be grown with planning, with greenhouses, with knowledge of varieties that mature quickly. More importantly, the region supports game populations – whitetail deer, black bear, small game – that can provide protein for those who hunt and possess the skills to process what they kill. Lakes and rivers hold fish. Forests provide timber for fuel and construction, enough wood to heat homes through winters that would likely kill the unprepared.

Winters are brutal in ways that must be experienced to be understood. Twenty below zero is not unusual. Snow accumulates in feet, not inches, and stays for months. Roads become impassable without heavy equipment that requires fuel and maintenance. Isolation increases as the snow falls and temperatures drop. This is not a design flaw. It is a feature. It keeps people out. It makes large-scale movement difficult. It creates a barrier that does not need to be guarded because nature guards it with cold that kills those who are not prepared for it.

Only three bridges connect the UP to the rest of Michigan. All are vulnerable to interruption by weather, by accident, by deliberate action. The road network is sparse, maintained minimally, often impassable in winter regardless of official status. Population is concentrated in a few small cities – Marquette, Houghton, Sault Ste. Marie – leaving vast areas nearly empty, populated by scattered homesteads and small settlements separated by miles of forest and water.

Land is cheap. Forty acres with water access can be purchased for thirty thousand dollars, sometimes less. Infrastructure – roads, power lines, buildings – exists from the mining boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but is now underutilized, maintained for populations that no longer exist. Houses stand empty, available for those willing to repair them. Schools have closed, leaving buildings that could serve other purposes. Population has been declining for decades, creating opportunity for those seeking to establish autonomous operations without competing for resources with millions of others.

The electrical grid is vulnerable. Winter storms knock out power regularly, sometimes for days or weeks. Residents have adapted over generations. Wood heat is standard, not optional. Generators are common, though they depend on fuel that must be brought from distant sources. Culture here accepts interruption as normal rather than catastrophic. This adaptation means that when the grid fails permanently, the population will likely not panic. They will light their stoves and continue, as they have done before, as their grandparents did before them.

Medical care is limited by distance. Hospitals are few and far between. Specialized care requires travel to Green Bay or Milwaukee, hours away over dangerous roads in winter. Population is aging, older than the national average. But older residents possess skills that have been forgotten in cities: how to cut timber with hand tools and chainsaws, how to repair engines without specialized equipment, how to grow food in short seasons, how to preserve meat through smoking and freezing, how to survive without calling a service technician who may not exist when systems fail.

Life here is not for the casual prepper who believes that buying supplies is sufficient preparation. It demands preparation for winters that have killed the unprepared historically and will likely kill them again when the infrastructure that provides margin for error fails. It demands tolerance for isolation that can become psychological torture for those accustomed to constant stimulation and connectivity. It demands skills that cannot be learned from books in the moment of crisis but must be practiced over years. Yet for those who meet these demands, who possess the hardiness and knowledge required, the UP offers water security, space, and social infrastructure that functions without dependence on distant systems controlled by people who will not be there when those systems fail.

Interior Alaska

Three hundred thousand square miles. Fewer than one hundred thousand people. The density is not low. It is nearly nonexistent, approaching the point where human presence becomes statistical noise against the vastness of the land.

Interior Alaska is not a place for compromise or half-measures. Winters reach fifty below zero. Darkness lasts two months in which the sun does not rise above the horizon. Cost of living is extreme – gasoline at eight dollars per gallon when it is available, milk at ten dollars, everything flown in or barged during the brief summer when rivers are navigable. Medical care is practically nonexistent outside Fairbanks and Anchorage, and even those cities offer limited capabilities by lower-forty-eight standards. A broken bone or appendicitis or heart attack can be a death sentence if weather prevents evacuation, if the plane cannot fly, if you are too far from help to reach it in time.

Yet interior Alaska offers something no other region can match: the possibility of genuine disappearance. Not hiding. Not evasion. Ceasing to exist as a data point, a consumer, a citizen, a participant in systems of control and extraction. The land is too vast for surveillance. The population too scattered for enforcement. The conditions too harsh for those who lack the skills and temperament to survive them. The environment filters out the unprepared with brutal efficiency that makes no exceptions for good intentions or money or credentials.

Water is everywhere. Rivers flow clean enough to drink without treatment. Lakes freeze and thaw on annual cycles. Snow melts to provide drinking water. The problem is not finding water. It is staying alive while you access it, staying warm enough to melt snow, staying alert enough to avoid falling through ice, staying competent enough to travel safely in conditions where the margin for error becomes dangerously small.

Subsistence is not a hobby in interior Alaska. It is recognized by federal law – the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 – as a protected way of life. Rural residents have the right to hunt, fish, and gather on federal lands. The harvest is substantial: 295 pounds per person annually in remote communities, compared to 22 pounds in urban areas. For those who know how to hunt caribou, how to fish salmon, how to preserve meat through drying and smoking in Arctic conditions, how to build shelter that withstands winds and cold that destroy conventional construction, survival is possible. Without those skills, the margin for error becomes dangerously small, and the land offers little forgiveness for mistakes.

Those skills are not optional. Those who lack them face conditions where small errors become fatal. Hypothermia, starvation, accidents in remote locations, encounters with bears or moose that end badly – these are common causes of death for those who underestimate the environment, who believe that equipment can substitute for knowledge, that technology can overcome conditions that have killed the unprepared for thousands of years.

Social structure is based on reciprocity and competence, enforced by necessity. Those who do not contribute to hunting or fishing do not eat. Those who cannot repair their own equipment depend on others who can, and that dependency creates obligation that must be repaid. Communities are small – villages of two hundred people, homesteads separated by miles of wilderness, families living alone with nearest neighbors hours away by snowmachine or boat. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows who is competent and who is not, who contributes and who takes, who can be trusted in emergency and who cannot.

Alaska has no permit requirements for firearms carry. No restrictions on weapon types. No magazine capacity limits. The culture of armed self-defense is absolute – not as political statement or identity marker, but as practical necessity. Bears exist. Moose exist, dangerous when threatened. Distance from any help is measured in hours or days, not minutes. People are armed because they must be, because the alternative is to be defenseless in an environment that does not forgive defenselessness.

The interior is not a retreat from difficulty. It is a commitment to difficulty that exceeds anything most Americans have experienced or can imagine. Those who go there must abandon connections to systems that sustain modern life. Supply flights, satellite internet, imported fuel, medical care, social services – these are vulnerabilities that pure subsistence practitioners avoid not because they reject modernity on principle but because they know that dependence on such systems is fatal when those systems fail, and in the interior, failure means death.

Native corporations own much of the land. The federal government owns most of the rest. But subsistence rights, protected by ANILCA, provide legal access to resources regardless of ownership. The legal framework recognizes what the environment enforces: survival depends on use, not on title, on the ability to extract resources from the land rather than on documents that claim ownership but provide no capacity to utilize what is owned.

Climate change affects the interior paradoxically. Warmer winters extend the season of vulnerability to thawing ice that makes travel dangerous, to shifting wildlife patterns that disrupt traditional hunting. But they also extend the brief growing season, potentially improving subsistence conditions for those who adapt to new patterns. Permafrost degrades, causing infrastructure collapse that matters little to those who never depended on infrastructure, but also creating new water access and vegetation opportunities.

Psychological demands exceed the physical in ways that are difficult to convey to those who have not experienced them. Isolation, darkness, cold, silence – these break people who lack the temperament for them, who require constant stimulation, who cannot exist without external validation or entertainment. Those who remain possess characteristics that cannot be taught in any school: patience, tolerance for discomfort, capacity for delayed gratification, comfort with silence, ability to exist without constant input from outside sources.

Interior Alaska will not save many. Barriers to entry are too high. The learning curve is too steep. Margin for error is too narrow, measured in hours or minutes rather than days. Yet for those who possess the necessary skills and temperament, who have prepared not merely with supplies but with knowledge that can only be earned through years of practice, it offers the ultimate possibility: existence beyond the reach of any system that might fail, any government that might collapse, any economy that might disintegrate. Here, you are alone in a way that no other place in America can replicate. For some, that is a nightmare. For others, it is the only freedom left.

*  *  *

There is no conclusion to draw, no moral to extract, no moral can be extracted, no call to action can be phrased in a way that will convince those who are not already convinced. These five regions exist. They have water, space, and social structures that function without constant external inputs. They demand things that most people cannot give: tolerance for isolation, acceptance of physical hardship, willingness to abandon the conveniences and connections of contemporary life, capacity to survive without the infrastructure that most Americans believe essential.

Those who wait for clear confirmation that systemic failure is imminent will likely find the window closed when they finally decide to move – the roads clogged with those fleeing the same crisis they saw coming, the locals having decided they have accepted enough outsiders, and land prices having risen beyond reach.

The choice is not between safety and danger. All five regions are dangerous in ways that matter, that can kill the unprepared. The choice is between different kinds of danger: the danger of isolation and hardship versus the danger of dependence on systems that may fail; the danger of cold and dark versus the danger of thirst and hunger in places where millions compete for shrinking resources; the danger of doing too much versus the danger of doing too little until doing anything becomes impossible.

Geography is not destiny until it is. Until the moment when the aquifer runs dry, when the grid fails and does not return, when the trucks stop running, when the violence starts and does not stop. At that moment, where you are becomes who you are, what you can do, whether you will survive or become a statistic in a catastrophe that future historians will struggle to explain, if there are historians.

The ground is shifting beneath feet that do not yet feel the movement. The question is whether you will feel it in time to move your feet to somewhere the shifting matters less.

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

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

Uncertainty about how the wars in Iran and Ukraine will unfold is keeping many traders away from taking positions in longer-dated futures contracts, according to Morgan Stanley.

Most traders have now moved to bet on futures prices within a three to six-month period, instead of longer-dated futures contracts, as volatility has spiked and uncertainty has grown regarding where the wars are going and how much they would continue to impact the global oil market.

“People have been more precise with their risk,” Brendan Ross, Co-Head Global Oil Trading at Morgan Stanley, said at the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference in Singapore on Wednesday, as carried by Bloomberg.

“They’ve decided what they really want and what’s an unexpected bleed,” Ross added.

Many traders are ditching too risky bets and are piling up in near-dated futures contracts as they don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the longer-dated bets amid high uncertainty about the Iran and Ukraine wars, according to the expert.

This shift into near-dated futures has sapped liquidity in the longer-term contracts, Ross noted.

Meanwhile, speculators and portfolio managers have recently amassed bets in the fuel markets as these have been considerably tighter than the crude oil market. Hedge funds have gone from short on fuels early in the spring to long now, building a net long position of 177 million barrels across the most traded fuel contracts—gasoline and diesel—as of September 1, according to the latest available data from exchanges compiled by energy analyst John Kemp.

Speculators’ position on fuels is likely to remain strongly bullish in the coming weeks, reflecting the impossibility of replacing lost output from the Middle East and Russia with alternative supply because there is not enough production capacity elsewhere. So, U.S. inventories of diesel and, most notably, gasoline, will continue to draw from an already low point.

An experimental drug designed using AI has produced measurable shifts toward a younger biological-age profile in patients.

Developed by Insilico Medicine, the drug – rentosertib – was initially engineered to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive, age-associated lung-scarring disease. When researchers analyzed blood samples from a Phase IIa clinical trial, they applied six proteomic profiling “aging clocks” among 42 participants. All six detected reductions in predicted biological age, whereas the placebo group showed little change or slight increases. The most pronounced and consistent effects emerged around week four of treatment.

The study was authored by Insilico with academic collaborators from Harvard, Stanford, the Broad Institute, RWTH Aachen, Peking University and Westlake University.

Insilico used AI not only to identify a specific enzyme (TNIK) linked to both fibrosis and aging pathways, but also to generate and optimize the specific molecule designed to inhibit it. That dual application makes rentosertib a rare clinical test of AI uncovering a target case and building new therapeutics from scratch.

In the earlier Phase IIa, patients in the 60mg once-daily arm recorded a mean improvement in forced vital capacity of 98.4 milliliters against a mean decline of 20.3 milliliters on placebo. FVC declines with age in healthy people over 65 at roughly 20 to 50 milliliters a year, which is why Insilico treats it as a physiological aging marker as well as an efficacy endpoint.

“If you manage to add 3 years to everyone’s life, the drug should be able to significantly extend the healthy portion of life as well, translating into trillions of dollars in productivity and savings,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, Insilico’s founder and co-CEO.

And according to 2013 chemistry Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, “What convinces me is not the size of the effect but the agreement, because these models share neither their features nor their training data,” he said of the six clocks reaching the same conclusion on the same 42 patients.

Rentosertib is no longer confined to early-stage laboratory work. In July, Insilico announced that the drug had entered a randomized Phase III trial, expected to enroll 320 IPF patients for a 52-week, once-daily regimen. That trial is designed to evaluate pulmonary-fibrosis efficacy and safety, not life extension – but it advances an AI-generated molecule into the final phase of clinical development. Of note – the study does not prove that rentosertib extends human lifespan or literally shaves years off a patient’s age. But the clock results, the senescence and metabolic pathway shifts, and the dose-dependent FVC gains all point the same way, and more study is needed to understand the possibilities.

If the drug succeeds clinically, it validates AI-driven drug discovery, and offers a template for testing future medicines against both specific age-related diseases and the biomarkers of aging itself. If it fails in Phase III, the aging clocks will have been measuring a lung.

By Zachary Skidmore of DataCenterDynamics

NextEra Energy has secured a $1.9 billion loan from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) to support the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant, which is tied to a long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Google.

The plant, located in Linn County, Iowa, is the only nuclear energy project in the state and first entered service in February 1975. However, due to the 2020 Midwest derecho (straight-line windstorm), which damaged the facility’s cooling towers, repairs were deemed uneconomical, leading to its shutdown.

Reports surfaced in 2024 that NextEra was considering a restart of the 615MW plant, following Microsoft’s announcement that it would take 100 percent of a revived Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The company subsequently announced that it had signed a 25-year PPA with Google in October, with the plant expected to begin delivering power by 2029.

According to the DOE, the latest loan will help finance the restart of the plant and represents the third loan provided by EDF to support a nuclear plant restart in the US. These include the Crane Clean Energy Center (Three Mile Island Unit 1), which received a $1bn loan, and the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert Township, Michigan, which secured a $1.52bn loan.

“President Trump has set an ambitious course to restore American nuclear leadership, and the restart of Duane Arnold Nuclear Plant in Iowa marks another step in advancing America’s nuclear renaissance,” said US deputy secretary of energy James P. Danly. “Returning 615MW of reliable baseload generation will drive down electricity costs, while supporting thousands of American jobs. This administration is pursuing a comprehensive nuclear strategy, restarting existing reactors, increasing the output of our nuclear fleet, and accelerating new construction, to build the abundant, affordable, and reliable power system required for American prosperity and reindustrialization.”

The plant is one of several to have its capacity contracted to a hyperscale data center firm. In addition to Google and Microsoft, Meta signed a 20-year PPA with Constellation Energy for the entire output of the 1.1GW Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Illinois. AWS has also gotten in on the act, signing a 1.92GW PPA with Talen Energy for energy from the 2.5GW Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Speaking at the Jefferies Industrials Conference earlier on Wednesday, MSC Industrial executive Martina McIsaac warned of a tungsten supply shock rippling through the company’s supply chain and continuing to drive up industrial tooling costs.

McIsaac told Steve Volkmann, an industrial analyst at Jefferies, that inflation affecting tungsten carbide inputs is “in the neighborhood of 500%” and said suppliers were still passing higher costs through the manufacturing chain.

Cutting tools represent about 15% of MSC’s revenue, making tungsten a major source of pricing pressure for one of the largest industrial distributors of tools and supplies across North America used by factories and machine shops. Notably, Grainger and Fastenal are larger by revenue.

“Tungsten has been the biggest driver,” McIsaac said. “It’s not our whole business, but it’s a chunk of business, and it’s not behind us.“

Volkmann asked McIsaac: “Okay. And you said that it wasn’t over yet, but I believe tungsten prices have flattened out a bit.”

McIsaac responded: “They have stabilized, but the ripples through the supply chain aren’t over yet. So some suppliers, for example, depending on where they source their tungsten powder and how much they had on hand, the cadence of their increases is all different. So every supplier is behaving a little differently, but there’s still a way to come. I think we said in the third quarter, we expected late … our late fourth quarter, early first quarter, there would be another price increase.”

MSC sells tungsten-carbide cutting tools used to machine metal parts across North America. McIsaac’s comments offer one of the first examples we’ve found of how the severe tungsten shortage, driven by China’s export restrictions and continued Western demand, is pressuring industrial customers. Prices have climbed above $3,000, according to a recent Cantor Fitzgerald note.

China’s dominance of tungsten production has certainly exposed a major vulnerability in Western manufacturing and defense supply chains.

The latest Katusa Research note puts China’s share of global tungsten mine production at roughly 79% last year, or 67,000 tons out of 85,000 tons worldwide. The US has had no commercial mine production since 2015.

Beijing’s February 2025 export-licensing requirements intensified that dependence. Katusa cites a nearly 70% decline in Chinese exports of ammonium paratungstate, or APT, through the first 11 months of 2025.

Rotterdam APT prices jumped from around $390 per metric ton unit at the beginning of 2025 to roughly $3,400 this spring, according to Katusa Research. 

Citing Financial Times reporting, Katusa said that Chinese traders have panic-hoarded carbide inserts, drill bits and worn tooling, sometimes bidding as much as five times normal market prices.

Christian Keller, Barclays’ global head of economics research, co-authored a note on Tuesday warning that “China’s quasi-monopolistic position provides it with significant geopolitical leverage.“

The end result has been a mad dash across the West, from governments to importers, to secure tungsten supplies outside China ahead of any further tightening of Chinese supply. However, there is only one problem… 

Companies that can bring supply online sooner could capture a crucial early market advantage, including Almonty as it ramps up tungsten production in South Korea.

Jefferies initiates critical mineral companies Almonty, Materion, USA Rare Earth and Neo Performance with Buy; the firms are expected to benefit from increased demand for supply outside of China.

Almonty (buy, PT $26.25)

Sees Almonty offering public exposure to Western tungsten…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2026

Deliverable supplies of critical materials from outside China can command a higher premium, reinforcing our broader decoupling theme. Our view is to identify companies positioned to bring new supplies to market as governments and manufacturers rebuild supply chains on an ex-China basis. 

Elon Musk’s America PAC has opened its 2026 midterm ad campaign with a barrage of ads centered on trans issues. Musk has reportedly authorized the PAC to spend more than $100 million this cycle and is targeting four Democratic Senate candidates in competitive races: Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Josh Turek in Iowa, James Talarico in Texas and Mary Peltola in Alaska. They are running online and across streaming platforms, marking the first coordinated trans-focused push of the cycle from a major Republican-aligned outside group.

According to AdImpact, the firm that tracks political ad spending, trans issues have been a minor theme in GOP Senate advertising so far this cycle. America PAC’s opening salvo changes that calculus, and it arrives as Republicans navigate a difficult midterm environment, with voters across party lines angry over the Iran war and the high gas prices that have followed it. Economic concerns dominate what voters tell pollsters they want candidates to address. Trans and LGBT issues barely register on those same surveys.

New — Elon Musk’s super PAC America PAC is going up with its first connected TV ad of the cycle. It’s against Sherrod Brown in #OHSen.

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 8, 2026

Elon Musk’s America PAC is running this ad on CTV in #TXSen right now, per @AdImpact_Pol:

— Brad Johnson (@bradj_TX) September 8, 2026

This paid digital ad from America PAC started running in Alaska over the weekend. “Would you want your daughter sharing a bathroom with a biological man? Mary Peltola cosponsored legislation that would require it.” #AKSen

— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) September 8, 2026

Here’s a paid digital ad America PAC is now running in Iowa going after Josh Turek The ad uses the emergency sound phones use when amber alerts are pushed out. #IASen

— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) September 8, 2026

So, why try this now? The answer traces back to the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, when a similar ad devastated Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Trump’s closing spots successfully cast Kamala Harris as out of touch because of her support for taxpayer-funded gender transitions for prison inmates and illegal immigrants, culminating in the line “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) September 23, 2024

Democrats have not disputed the ad’s effectiveness, even in hindsight. Quentin Fulks, Harris’s principal deputy campaign manager, said after the election that even though trans issues sat “at the bottom for voters,” trailing the economy, immigration, crime and inflation in what people actually cared about, the “Kamala is for they/them” line effectively branded Harris as “out of touch.”

According to a report from Semafor after the election, Democratic Party allies had expected it to “flop or backfire,” but instead, “it inspired more than $215 million of follow-up ads, by multiple campaigns, dividing Democrats and fulfilling the Trump campaign’s goal of branding Harris as an out-of-touch progressive.”

That explains why America PAC is reaching for the same playbook now, and public opinion data suggests this still can be an effective strategy.

Gallup found in 2025 that 66 percent of Americans want a person’s birth sex listed on documents such as passports and driver’s licenses, versus 31 percent who favor listing current gender identity. Sixty-nine percent told Gallup they favor requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams matching their biological sex. Pew Research Center found nearly identical numbers on athletics, 66 percent in favor and just 15 percent opposed, with support up 8 points since 2022. A separate Pew survey published Aug. 11, 2026, found 73 percent of respondents uncomfortable, to varying degrees, with transgender athletes competing on teams that do not match their biological sex. On gender transitions for minors, Pew found 56 percent favor making it illegal for health-care professionals to provide gender-transition treatment to people under 18, up 10 points since 2022.

Whether pivoting midterm messaging to the culture war pays off depends on a variable the 2024 campaign did not have to contend with: an electorate frustrated with Republicans over the Iran war and the prices that have followed it. Trans messaging worked in 2024 as an addition to an economic argument that heavily favored Trump. America PAC is banking on it working again in this cycle as a substitute for one.

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

“You better get ready for … war.”

Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans.

Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.

In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across the country as Democratic establishment figures from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to Gov. Gavin Newsom pander to the movement.

Speakers in Chicago used the conference to push supporters to the next stage in the movement, including some openly calling for violence and the end to capitalism.

University of California Santa Barbara History Professor Butch Ware said Democrats “must be destroyed” and urged attendees to be ready for “war in the streets.” Notably, in postings on X, Ware has said that candidates such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed are too restrained and are being pushed by the establishment “to contain radicalism.”

The professor “of Africa and Islam” whose faculty page is appropriately found under “bware” is the latest radical to dismiss the “Big Tent Party” rhetoric of establishment figures like Schumer. He declared, “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.” There is little subtlety in the message, Ware has explained: “You cannot call yourself a revolutionary and not be talking about training with weapons.”

It is another example of the delusion that establishment Democrats have that they will be able to use these radicals to destroy their political enemies but not themselves.

After one election victory, socialists chanted “You’re Next!” when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s image came on big-screen televisions.

Hasan Piker has called for a purging of moderates from the Democratic Party.

Just last week, Darializa Avila Chevalier declared, “A big tent doesn’t pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does.”

In a video posted to X, Professor Ware called for violence, warning followers that “some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f*cking gunfight.” He menacingly added, “Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war if you stay ready, you ain’t got to get ready.”

This is just the latest example of the type of hate-spewing radical that university departments want to teach in higher education. While purging virtually all Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians from departments, faculty candidates cannot be too radical enough to secure positions on colleges and universities. UCSB pays Professor Ware over $211k to spread this type of lunacy.

Notably, this is the same university that saw a professor lead her students in physically assaulting pro-life advocates on campus years ago. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and later honored by the University of Oregon for her inspiring leadership.

In other events around the country such as “Socialism 2026 Conference,” City University of New York Professor Ruth Gilmore said in a video, “It’s capitalism we’re after,…There isn’t a capitalism that is somehow not racial. There isn’t a capitalism that does not produce and reproduce all kinds of sexual and gender boundaries.”

At my alma mater, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, the half-sister of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has denounced the university and explained that she is only teaching there to bring down the system.

One year after the massacre, Professor Abdelhadi offered an “October 7th blessing” over an attack that murdered, raped, and tortured innocent men, women, and children. She was previously arrested for spitting on officers.

She added “I hope you know that we have a lot of work ahead of us and that we need each other to do that work. We have an imperative to not just imagine a better future, but to build one together. I’ll see you on the streets.”

What is so striking is that these radicals are not hiding their agenda or their hostility toward the Democratic Establishment. William Lawrence, who is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, previously called for the end of borders, the nation-state, capitalism, and told a leading moderate Democrat to “hurry up and die.”

In the meantime, some Democrats are admitting that, after using the socialists to retake power, they will marginalize them in actual governing decisions. Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) just explained that they will have to block the “crazy” DSA stuff from actually getting to the floor for a vote.

In Rage and the Republic, I discuss how these Democratic leaders are following the same self-destructive delusions of other establishment figures in history who thought that they could use mobs against their opponents while hoping that they could survive.

Figures like Newsom have even campaigned on denouncing capitalism as “not working” as candidates like Texas Democratic Senatorial candidate James Talarico have called to “dismantle” capitalism. Figures like former Vice President Kamala Harris have dismissed loyalty to our core institutions such as the Supreme Court as mere “nostalgia.”

It will not work. These figures are nothing more than “clickety-clack revolutionaries” who convince no one inside or outside the movement. By putting their elections above every other consideration, Democratic leaders are willing to endanger core institutions, values, and even capitalism itself to reacquire power. In so doing, they are embracing the very “mobocracy” that the Founders warned us against in laying the foundations of our constitutional system.

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

Results from a recent global assessment indicate that reading scores for American high school students have dropped over the past three years, while math and science performance still falls behind their peers in several other developed countries.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading proficiency as metrics for college and career readiness, conducted its last tests in 2025.

The initial findings, released on Sept. 8, indicate that children from Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom continue to outperform American public-school children in those three subjects.

PISA has not yet shared comprehensive comparative rankings of the 91 nations that participated in the latest assessments.

China did not participate as a nation; the four Chinese provinces that did also outperformed American 15-year-olds.

About 760,000 children across the world participated, according to the PISA website.

All told, U.S. students still performed above the average of all participating nations in reading and science, and slightly below average for math.

Compared to the 2022 PISA, average U.S. results in science remained the same.

For math and reading, however, the average scores remained below pre-COVID levels and “among the lowest ever observed in PISA in the United States” dating back 26 years.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the nation’s outdated public education needs a major overhaul that begins with universal school choice for all American families.

“The United States of America is a nation built to lead the world, yet our one-size-fits-all federal education bureaucracy has shortchanged our children and stifled our future,” she said in an email to The Epoch Times.

“Today’s international education scores confirm a decade of stagnation and a devastating gap: we successfully propel our highest achievers, but the lowest-performing students are falling further behind – and have suffered a loss of learning in reading equivalent to nearly a year and a half of instruction compared to 2015.

“This moment is a stress test for our nation’s future. To pass it, we must enact a hard reset that stops protecting a failed status quo and instead builds a system that empowers state leaders and embraces innovative learning options through school choice.”

The PISA proficiency levels range from one to six, with level two considered minimum proficiency.

Seventy-four percent of the U.S. students were at level two or above in reading, but only 13 percent were at level five or six.

The results for science were similar.

For math, 65 percent of U.S. students were at level two or above, but only 8 percent were at levels five or six, compared to 54 percent of the four Chinese provinces and Singapore’s 37 percent.

The 2025 program introduced a digital computational problem-solving assessment.

U.S. children scored above the overall average in that category, still falling behind several Asian and English-speaking nations, but outperforming Germany, France, Mexico, and Brazil, according to the PISA report.

Globally, PISA determined that one in five students is considered low-performing in science, math, and reading, up from 16 percent in 2022.

Average reading scores fell by 28 points since 2015, while math fell by 22 points, according to the report.

“PISA 2025 shows that reversing declines in student performance is urgent,” said Mathias Cormann, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which oversees the PISA program.

“The most successful education systems focus on fewer areas in greater depth, invest in teachers, engage parents, and provide targeted support for the students and schools that need it the most,” Cormann said in the report.

“Technology and AI can strengthen learning and help prepare young people for the future, but only when used purposefully and not as a substitute for attention, effort, and understanding.”

PISA also surveyed participants about their use of artificial intelligence to draft text in writing assignments and determined that those who did not use it outperformed those who said they did.

The full-scale war in Ukraine lately blew past four years and six months since February 24, 2022, and has also long been a proxy conflict, pitting the US and NATO against Russia. Beyond this, there’s been what can be described as a raging ‘dirty war’ stretching back over 12 years since at least February 2014.

Lest anyone think this is an exaggeration, or that it’s not actually a deep proxy and covert shadow war as well, it is worth revisiting our prior widely viewed report from 2024: CIA Built “12 Secret Spy Bases” In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms.

Embroiled in a seemingly unwinnable Iran war and increasing quagmire, President Trump badly needs a ‘win’ in terms of winding down major foreign conflicts, and so this month there’s been a return to intensified diplomacy on the Ukraine war, for which envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were dispatched to both Moscow and then Kiev.

It seems that prior to this week, as White House and global attention was purely consumed with the Iran war, and Hormuz-related global energy crisis, the US administration left deep state bureaucrats in charge of running the day-to-day on American involvement in Ukraine. It’s no wonder why long-range drone operations deep into Russian territory have grown more and more brazen, clearly having Western intelligence targeting assistance.

Now, enter US Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, who has informed Washington’s European allies to prepare for a “protracted” war in Ukraine and to keep the pipeline of US-made weapons to Ukrainian forces going. This all certainly is a contradiction on its surface, but is part of the ongoing US policy folly of ‘escalate to de-escalate’.

“As President Trump has stated, our goal is a lasting peace. We are supporting every effort in that direction. From the standpoint of the Department of War, however, we cannot predict when this tragic war will end,” Colby said Tuesday in virtual address to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

The Defense Contact Group was formed under a Biden – and not a Trump – initiative, ironically enough. It has coordinated and overseen the flow of weapons among allies to Ukraine since its formation in 2022.

“As you all well know, Russia is reconstituting its forces and defense-industrial capacity. We must be prepared for a protracted conflict and for Ukraine’s requirements to persist in the months and years ahead. And we must also be prepared for other plausible contingencies as well,” he added.

…So now Washington is settling in for yet more grinding and bloody “years ahead” in supporting Ukrainians on the battlefield.

Colby further said the situation “makes it all the more important for Europe to sustain support for Ukraine while also accelerating its own rearmament and reindustrialization.”

“First, Europe must continue — and where necessary increase — support for Ukraine’s immediate battlefield requirements through PURL. The continued flow of munitions and critical capabilities is effective; it remains essential to enabling Ukrainian forces to hold the front line and deny further Russian advances,” Colby laid out.

“Second, Europe must plan now for sustained procurement that supports both Ukraine’s long-term force reconstitution and Europe’s own defense requirements,” he added.

Colby had before joining the Trump administration been an open skeptic of the US pouring so many billions into Ukraine, arguing that the Taiwan-China issue should be a much bigger and long-term priority.

For example, back in 2023 he was giving foreign policy talks called “The Case for Prioritizing Taiwan Over Ukraine” in which he argued that “if America continues to divide and distribute valuable resources to Ukraine and the Middle East, all it will do is detract from adequately addressing the largest threat to America and the world.” The ‘threat’ in his estimation is China potential future conquest and hold over Taiwan.

Summary

• Trump: “This war will end immediately after our election.“
• Iran escalates with “20 for 2″ response doctrine: 20 targets for every 2-3 targets struck.
• Iran sets heightened conditions for war’s end: Tehran calls for an end to attacks, Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, an end to the Yemen blockade, and release of $24B in frozen assets.
• Shipping attacked: A tanker carrying 2M barrels of Iraqi oil was hit by a drone in Iraqi waters.
• Damage assessment in wake of overnight assaults: CENTCOM denies US warships were hit while saying 10 Iranian tankers have been destroyed. Regional reports say Jordan bases hit hard.
• Oil tops $100: Brent crude surpassed $100/barrel as markets see prolonged Gulf disruptions and little hope for a diplomatic off-ramp.

* * *

Trump on ‘War’ Ending ‘Immediately’

New Trump remarks on Iran… Note that he called it a “war” (no less than twice in the below clip) – contradicting the White House’s own stance (Sept. 4: Trump said don’t call it a war, instead: “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us.”:

Q: Do you expect negotiations with Iran to restart at some point?

Trump: Uhhhhhh… we’re not looking for it to be honest with you. This war will end immediately after our election.

And meanwhile, back to the below laughably implausible headlines…

Pakistani Ambassador says they believe that a better understanding will soon be achieved between the US and Iran, reports ISNA

But don’t Republicans actually need the war to end before Congressional elections?

Trump on Iran: I think the war will end immediately after the election. They’re desperate to affect the election. pic.twitter.com/31VEeI0tjO

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 9, 2026

More on high prices at the pump and the question of nuclear weapons… however, the war itself has only made this a greater uncertainty, as Washington has not achieved any prime objectives – and the status of the Iranian nuclear program remains unknown…

Reporter: You said that oil and gas prices were going to come down. Oil is now back above 100 dollars. How do you explain this to Americans?

Trump: It’s very easy to explain to Americans: all you have to do is say, will you let Iran have a nuclear weapon? The answer is no. pic.twitter.com/HFldzUtrbo

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 9, 2026

IRGC: ’20 for 2′, Vows Disproportionate Responses

Amid the dramatic escalation which kicked off since Tuesday night, Iran is seeking to impose new conditions on the United States. While continuing to vow a ‘disproportionate response’ to any attack moving forward, Tehran is now identifying specifics.

IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi states Wednesday, “The imposed war, which involved the world’s most powerful nations, has ended in certain periods, but the nature of the conflict continues. For the first time, this conflict has directly inflicted strategic damage on the United States, impacting the country’s security and economic equations.”

He issued the following list for the US to reach an end to the conflict. “If the enemy desires an end to this situation, they must”…

• completely cease the war
• refrain from further threats
• withdraw the Israeli army from Lebanon
• end the siege of Yemen
• release the $24 billion of Iranian assets that have been frozen
• cease any interference in the country’s nuclear and missile programs

This definitely marks a raised bar, to be sure, after this summer the MoU complete ceased, and negotiations vanished. There’s no way Washington complies with even half of the conditions, at this rate.

Importantly, Mohebbi also said: “We have reached a point where if the enemy strikes at 2 or 3 of our targets, we will respond forcefully by striking at 20.”

Tanker Attacked in Iraq Territory Waters, After CENTCOM Insists US Warships Not Hit

After a huge Iranian ballistic missile launch on US bases in Jordan overnight, CENTCOM has yet to respond in any major way. The Pentagon has also said all US troops “are accounted for” – but this doesn’t necessarily mean there were no casualties. However, CENTCOM is at the moment denying that the Iranians hit US warships, as the IRGC has been claiming since Tuesday, in an oddly specific statement: The IRGC claims to have targeted and inflicted “significant damage” on a pair of US warships in the Gulf of Oman: DDG-119 USS Delbert D. Black and DDG-53 USS John Paul Jones, both Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

CENTCOM responded: “No U.S. Navy warship has been struck; all IRGC attempted attacks failed.” It added on X, “Meanwhile, U.S. forces have successfully destroyed 10 Iranian tankers in just the last week. These vessels were part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC, and Iran cannot defend them.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s military is continuing to go on the offensive, seeking to maintain its leverage over the contested Strait of Hormuz.

“A Panama-flagged tanker carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi fuel oil was struck today by a drone in Iraqi territorial waters, two port officials say,” Reuters reports. “Iraqi rescue boats extinguished a fire aboard the tanker, New Andros, and there are no reports of casualties, port officials tell Reuters.”

💢 BREAKING: A Panama-flagged tanker carrying about 2 million barrels of Iraqi fuel oil was struck by a drone in Iraqi territorial waters, according to two Iraqi port officials cited by Reuters journalist Ahmed Rasheed. The vessel and extent of the damage were not immediately… https://t.co/3ciZBBGgg7

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 9, 2026

Brent Crude Futures Top $100

Brent crude futures topped $100 a barrel for the first time since July as US strikes on Iranian oil tankers and renewed attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and a US base in Jordan suggested to UBS energy specialist Dominic Ellis that a “US-Iran off-ramp remains elusive.”

Ellis adds more color on the overnight Gulf developments and response in the crude oil market:

Brent topped $100/bbl as the US and Iran continue to trade strikes around the Strait of Hormuz. 

The US says it has destroyed multiple Iranian vessels (including 5 on Sept. 8) in response to Iranian attacks, and says it will respond to each subsequent Iranian hit (actual or attempted) by destroying another Iranian tanker.

CENTCOM forces destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers, Sept. 8, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days. The U.S. warship successfully evaded the attempted Iranian attacks and… pic.twitter.com/Gi8a2tloN1

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 8, 2026

Iran hit a US base in Jordan, and has stepped up attacks on the US’ regional allies, with Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure under particular pressure. 

Some investors have shown signs of wanting to fade the rally in oil and related equities, but the change in tone from all concerned makes it seem less likely (if not impossible) that we will see a return to the de-escalation narrative that has historically triggered a drop in oil and profit-taking in equities. 

With the tailwind into Q3 numbers for the integrated energy sector, I think most will be inclined to leave long positions open until there is evidence of real progress back toward a diplomatic off ramp.

Iran has reportedly rejected the latest US offer of talks, and the conflict seems likely to support oil at current levels and potentially push prices higher in the near term.

The global crude benchmark broke above $100 a barrel in European trading but initially failed to hold the level. Just over an hour later, at around 4:36 a.m. ET, Brent reclaimed triple digits and extended gains to $100.83 by around 6:00 a.m. ET.

Price Forecasts

Goldman’s head commodity strategist, Daan Struyven, wrote in a note on Monday that, given the renewed turmoil in the Gulf region, he raised his Brent/WTI price forecasts by $5 to $85/$80 for December 2026 and to $80/$75 for 2027, on the assumption that Mideast shipping disruptions continue into 2027.

Struyven outlined significant net upside price risks with two Gulf output and Brent scenarios:

• Price upside scenario: Brent might exceed $120/bbl if 2027 average Gulf output remains 4mb/d below pre-war levels, versus 0.5mb/d below in the base case. The bank views more intense shipping attacks in Hormuz and the Red Sea as the most likely driver of this lower-output, higher-price scenario.
• Price downside scenario: Brent might decline into the $60s in 2027 if 2027 average Gulf output rises 1mb/d above pre-war levels. Goldman still recommends hedging geopolitical risk through deferred Mar27-Dec27 European diesel timespreads, which would rise over 100% if persistent Russia or Mideast refinery outages keep the nearby 9-month spread near current levels.

Separately, Darrell Fletcher, managing director for commodities at Bannockburn Capital Markets, warned that the “path of least resistance is a strong and steady grind higher as the war enters seven months,” adding, “The fundamental picture for products remains bullish with global inventories and reserves deteriorating. In the typical pattern, the US and Iran continue their counterattacks and warnings.”