Netflix To Buy Warner Bros In $72 Billion Deal; Hollywood Goes Into Panic Mode
Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and TV studios, HBO, and HBO Max, in a cash-and-stock transaction valuing WBD at an enterprise value of $82.7 billion (equity value $72 billion), or $27.75 per share. The deal is expected to close in 3Q26, following WBD’s planned spinoff of its Global Networks division into a separate public company (“Discovery Global”). The move comes just months after Paramount-Skydance made its own bid for WBD.
The Netflix-WBD deal unites the streaming platform with a century-deep library and franchises such as DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, and The Big Bang Theory.
Netflix wrote in a statement that the deal will boost its content offering, expand production capacity, and improve long-term growth:
By offering members a wider selection of quality series and films, Netflix expects to attract and retain more members, drive more engagement, and generate incremental revenue and operating income. The company also expects to realize at least $2–3 billion of cost savings per year by the third year and expects the transaction to be accretive to GAAP earnings per share by year two.
Here’s a snapshot of the deal terms:
Each WBD share converts into $23.25 in cash plus $4.50 in Netflix stock
Boards of both companies unanimously approved the transaction
Closing in 12–18 months, pending regulatory review and WBD shareholder approval
Bankers for NFLX: Moelis, Skadden; additional financing by Wells Fargo, BNP, HSBC
Bankers for WBD: Allen & Co., J.P. Morgan, Evercore; legal counsel Wachtell and Debevoise
Netflix outbid other offers, including those from Paramount-Skydance and Comcast, earlier this year.
Bloomberg noted that Hollywood is far from thrilled about this new Netflix–WBD marriage:
And the winner is… Netflix.
Warner Bros. Discovery began exclusive negotiations to sell its film and TV studios and HBO Max to Netflix, people familiar said — a sign that the streaming giant pulled ahead of Paramount-Skydance and Comcast. A deal would reshape the entertainment landscape and mark a major strategic shift for Netflix, already Hollywood’s most valuable company. Paramount called the sale process “tainted,” while two-time Oscar-winner Jane Fonda used a stronger word for its likely impact on the industry: “catastrophic.”
Founded as a DVD-by-mail service, Netflix first crushed video chain Blockbuster – and is now doing the same to Hollywood by largely refusing to release films in theaters. The deal would position Netflix as a true studio heavyweight. Of course, all of this still hinges on regulatory approval, with California Republican Darrell Issa already objecting to any potential Netflix takeover of Warner Bros.
“Brian Cole Jr., a 30-year-old white man from the D.C. suburbs, is charged with transporting an explosive device in interstate commerce and with malicious destruction by means of explosion. CNN observed local and federal law enforcement outside his home in Woodbridge, Virginia, this morning,” Tapper told viewers – a statement that now appears grossly misleading and suggests the unhinged anchor is upholding a political and racial bias simply because the facts don’t fit the fake-news narrative mainstream media has pushed for years.
Just so instinctually programmed to lie. Literally an NPC. Programmed to lie.
Tapper’s segment refers to pipe bombs found near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters on January 5, 2021, the night before the Capitol riot.
In a separate report, the New York Post noted: “Cole’s father is also Black and once enlisted the services of Ben Crump, an attorney best known for his racial discrimination cases.”
According to an FBI affidavit filed on Wednesday, Cole works in the office of a bail bondsman in northern Virginia. He resides in a single-family home in Woodbridge with his mother and other relatives.
The current scene outside the J6 pipe bomber suspect Brian Cole’s Virginia homepic.twitter.com/3CptZpuxsD
Public records indicate that Brian Cole is connected to a wide network of bail-bonds companies.
When corporate media’s manufactured narratives collapse like a house of cards, their immediate reaction is always the same: lie. But this time, the fake news isn’t sticking – ordinary people see through the bullshit, and trust in mainstream media continues plunging to record lows.
We are now well past dawn in the age of artificial intelligence: According to a recent survey by Pew Research Center 62% of respondents say they interact with AI a least several times a week. Nearly every company in the U.S. is now urgently evaluating the ways in which AI can be deployed to lower costs, improve products and services, and ultimately to increase profits. Some, such as Elon Musk, are predicting AI and robots will generate such abundance that in 10 to 20 years, work will become optional and money irrelevant.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are being poured into building new data centers to house the computers to meet expected demand as AI becomes ubiquitous, not just in the U.S., but around the world. Some see a 25% growth in U.S. electricity demand over the next five years as these data centers come online, and predict consumer electricity prices will go at least 40% higher, too.
While there’s been much handwringing over the risk that AI will take over the world, as in “The Terminator” series of movies (Google’s AI estimates there have been hundreds of thousands or more articles on this topic), perhaps we should focus more attention on the opposite risk.
What if AI, the computers, indeed all electricity and electric circuits are suddenly turned off? What happens if the continuous flow of electrons through circuits upon which our civilization increasingly depends just – ends?
How could this happen? Wires and circuits are designed to carry a certain voltage and amperage: Volts measure pressure on electrons and amps measure the volume or flow of electrons. When volts or amps are too high for the wire or circuit, it overheats, melts, or catches fire. So, for example, when lightning strikes an electronic device, the wires in the device act as antennae and pick up the electric charge from the lightning, which causes the voltage on the wire to surge millions of times higher than typical voltage.
Lightning rods, invented by Ben Franklin in 1753, and Faraday cages, invented by Michael Faraday in 1836, have long been used to protect structures and electronic devices from the regularly and naturally occurring risk of lightning and ambient electromagnetic waves from the sun or other sources, by redirecting the electricity caused by these phenomenon.
So, how might the entire flow of electricity upon which our civilization depends ever just be turned off? There are two types of relatively low-probability events that could cause a massive electromagnetic pulse directing millions of volts onto wires, thereby destroying unprotected electronic devices in the U.S.
The first is a massive solar storm called a “Carrington event” after the astronomer who observed the largest geomagnetic storm ever recorded in 1859 – a storm hundreds of times larger than “typical” solar storms – that destroyed telegraph systems in Britain and the U.S.
The second is the creation of electromagnetic pulses by detonating a nuclear device high in the atmosphere above the U.S., called a HEMP, or high-altitude electromagnetic pulse.
While no one knows for sure the odds of either event occurring in the next 10 years, some have put the odds for each at 10-12%. In any event, the risk is non-trivial and the consequences to life in the United States of either event continue to grow every day as our reliance on AI, computers, robots, and the electricity that makes it all possible, grows.
Our government formed a commission to assess this risk in 2001, which reported in 2008 that 90% of Americans would likely be dead 6 months after a HEMP attack on the U.S. – because our modern civilization operates as a system of systems, but all of the systems require electricity and electric components to function.
Americans are even more dependent on electricity today than we were 17 years ago, and our dependence on electricity will grow even deeper as we integrate AI into our lives.
So, as we depend more on electricity and AI, the policy question is: Are we actually implementing strategies for mitigating EMP risk, as the expected cost of this known risk is massive and continues to grow?
Note in this regard that triggering a HEMP is actually the easiest type of nuclear attack a rogue state or actor could launch against us – because a missile only has to go up and explode over the U.S. and does not have to be targeted back to a particular location on earth. It’s also relatively “clean” in that radiation fallout to the ground is lower the higher the bomb is detonated. Some scholars believe that HEMP weapons are central to China’s nuclear and cyber strategy against the U.S.
It’s uncomfortable to consider this risk, and it’s human nature to sometimes ignore small risks with major consequences, but a rational policymaker should increase investments to mitigate this risk as the expected cost of the risk increases.
Are we doing this? How many of the new, massive data centers are incorporating protections against EMP in their design and construction? As utilities build new power plants and upgrade the aging, unprotected grid, are they planning and designing to mitigate EMP risk? And what of our transportation equipment and infrastructure?
Ubiquitous, reliable, low-cost electric energy has been our greatest strength, but it’s also become our Achilles heel in the nuclear age. We know this to be true.
Last March, President Trump ordered the creation of a National Resilience Strategy by July and a National Critical Infrastructure Policy by October to address risks such as these, but neither the follow-up strategy nor the policy contemplated by the order appears to have been published. While empowering states and localities to deal with these risks may be efficient, it’s unclear whether states are seriously taking on this task either.
In Aesop’s fable of the wild boar and the fox, the fox questions why the boar sharpens its tusks, and the boar replies it would be foolish not to get ready when you can for what comes. I fear we are not giving this well-known, truly-existential, but oft-ignored risk the attention, planning, oversight, and investment it deserves as electric infrastructure spending soars in pursuit of AI.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Over the years, we’ve explored some intriguing theories about who (or what) created Bitcoin, ranging from the top government spy agency in America to a time-traveling AI and even the lizard people.
However, some are adamant that the creator of Bitcoin is much more human and has been under our noses this whole time, sporting a guru beard, sandals, and wearing a T-shirt with Satoshi written on it in large letters: the billionaire Twitter and Block founder Jack Dorsey.
“I believe that Jack has been outwardly signaling that he’s Satoshi for more than a decade,” deBanked chief editor Sean Murray tells Magazine.
“I don’t think his actions over the past decade are of someone saying ‘don’t find me’ but rather someone building on to the lore of how it’s him, why it’s him, that each blatant but indirect admission is part of the art, the brand of poetic terrorism that he subscribes to.”
So what makes some intelligent and respected people — including VanEck’s head of digital assets research Matthew Sigel — so confident that Dorsey is the creator of Bitcoin?
1. Jack Dorsey was one of the original cypherpunks in the 1990s and wanted to end dependence on the dollar
Like any good murder mystery, a killer requires a motive. Dorsey has this in spades.
Dorsey was one of the original 1,300 members of the famed Cypherpunk mailing list — a foundational online community founded in 1992 that prized privacy and digital freedom and laid the groundwork for Bitcoin as money outside the control of the state. He joined the list in 1996 while a student at the University of Missouri–Rolla at around 20 years of age.
Jack Dorsey wearing an RSA shirt designed by Dr Adam Back in protest of the US government’s ban on the export of RSA encryption. (Sean Murray)
Dorsey even created a website that promoted the cyberpunks’ mission using his university domain. It’s safe to say he was a massive fan of the movement and familiar with Adam Back and Hal Finney and DigiCash long before they became well known.
Fun fact: In 2003, Dorsey reportedly blogged, “I also wish to end my dependence on the American Dollar ($) and in that vein am setting up a bartering network.”
2. Dorsey’s ventures are about Bitcoin and decentralization
Dorsey’s alignment with the cypherpunk movement persists to today. In 2009, he founded the now crypto-forward payments company, Square (now known as Block), which has just rolled out Bitcoin payments to over 4 million merchants.
In 2019, after his second return as CEO of Twitter, he created Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter alternative that embodies some of Bitcoin’s decentralized ideals. It didn’t live up to his ideals of decentralization so he focused his efforts on supporting Nostr instead.
Then, earlier this year, Dorsey launched Bitchat. This decentralized communications platform enables people to contact each other without the need for the internet, which has proven particularly valuable amid government protests and natural disasters, much like Bitcoin has in the past.
His charity, Start Small, donated a whopping $21 million to OpenSats, a nonprofit that supports the developers of Bitcoin Core and other projects related to Bitcoin.
No matter which way you slice it, Dorsey is a cypherpunk OG who has the motivation, and as we will see, the know-how to create and support the growth of Bitcoin.
3. See? Plus, plus: Jack Dorsey had the know-how to code Bitcoin
So, if Dorsey wanted to create Bitcoin, did he have the skills to code it?
The answer to this is also a resounding probably. Dorsey was obsessed with computers since his father brought home an IBM PC Junior, when he was around 8 years old. They later got a Macintosh, and by the age of 11, he had taught himself to code.
“I was enthralled by both of them, mainly the ability to just change what they do. So I learned how to program in BASIC, and I played with HyperCard, and little by little I got better and better at newer programming languages like C,” said Dorsey in a Harvard Business School podcast in 2014.
By around the age of 15, Dorsey was already writing dispatch software for taxi cabs, couriers and emergency services that would later be used for decades.
When deBanked’s Murray Dorsey uncovered Dorsey’s early cypherpunk website from the late 90s, it showed Dorsey already knew coding languages including C, Python, Java, Perl, PHP, OCaml, JoCaml, Lisp, ObjC and more. And yes, it did show he knew how to code in C++, the language the original Bitcoin client was written in.
So, it’s not a giant leap to think that Dorsey would have had an even firmer grasp of programming by the time he was 32, which was how old he was when the Bitcoin white paper was released.
4. Dorsey was focused on other things outside his day job in the lead up to the BTC white paper
The theory becomes even more intriguing once you realize that Dorsey, who founded and ran Twitter from 2006 to 2008, happened to have some downtime just weeks before the Bitcoin white paper was released — downtime potentially related to spending too much time away from his day job.
Writing Bitcoin would not have been an easy task. Nakamoto once told early Bitcoin user and developer Mike Hearn in 2010 that it took him two years of development before releasing the Bitcoin paper and code, “and I could only spend so much time on each of the many issues.”
This would have been precisely the time frame that Dorsey was working as the CEO of Twitter before he was fired in October 2008.
Why did he get fired? Many reports pin it to Dorsey’s failure to address the platform’s frequent service disruptions and perceived leadership issues.
However, some suggest that part of the reason is that he would leave the office early to “de-stress and attend night courses in fashion and drawing.”
Satoshi Nakamoto would go on to share the Bitcoin white paper for the first time on Oct. 31, 2008, with the message:
I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”
Bitcoin officially launched a few months later on Jan. 3, 2009.
5. The coincidences
Then, there are the many “coincidences” aligning specific dates in Bitcoin with aspects of Dorsey’s personal life. Believers are convinced these Easter eggs were made to subtly point toward Dorsey.
Here are some key ones, with credit to Murray and Sigel; however, there are countless more that we didn’t cover, which can be found here.
Oct. 31, 2008: Bitcoin white paper comes out / Oct. 31, 2008: Neal Stephenson, author of “Snow Crash,” birthday. Dorsey is a fan of the book.
Jan. 9, 2009: Dorsey attends an award show in San Francisco / Jan. 10, 2009: Nakamoto accidentally logged into IRC from an IP address in California
Jan. 11, 2009: Nakamoto’s first recorded transaction / Jan. 11, 2009: Dorsey’s mother’s birthday
Nov. 19, 2009: Nakamoto registers for the Bitcoin forum as “satoshi” / Nov. 19, 2009: Dorsey’s birthday / Nov. 19, 2015: Square (now Block)’s IPO / Block Investors Day, Nov.19 2025.
May 3, 2010: Nakamoto’s last mined Bitcoin / May 3, 2010: Dorsey’s father’s birthday.
Then there’s the coincidence that his good friend Alyssa Milano wrote a graphic novel called Hacktivist about a billionaire character based on Dorsey who runs a social media company but is a secret hacker who develops a decentralized encrypted peer to peer network. Hmmm.
6. Jack Dorsey bankrolled the case against Faketoshi
Another circumstantial piece of evidence is what Jack Dorsey did when he saw a man parading around the world claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
For years, Australian computer scientist Dr. Craig Wright claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. He ultimately lost the battle last year and was forced to admit he was not.
But before that, his lawyer, Anthony Grabiner, had argued that it was “striking” that no one else had publicly claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin.
“If Dr Wright were not Satoshi, the real Satoshi would have been expected to come forward to counter the claim,” said Grabiner.
Jack Dorsey answered the call.
In May 2020, 145 ancient Bitcoin addresses signed a message stating that Craig Wright was not Satoshi and a liar and a fraud. The oldest Bitcoin address that signed the message started with 1jak — Jack’s old pseudonym.
Through Block, Dorsey co-founded and bankrolled the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which sued Wright in 2021 to legally declare he is not the creator of Bitcoin.
Dorsey began wearing the Satoshi T-shirt in February 2022, in the midst of the saga.
The case concluded with a High Court ruling in March 2024 in their favor. Dorsey simply and humbly labeled it a “W” after the verdict was announced.
5 good reasons why Jack Dorsey isn’t Satoshi Nakamoto
While none of the evidence above could be considered bulletproof, supporters of the theory say there’s more than enough circumstantial evidence to seriously point toward Dorsey. Not everyone agrees, though.
Knowing how to code and being a member of the Cypherpunk mailing list is probably just the bare minimum to be a Nakamoto candidate. Julian Assange was also on the list, along with Adam Back and Wei Dai, for example.
Critics of the theory argue that there’s no single piece of evidence that concretely links Dorsey to Nakamoto.
Jameson Lopp, the co-founder of crypto security company Casa, is one of these people, calling the theory a “half baked narrative.”
“It’s true that Jack was a cypherpunk and a programmer, but that’s the strongest ‘evidence’ available to support this theory. Everything else is circumstantial if not outright mental gymnastics via numerology,” says Lopp.
1. Dorsey would have had to juggle Bitcoin, Square and Twitter
“I think Jack is by far one of the least plausible theories because there’s so much evidence that he was too busy doing other things (traveling, building, and promoting Twitter) to be deep in the weeds on a project as novel as Bitcoin,” Lopp tells Magazine.
Common sense says that Dorsey wouldn’t have had the time to work to grow Bitcoin, argues Lopp. While Dorsey was indeed fired as Twitter’s CEO in 2008, just before Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper, Dorsey remained chairman of the board.
Then a year later, Dorsey founded Square, a company that allows anyone to accept credit card payments on a mobile device. It would be pretty challenging for Dorsey to have assembled a brand new company while steering the Bitcoin ship.
2014: “We found Satoshi. Turns out he was hiding in plain sight and was listed in the phone book.”
2025: “We found Satoshi. Turns out he was hiding in plain sight and appearing on national television wearing a Satoshi shirt.” pic.twitter.com/Vs7suPUCZI
“It’s quite clear that he was an extremely busy person not only overseeing multiple companies, but traveling around the world meeting important people, doing press interviews, speaking at conferences, promoting philanthropic causes, and more,” argues Lopp.
His activities do not fit the profile of someone who had the time and mental bandwidth to also be building a completely new financial system from scratch while maintaining perfect anonymity.”
But Murray argues that this is precisely why Nakamoto complained about being “really busy” on several occasions between 2009 and 2011, eventually leaving the Bitcoin project, posting on April 23, 2011 that “I’ve moved on to other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.”
2. Satoshi wary of government, Dorsey worked with them
Another piece of evidence that suggests Dorsey is not Nakamoto is that the creator of Bitcoin comes across almost as a cautious recluse and wasn’t a fan of the government or government control.
Lopp argues that, in contrast, Dorsey is a highly public figure.
“The funny thing about Jack is that, unlike most cypherpunks, he was an extremely public individual who posted what he was up to on nearly an hourly basis,” he explains.
Dorsey also reportedly spent 2008 and 2015 engaged with the US State Department as part of several delegations to Iraq, Iran and Russia with other representatives from the tech sector, which would appear to be out of character for Nakamoto.
3. Satoshi Nakamoto had regular PT posting patterns
Lopp also noted that Satoshi’s online activity suggests a consistent sleeping pattern in the Pacific timezone. Cities in this timezone include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Tijuana.
In contrast, Dorsey’s tweets were far more erratic — consistent with someone who is constantly travelling between different time zones. However, it is worth noting that Dorsey was based in San Francisco around the time Bitcoin was created.
Satoshi Nakamoto and Jack Dorsey had different online activity patterns (Jameson Lopp)
4. Dorsey and Nakamoto had conflicting activities
A related point is that Lopp argues that there are specific event conflicts that make it doubtful that Dorsey and Nakamoto are the same person.
For example, in November 2009, Dorsey tweeted he was having a “late lunch” with venture capitalist Fred Wilson, but only five minutes later, Nakamoto committed code to the SourceForge repository.
In another instance, Jack said he was walking to meet the mayor of Paris at City Hall on Dec. 9, 2009, and only 18 minutes later, Satoshi posted several responses to a technical suggestion thread about Bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s post to BitcoinTalk, as Jack Dorsey was set to meet the mayor of Paris (Jameson Lopp)
Another potential conflict arose in July 2010, when Jack tweeted that he was getting ready to go on stage to present at the Square headquarters, and posted “Boom” around 28 minutes later, presumably when he had finished the presentation.
During this time, Satoshi posted to the Bitcoin talk forum.
Of course, if you can design an entirely new monetary system in your spare time, you can probably schedule in a few posts to throw people off the scent.
Lopp acknowledges that it’s not impossible that Dorsey pre-timed certain posts on Bitcointalk or posted with his mobile phone while on the go, but argues that if that was the case, Dorsey would have picked much more public events and settings to set his pre-timed posts as Nakamoto.
5. Coincidental dates are meaningless
Lopp also argues the so-called “numerology” — like Nakamoto signing up for BitcoinTalk on the same day as Dorsey’s birthday is “absolute junk.”
“You can find patterns in anything,” Lopp tells Magazine. “It preys upon our monkey brain’s innate desire to find patterns in random noise and try to make sense of them.”
There’s actually a scientific term for this called “Apophenia” — the psychological phenomenon of perceiving meaningful patterns or connections between unrelated or random things. It’s seen as one of the key reasons why humans can navigate the world in the way we do.
Apophenia could be why people keep accidentally finding Jesus Christ in their grilled cheese toast (YouTube)
Famed physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once made a similar observation.
“Over centuries of evolution, humans’ pattern recognition skills determined natural selection. Hunters skilled at spotting prey and predator and telling poisonous plants from healthy ones offered them a better chance of survival than those blind to the patterns. It enabled the survivors to pass on those pattern-friendly genes to future generations.”
The debate goes on
The evidence pointing to Dorsey is certainly fascinating, but is far from irrefutable. Murray remains convinced that Dorsey is Nakamoto.
“I believe that the Satoshi character is a Jack Dorsey story, that the circumstantial evidence, skillset, timeline, background, and modus operandi are a perfect match,” he tells Magazine.
“Prior to my research, there were very few people, if any, that were even aware Jack was one of the original cypherpunks or that he was obsessed with cryptography as a youth, that he knew of Adam Back and Hal Finney and DigiCash by name.”
The pieces were intentionally put there to be found, even if we may never be afforded the satisfaction of him directly coming out and saying it’s him.”
Lopp thinks it’s more likely to be someone other than Dorsey — but argues that for the sake of Bitcoin, we would be better off not looking.
“I find the aggregate of all the evidence to provide so much doubt that a reasonable person would conclude that it’s far more likely that Satoshi was someone else,” says Lopp in a blog post.
Bitcoin is better off with Satoshi’s identity remaining unknown. A human can be criticized and politically attacked. A myth will withstand the test of time.
A new analysis from the Tax Justice Network (TJN) has revealed the United Kingdom to be the biggest enabler of corporate tax dodging in the world.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in this infographic, British overseas territories and crown dependencies dominate the top eight roundup of places allowing multinationals to avoid paying tax on their profits.
Overall, this makes the UK responsible for about one third of global tax avoidance risk.
Ireland remained in ninth place for a second consecutive year in 2025, with an index value of 1,432.
It is followed by Luxembourg (1,399) and then the Bahamas (1,283), the latter of which is an independent member of the British commonwealth but not an OT or CD. In position 12 comes the Isle of Man (1,189) and in 13 comes Guernsey (1,145), both Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom places in 19th position with a value of 865.
The index evaluates jurisdiction laws and monitors the volume of corporate financial activity entering and leaving jurisdictions. A Haven Score is determined by more than 70 questions under 18 indicators to find the extent to which a jurisdiction’s laws and regulations allow for corporate tax abuse. The outcome of these indicators are then combined with global scale weights, which are based on IMF data on foreign direct investments. The final figure is a measure of the contribution of each jurisdiction to the global problem of corporate tax abuse.
This could make it easier for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel even in the absence of Palestinian independence and thus restore the political viability of this geo-economic megaproject.
The announcement that the US will sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia is a monumental development. Israel is the only country in West Asia to field these cutting-edge fighter jets so its “qualitative military edge” could be eroded as a result, ergo why the IDF officially objected to this.
Axios reported that Israel wants the sale conditional on Saudi Arabia normalizing their relations, ideally through the Abraham Accords, or at least the US guaranteeing that the F-35s won’t be deployed in Saudi Arabia’s western regions near Israel.
It remains unclear whether the US will comply with these requests, but what’s much clearer is that Saudi Arabia will occupy a greater role in the US’ regional strategy, which brings the Kingdom back into the US’ orbit after it diversified its partnerships in recent years by expanding ties with Russia and China. Saudi Arabia was already moving towards a rapprochement with the US after the last four years of troubled ties under Biden, however, as proven by its reluctance to formally join BRICS after being invited in 2023.
The latest Gaza War that broke out shortly afterwards, which evolved into the first West Asian War between Israel and the Iranian-led Resistance Axis and ended in the latter’s defeat, derailed progress on the “India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor” (IMEC) from that year’s G20. IMEC’s geo-economic scope importantly necessitates the normalization of Israeli-Saudi ties for facilitating this, which the US might now try to broker after ending the Gaza War that disrupted this previously fast-moving process.
Saudi Arabia’s commitment to invest nearly $1 trillion in the US economy, up from the $600 billion that it agreed to during Trump’s visit in May, can be interpreted as a bribe for obtaining the best terms possible. Trump might therefore try to coerce Bibi into at least making superficial concessions on Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank so that Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) doesn’t “lose face” by agreeing to the normalization of their countries’ relations without Palestine first becoming independent.
At the same time, selling F-35s to Saudi Arabia and bestowing it “Major Non-NATO Ally” status might suffice for MBS abandoning even the minimal aforesaid implied demand, especially since IMEC is indispensable to his Kingdom’s post-oil future and associated “Vision 2030” development program. If the US brokers an Israeli-Saudi deal that leads to swift progress being made on implementing IMEC, then it can push IMEC as a replacement for India’s North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) with Iran and Russia.
The US already revoked India’s Chabahar sanctions waiver before reinstating it, correspondingly as a form of pressure amidst their trade talks and then as a goodwill gesture therein as they made progress, but it arguably aims to redirect India from the NSTC to IMEC as a means of containing Russia. After all, the NSTC enables India to help Russia counterbalance the expansion of Turkish influence in Central Asia via TRIPP, so an indefinite waiver is extremely unlikely even in the event of an Indo-US trade deal.
It would be easier for India to accept this geo-economic concession, which might be reciprocated by tariff concessions on the US’ part, if IMEC is once again viable and could thus replace the NSTC. For that to happen, the US must first mediate the normalization of Israeli-Saudi ties, which it might now prioritize after brokering an end to the Gaza War and reaching its latest series of agreements with the Kingdom. The US’ F-35 deal with Saudi Arabia might therefore be part of Trump’s ultimate plan to revive IMEC.
Zelensky’s Jet Reportedly In Near-Miss With Military Grade Drones In Ireland
Various major publications including The Telegraph and Newsweek are reporting claims that military-grade drones threatened Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s plane shortly before it landed at Dublin Airport on Monday.
The mystery drones reportedly reached the coordinates where the Ukrainian president’s plane had been expected, but Zelensky is said to have arrived a little earlier than scheduled, touching down at around 11 pm, thus missing the drones.
Irish security officials believe the drones were intended to interfere with Zelensky’s arrival, noting that they were flying with their lights on, also given the UAVs were military-spec. The episode is being presented in Irish and UK press reports as a form of hybrid warfare.
Afterward, the unidentified aircraft circled above an Irish Navy vessel that had been covertly positioned in the Irish Sea and which was patrolling there related to providing security for Zelensky’s visit.
In all the drones were reportedly airborne for roughly two hours – which again would suggest are more sophisticated or even military drone technology, and the drone operators are unknown, amid an investigation.
Conflicting reports have suggested that four or up to five drones were involved in the incursion. Their operators and current whereabouts remain unknown.
The Dublin intrusion occurred inside a no-fly zone ordered by the Irish Aviation Authority for the duration of Zelenskyy’s visit. Ahead of the visit, Irish MEP Barry Andrews posted a graphic on social media showing the no-fly zone which was imposed.
The drones then entered Irish-controlled waters and circled above the LÉ William Butler Yeats, which did not have air-search radar and was unable to disable them. An Irish Air Corps aircraft was airborne at the time but did not engage.
One security official has been cited in press reports as describing of the UAVs, “They had their lights on. They wanted to be seen. They had both the capability and the intent. They could have acted at any time.”
Western officials have suspected that this is an extension of alleged Russia-backed ‘hybrid warfare’ targeting Europe’s skies.
However, there is cause for skepticism to these ‘Russia did it!’ allegations and mystery incursions…
Well colour me shocked. The Dutch magazine Trouw analysed 60 drone incidents throughout Europe and found “hardly any evidence of Russian involvement”. The most obvious NATO psy-op ever.
Suspicious drone sightings have of late disrupted air traffic at key hubs in places like Denmark, Germany, and other places in northern Europe. EU officials are pushing forward with plans to invest in a collective ‘drone wall’ defense.
In a document published in the October Bulletin of the World Health Organization and funded by the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO) is proposing a globally interoperable digital-identity infrastructure that permanently tracks every individual’s vaccination status from birth.
The dystopian proposal raises far more than privacy and autonomy concerns: it establishes the architecture for government overreach, cross-domain profiling, AI-driven behavioral targeting, conditional access to services, and a globally interoperable surveillance grid tracking individuals.
It also creates unprecedented risks in data security, accountability, and mission creep, enabling a digital control system that reaches into every sector of life.
The proposed system:
integrates personally identifiable information with socioeconomic data such as “household income, ethnicity and religion,”
deploys artificial intelligence for “identifying and targeting the unreached” and “combating misinformation,”
and enables governments to use vaccination records as prerequisites for education, travel, and other services.
What the WHO Document Admits, in Their Own Words
To establish the framework, the authors define the program as nothing less than a restructuring of how governments govern:
“Digital transformation is the intentional, systematic implementation of integrated digital applications that change how governments plan, execute, measure and monitor programmes.”
They openly state the purpose:
“This transformation can accelerate progress towards the Immunization agenda 2030, which aims to ensure that everyone, everywhere, at every age, fully benefits from vaccines.”
This is the context for every policy recommendation that follows: a global vaccination compliance system, digitally enforced.
1. Birth-Registered Digital Identity & Life-Long Tracking
The document describes a system in which a newborn is automatically added to a national digital vaccine-tracking registry the moment their birth is recorded.
“When birth notification triggers the set-up of a personal digital immunization record, health workers know who to vaccinate before the child’s first contact with services.”
They specify that this digital identity contains personal identifiers:
“A newborn whose electronic immunization record is populated with personally identifiable information benefits because health workers can retrieve their records through unique identifiers or demographic details, generate lists of unvaccinated children and remind parents to bring them for vaccination.”
This is automated, cradle-to-grave traceability.
The system also enables surveillance across all locations:
“[W]ith a national electronic immunization record, a child can be followed up anywhere within the country and referred electronically from one health facility to another.”
This is mobility tracking tied to medical compliance.
2. Linking Vaccine Records to Income, Ethnicity, Religion, & Social Programs
The document explicitly endorses merging vaccine status with socioeconomic data.
“Registers that record household asset data for social protection programmes enable monitoring of vaccination coverage by socioeconomic status such as household income, ethnicity and religion.”
This is demographic stratification attached to a compliance database.
3. Conditioning Access to Schooling, Travel, & Services on Digital Vaccine Proof
The WHO acknowledges and encourages systems that require vaccine passes for core civil functions:
“Some countries require proof of vaccination for children to access daycare and education, and evidence of other vaccinations is often required for international travel.”
They then underline why digital formats are preferred:
“Digital records and certificates are traceable and shareable.”
Digital traceability means enforceability.
4. Using Digital Systems to Prevent ‘Wasting Vaccine on Already Immune Children’
The authors describe a key rationale:
“Children’s vaccination status is not checked during campaigns, a practice that wastes vaccine on already immune children and exposes them to the risk of adverse events.”
Their solution is automated verification to maximize vaccination throughput.
The digital system is positioned as both a logistical enhancer and a compliance enforcer:
“National electronic immunization records could transform how measles campaigns and supplementary immunization activities are conducted by enabling on-site confirmation of vaccination status.”
5. AI Systems to Target Individuals, Identify ‘Unreached,’ & Combat ‘Misinformation’
The WHO document openly promotes artificial intelligence to shape public behavior:
“AI… demonstrate[s] its utility in identifying and targeting the unreached, identifying critical service bottlenecks, combating misinformation and optimizing task management.”
They explain additional planned uses:
“Additional strategic applications include analysing population-level data, predicting service needs and spread of disease, identifying barriers to immunization, and enhancing nutrition and health status assessments via mobile technology.”
This is predictive analytics paired with influence operations.
6. Global Interoperability Standards for International Data Exchange
The authors call for a unified international data standard:
“Recognize fast healthcare interoperability resources… as the global standard for exchange of health data.”
Translated: vaccine-linked personal identity data must be globally shareable.
They describe the need for “digital public infrastructure”:
“Digital public infrastructure is a foundation and catalyst for the digital transformation of primary health care.”
This is the architecture of a global vaccination-compliance network.
7. Surveillance Expansion Into Everyday Interactions
The WHO outlines a surveillance model that activates whenever a child interacts with any health or community service:
“CHWs who identify children during home visits and other community activities can refer them for vaccination through an electronic immunization registry or electronic child health record.”
This means non-clinical community actors participating in vaccination-compliance identification.
The authors also describe cross-service integration:
“Under-vaccinated children can be reached when CHWs and facility-based providers providing other services collaborate and communicate around individual children in the same electronic child health records.”
Every point of contact becomes a checkpoint.
8. Behavior-Shaping Through Alerts, Reminders, & Social Monitoring
The WHO endorses using digital messaging to overcome “intention–action gaps”:
“Direct communication with parents in the form of alerts, reminders and information helps overcome the intention–action gap.”
They also prescribe digital surveillance of public sentiment:
“Active detection and response to misinformation in social media build trust and demand.”
This is official justification for monitoring and countering speech.
9. Acknowledgment of Global Donor Control—Including Gates Foundation
At the very end of the article, the financial architect is stated plainly:
“This work was supported by the Gates Foundation [INV-016137].”
This confirms the alignment with Gates-backed global ID and vaccine-registry initiatives operating through Gavi, the World Bank, UNICEF, and WHO.
Bottom Line
In the WHO’s own words:
“Digital transformation is a unique opportunity to address many longstanding challenges in immunization… now is the time for bold, new approaches.”
And:
“Stakeholders… should embrace digital transformation as an enabler for achieving the ambitious Immunization agenda 2030 goals.”
This is a comprehensive proposal for a global digital-identity system, permanently linked to vaccine status, integrated with demographic and socioeconomic data, enforced through AI-driven surveillance, and designed for international interoperability.
It is not speculative, but written in plain language, funded by the Gates Foundation, and published in the World Health Organization’s own journal.
Hawkish Baltic States Lead Europe’s Race Back To The Draft
We’ve been documenting new efforts of European countries to drastically ramp up their defense readiness as the proxy war in Ukraine persists with no end in sight. For example, French President Emmanuel Macron last week announced a new avenue of voluntary military service for 18- and 19-year olds with the goal of gradually bolstering both active duty and reserve strength. This is part of a trend of the return of military conscription across the continent.
And this week Lithuania announced it will call up 5,000 conscripts in 2026, a significant increase from previous years. Years ago, Lithuania was the first EU country to restore mandatory military service in the wake of the Ukraine crisis centered on Crimea in 2014. The small Baltic country has also committed 5-6% of GDP to defense through 2030, more than double the existing NATO 2% guideline. It is now expected to expand its conscription plan to run year-round from 2026. Latvia too had been among the first to restore mandatory service based on concerns Russia could expand action beyond Ukraine.
A regional publication reviews the recent history as follows:
Lithuania reinstated conscription in March 2015 after suspending it in 2008, becoming the first EU country to reverse course following Russia’s seizure of Crimea, according to the US Library of Congress. Sweden followed in March 2017 with a gender-neutral conscription system.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted Latvia to restore mandatory service in 2023, with mandatory service beginning January 2024. Croatia followed suit in October 2025, with the first conscripts expected in January 2026.
This is also consistent with a pattern of smaller Baltic and northern European states being some of the most outspoken hawks when it comes to Russia.
But broadly, more and more European governments racing to find the quickest and least expensive ways to expand their forces to face down the ‘Russian menace’. One European source says bolstering military personnel – whether active or reserve – is increasingly being seen as an “emergency back-up plan”.
“As defense budgets swell, governments are quietly rebuilding the human backbone of their militaries. It’s not just about guns and tanks. In 2024, EU member states collectively spent a record €343 billion on defence (1.9% of GDP), and much of that went to personnel and readiness,” Euractiv writes in a fresh report.
The report suggests that at a moment Washington seems to be taking more of a wait on the sidelines approach to militarily supporting Ukraine, the Europeans are scrambling to make up for a potential future major lack of NATO manpower.
“NATO currently has 3.44 million military personnel, according to the latest data. But if you take the US out of the equation, the Western military alliance is left with roughly 2.11 million active troops, only 1.5 million of which belong to EU countries,” Euractiv continues.
Across the bloc, 9 EU countries have mandatory military service: Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden.
France and Germany have recently followed suit in a bid to bulk up their reserves without reverting to full-blown conscription. Paris has moved to roll out a 10-month voluntary national service program by 2026, and Berlin is openly weighing a return to mandatory service, after years of ruling it out.
The models, however, are anything but uniform. In the Nordics, Sweden and Norway use selective, gender-neutral drafts. They screen entire age groups but call up only the numbers they need, roughly 6,000-8,000 people a year, to avoid draining reserves. Denmark relies on a hybrid lottery. Militarily neutral Austria maintains traditional male conscription but provides conscripts with the option to participate in civilian volunteer activities instead of traditional military ones.
The report further provides the following helpful infographic map:
As for reserve programs, a system of part-time service members who are civilians which can be mobilized quickly if called upon helps countries keep defense spending down during times of peace. European nations are trying to bolster these numbers of trained personnel as well.
In the wake of Kyiv’s decision to allow men aged 18-22 to legally leave Ukraine last August, Poland has seen one of the largest waves of young Ukrainians flooding its borders.
From Aug. 26 to Nov. 10, 49,700 Ukrainian citizens have applied for protection status (UKR), linked to a PESEL number, in Poland in recent weeks. As a comparison, for the January-February period of 2025, there were only 16,000 such applications, reports Do Rzeczy, citing data from “Rzeczpospolita.”
Asylum status for Ukrainians provides the right to legal residence (currently until March 4, 2026), work, access to education, and benefits.
It is lost upon leaving Poland for more than 30 days, but can be reapplied for.
In total, over 2 million Ukrainians have applied for refugee status in Poland since 2022, but as of Nov. 12, only 964,400 had active status.
Over the past few months, the share of men aged 18-65 among new applicants has increased from 16.6 percent to 17.4 percent, while the share of women has fallen from 48.3 percent to 47.7 percent.
According to Polish Border Guard data, from Aug. 29 to Nov. 24, 121,000 Ukrainians aged 18-22 entered Poland, of whom 59,000 returned to Ukraine.
This means that approximately 62,000 young men remained in Poland or departed for the EU. Experts emphasize that this is the first such large wave of young Ukrainians in this age group in Poland.
According to Kyiv, the change in regulations is intended to enable young people to study and work abroad. At the same time, men aged 18-22 are exempt from the mandatory mobilization process, which begins at age 25. However, according to data from the Polish Economic Institute, only 39 percent of young men take up employment, primarily in construction, transport, and industry. They often work in closed environments, which, as the Institute points out, hinders linguistic and social integration.
Meanwhile, crime and sabotage perpetrated by Ukrainians have become a problem.
Police indicate that in the first half of 2025, 8,994 foreigners committed crimes in Poland, of which approximately 60 percent were Ukrainians. The most common offenses were drunk driving and fraud, including cybercrime. At the same time, Polish services emphasize that some Ukrainians are being used by Russian intelligence for sabotage activities. In Ukraine alone, 2,800 investigations into espionage and sabotage are ongoing.
