Another US B-52 bomber conducted a flight near Venezuela’s coastline earlier this week, according to flight-tracking data, continuing a pattern of regular bomber activity amid threated regime change action targeting President Nicolás Maduro.

These flights have occurred at a rate of about once a week for over a month, and are meant as a very public threat and warning, given the bombers which often fly from bases deep within the continental United States intentionally keep their transponders on so they can be tracked. 

According to the latest reports, in this fresh flight that occurred Monday two B-52s departed from Minot Air Force Base, with one returning to base while the other proceeded toward the Caribbean, flying close to Venezuela’s northern coast near Caracas.

The bomber was additionally escorted by US Navy F/A-18 fighter jets. The last known flight prior to this was on November 20. That one was notably as it was accompanied by F/A-18s launched from the USS Gerald Ford, which just this month began patrolling the Caribbean Sea. 

There’s been a lot of speculation of late over just what President Trump intends to do with the unprecedented US military build-up in the Caribbean.

There’s concern that he is preparing to launch imminent military action against the Maduro government, but the White House has also signaled that last minute-diplomacy could still ensure peace, and there are unverified claims that Presidents Trump and Maduro may speak by phone.

Previously the Wall Street Journal commented on how rare the B-52 bomber flights are in prior history in the region:

The U.S. has seldom flown bombers near South America in recent decades, usually carrying out just one planned training mission a year. But more missions involving bombers could be carried out soon, according to two defense officials. 

Thursday’s flights signal “seriousness and intent,” said David Deptula, a retired Air Force general and Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, an aerospace think tank. “You’re bringing an enormous set of capabilities…endurance, payload, range and precision,” he said.

75k+ people are tracking a B-52 Stratofortress with two F/A-18 Super Hornets just north of Caracas, Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/qH9OpTZeo3

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) November 24, 2025

The US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) had earlier this month described its first bomber flights near Venezuela as a “bomber attack demonstration mission” in skies over the southern Caribbean.

It could be a ‘dry run’ for imminent war, or else major attacks on cartels. Also widely reported this week is the potential start of US covert action in Venezuela. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Certain myths survive from a period of trauma. They can be wholly incorrect and yet widely believed by nearly all living experts. The myth keeps moving from generation to generation and becomes doctrine, one which we dare not question for fear of contradicting the settled consensus. It so happens that “everyone knows” something that is entirely incorrect.

The myth in this case is that deflation, in the form of falling prices, is always to be avoided at all costs. This myth is global.

The other day, Bloomberg and Economic Times whipped up a frenzy with an article called “What India can do about its low inflation problem.”

“India’s economy, so often touted for potential to supplant China as a global engine, is having a hard time getting its arms around inflation. Not that it’s too high, but because the pace of price increases is worryingly low.”

The prescription is always the same: loosen the money and pump up the prices, robbing savers and consumers of all production.

How can they say this? Because everyone believes it.

India has had a roaring inflation problem in recent years, same as everyone else. I’m just going to eyeball this and say that the currency has lost 30 percent of its value over five years, again, not an unusual experience. Finally we have inflation tamed to the 2–3 percent realm. That means only that the problem is getting worse more slowly.

This is not deflation. Not even close.

And yet at this very moment, we are told that India has another problem. Inflation is too low! The central bank has to act before it is too late!

Some of this confusion truly results from sloppy use of language. When inflation is falling, that vaguely feels like prices are falling. Not so! It only means that prices are rising more slowly than previously. This is not deflation. This is a lower rate of inflation.

The language problem is coupled with a strange public psychology. For years, I’m convinced, consumers really believed that the inflation was temporary. Maybe you believed this too. I think I did briefly until I remembered that there is no way that the monetary authorities would actually let overall prices fall.

Whatever damage has been done over five years is really done. Nothing can fix it. The price level will never go back to what it was. The monetary unit is permanently devalued. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Why this entrenched phobia of deflation? It all traces to a grave confusion over cause and effect that began in 1930 and continued for the length of the Great Depression. During these years, the seemingly impossible happened. The purchasing power of the currency actually increased. This is something to celebrate, not regret, as explained at length in Murray Rothbard’s book America’s Great Depression.

Broadening this out a bit, the purchasing power of the dollar actually gained 66 percent between 1920 and 1933. This was a welcome relief following the 50 percent decline that hit soon after the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

Imagine sticking dollars in your mattress. You decide to check on them 13 years later. You discover that they have gained in value, without using a bank to pay interest or otherwise investing. You have saved money and made money at the same time. This is absolutely glorious for the public.

It was a one-time thing, sorry to report. It never happened again. After 1933, the valuation of the dollar began to fall because inflation returned. Incredibly, this was the intended policy outcome. The monetary elites intended to create inflation.

Why did they do this? Because the prevailing economic theory at the time preached that the reason for the decline in business activity was the deflation itself. Somehow they decided that the way to fix the problem was to make goods and services more expensive for consumers and businesses.

This was of course the prevailing Keynesian theory. It rejected all historical experience. A mild deflation had characterized the Gilded Age, the greatest period of rising prosperity recorded in any nation in the whole history of mankind. It was only a few decades in the rearview mirror.

Somehow the generation of the 1930s had adopted a fashionable view that everything can and should be reinvented according to an engineering model. This included economics—a discipline dating back many hundreds of years to the late Middle Ages. This generation imagined that they could repeal basic economic laws with power and expertise.

They got to President Herbert Hoover himself, who was panicked about economic conditions following the stock market crash of 1929. He had two years before the election and was worried about the fate of his party. As a result, he listened to the experts who told him that the CAUSE of the decline in business activity was the tendency of prices to decline.

If that is true—which it was not—the only solution is to repump the economy, raise wages, set price floors, and attempt to reflate using the power of the Federal Reserve. Hoover did all these things between 1930 and 1932, all in hopes of boosting his election.

In other words, Hoover had run a test case of the first New Deal. I am profoundly aware that the historians won’t tell you this but he was a huge interventionist, unlike his Republican predecessors who let the business cycle run its course. Using modern parlance, Hoover was a leftist for the totality of this period. FDR merely picked up on his themes and made everything worse.

Arguably, if Hoover had done nothing at all, the economic downturn of 1930 might have run its course in time for the presidential election and he would have won over FDR. Instead, his actions pushed the economy deeper into recession and FDR won in a landslide. FDR had campaigned for balanced budgets and fiscal frugality. He took exactly the opposite path once he had power.

Why did FDR do this? Because he too had listened to the experts who all said that the problem in need of fixing was the deflation. Common sense would have refuted this bogus notion. Prices were falling as a corrective to the previous boom. Production structures desperately needed to be rebalanced by market forces. Savings needed to be encouraged. Business needed to stop higher-order investments.

FDR was much worse even than Hoover. He devalued the money by closing the banks and then forcibly grabbed gold from the people. Then he revalued the dollar by executive order. That was just the beginning. He disabled labor markets, banned teen labor to make the data look better, and massively subsidized industry.

This was the exact opposite of what needed to happen. As for consumers, they were robbed of the one silver lining from the period of 1929 to 1932, namely the existence of lower prices that made products more affordable and rewarded thrift on the part of savers. This was a gift to the public in the midst of economic depression. The government took away that gift.

Even though FDR mysteriously gained the reputation of having solved the Great Depression, he prolonged it all the way to the Second World War. Recovery did not begin until after the war and Truman was president. Somehow, many people still believe that FDR was a great hero who dug the country out of an economic quagmire.

This is how the legend of deflation began. It is the historical imagination that still fuels the myth in people’s brains. Even now, I promise you that the elites fear deflation far more than inflation. Even after having lost 30 percent of purchasing power in the great inflation of our times, and even though prices are still rising 2-3 percent per year, we hear constantly about the danger of letting inflation rates fall to less than zero.

I’m telling you that consumers and wholesalers would right now welcome and cheer a return to 2019 prices. This is what should happen. To be sure, such a thing would put enormous pressure on banks, likely cause stock markets to fall, and be a major issue to all indebted businesses.

So, yes, this would cause pain—it could even risk default unless government tighten its belt—but the pain is the sort that an alcoholic undergoes when he gives up the bottle. It’s a necessary part of sobriety.

I have zero hope that we can get rid of the myths around deflation but I’m letting you know anyway. Sometimes it’s best just to know what’s true, even if the whole of the establishment rejects it.

As the AI ‘circle jerk‘ rages on, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, will need to raise at least $207 billion more by 2030 to simply keep the lights on, according a new analysis by HSBC which takes into account recently disclosed megadeals with Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. 

Even with bullish assumptions that include 3 billion users, rapid subscription growth, and a giant slice of enterprise AI spending, the company’s projected revenues are nowhere near its exploding bills for energy and chips, the bank says.

“OpenAI is a money pit with a website on top,” according to FT‘s Bryce Elder, who notes that the bigger AI models get, the more cash they burn – and the winner in the LLM landscape may come down to who can continue raising money the longest. 

The Math Behind the $207 Billion Hole

HSBC’s model runs through 2030 and arrives at these headline numbers:

• Cumulative data-center rental costs (2025-2030): $792 billion – rising to $1.4 trillion by 2033!
• Projected cumulative free cash flow: $282 billion
• Additional liquidity from Nvidia/AMD deals, undrawn facilities and cash on hand: ~$68 billion
• Net funding shortfall: $207 billion (plus a $10 billion buffer)

Key revenue assumptions that still leave OpenAI in the red:

• Total users reach 3 billion by 2030 (44% of global adults outside China), up from ~800 million today
• Paid-subscriber conversion rises from ~5% today to 10% by 2030
• Consumer AI market generates $129 billion annually by 2030 ($87 billion from search, $24 billion from advertising)
• Enterprise AI market hits $386 billion; OpenAI’s share slips from ~50% today to 37%
• Resulting 2030 revenue run-rate: roughly $174 billion (in line with CEO Sam Altman’s public hints of $100 billion by 2027 and continued hypergrowth)

HSBC also estimates cloud compute contracts that total up to $1.8 trillion in lifetime value, and notes that out of the 36 gigawtts of power they’ll need, just one-third will be online by 2030. OpenAI’s annual rental bill will approach $620 billion once capacity is fully online later in the decade. 

Biggest Challenges To Come

According to the report, there are several pressure points that could worsen this outlook, possibly forcing drastic action…

Investor Fatigue: “If revenue growth doesn’t exceed expectations and prospective investors turn cautious, OpenAI would need to make some hard decisions.” -FT

Debt-market jitters: Oracle’s recent bond volatility after its OpenAI deal shows how quickly sentiment can sour.

Contract lock-in: With most cloud deals running for 4-5 years and containing stiff penalties for early exits, OpenAI has little wiggle room.

Competition: “OpenAI’s consumer market share slips to 56 per cent by 2030, from around 71 per cent this year. Anthropic and xAI are both given market shares in the single digits, a mystery “others” is assigned 22 per cent, and Google is excluded entirely.” -FT

No AGI in the model: HSBC explicitly excludes any revenue or efficiency windfall from artificial general intelligence – an omission that could prove either prudent or massively conservative.

While HSBC provides a sobering view of OpenAI, they’re actually very bullish on AI as a concept…

We expect AI to penetrate every production process and every vertical, with a great potential for productivity gains at a global level. [ . . . ]

Some AI assets may be overvalued, some may be undervalued too. But eventually, a few incremental basis points of economic growth (productivity-driven) on a USD110trn+ world GDP could dwarf what is often seen as unreasonable capex spending at present.

GPT COUNTERS!

For shits and giggles we asked ChatGPT if it thought HSBC was correct in their analysis. While the LLM mostly agreed, it said that the bank ignored;

• architectural efficiency improvements
• distillation
• sparse expert models
• on-device inference
• agent-delegated execution
• reinforcement-learning-optimized efficiency
• quantization
• open-weight local models replacing cloud calls

In other words, “There is no historical precedent in computing where efficiency didn’t massively improve as scaling occurred.”

What say you?

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle.

Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Knowing who to trust and who to distrust at this point in history is the most important quality for anyone who expects to maneuver their lives and those of their loved ones through the final years of this Fourth Turning. I trust people who base their opinions on facts, not some government approved narrative regurgitated by legacy media bubble headed bimbos and “expert” talking heads. Michael Burry, Ed Dowd and Edward Snowden are men whose opinion I value.

They have all put their careers on the line telling the truth, when virtually everyone else was toeing the Deep State/Wall Street/Big Pharma line regarding the surveillance apparatus monitoring everything we say on our phones or type on our computers; the Federal Reserve/Wall Street manufactured housing bubble to replace the Dot.com bubble; the Covid plandemic created as an excuse to manufacture trillions of new debt because our empire of debt began seizing up in September 2019; and the current Everything Bubble (commercial real estate, residential housing, stocks, bonds, bitcoin, AI).

I’ve been a huge fan of Ed Dowd since reading his principled, factual, data driven destruction of the Covid narrative in real-time when the world had lost its mind and had bowed down to the authoritarian dictates of our government overlords. He was right all along about the Covid scheme to enrich Big Pharma, politicians, and legacy media, while seeing how far the ignorant masses could be pushed before they pushed back. Other than Ed and a small minority of other brave truth tellers, the globalist elite scheme worked to perfection, with billions injected with a toxic gene altering concoction, and the power of government enhanced and broadened.

The tweet below from Ed Dowd was from sixteen months ago, four months before the election of Donald Trump. Absolutely no one was speculating about the scenario Ed laid out. And now his “conspiratorial conjecture” is playing out in real time. No one with any brains wanted the dementia ridden basement dummy or the cackling brain dead hyena, and their cult party of death and destruction to continue their reign of terror on our nation.

Trump and his MAGA legions swept into power (or was he ushered into power?) with promises of America First, an economic renaissance, retribution for the criminal politicians in DC who conducted a coup against Trump, the instantaneous end of wars, MAHA, releasing the Epstein client list, and drastic reduction in government spending through Musk’s DOGE initiative. The level of hope and enthusiasm from Trump’s base, and even the moderates who voted against Kamala, was off the charts. NOT ANY MORE.

This needs to be said now and I will be attacked. I have no proof so it’s a literal conspiracy theory but bears watching with eagle eyes.

Conjecture: If I were in the shadows and had an agenda of ushering in a reset to control the end of the current ponzi debt based fiat system…

— Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) July 23, 2024

The real owners as described by George Carlin and/or the invisible government as described by Edward Bernays, really don’t care which figurehead from the uni-party is installed at the top of this dung heap of debt. The fleecing of the national treasury continues unabated by the ruling class, and the plight of the plebs deteriorates on a daily basis. But they have been convinced by their overlords to continue going deeper into debt, while thinking they can vote their way out of this delusional debt debacle of a floundering empire.

Trump’s closure of the border and continuing modest efforts to deport the tens of millions of illegal invaders is about the only real positive I’ve witnessed in his first year in office. The old “at least he’s not Kamala” mantra is wearing thin and does not explain his exasperatingly stupid decisions and bloviating pronouncements on a daily basis. Those who adhere to the principles of liberty, freedom, transparency, free speech, not policing the world, and fiscal responsibility are extremely disappointed, but not surprised by the results under Trump thus far. His absolute vitriolic hatred for Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted with him 90% of the time, tells me all I need to know about Trump’s moral compass and adherence to the Constitution.

Despite the initial publicity campaign (propaganda) for DOGE and the huge cuts to spending which Trump spewed on a daily basis, the national debt increases by $6.5 billion PER DAY, just as it did under the pants shitting president before him. Future generations are incurring $3.3 billion PER DAY of interest on the now $39 trillion national debt. Trump’s tariff revenue is like pissing in an ocean of debt, as he acts like he is going to send us $2,000 checks with the money he just made us pay by imposing the tariffs. The big beautiful bill cut nothing. Ignoring future recessions and multiple looming wars, the CBO projects the debt to go up by another $23 trillion in the next ten years. I’ll take the over, if the entire Ponzi scheme doesn’t collapse beforehand.

The president who was going to end all the wars funded Israel’s mass genocide in Gaza and their attacks on Iran, while bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities with U.S. forces. Trump has continued to fund Ukraine’s futile war against Russia, while utilizing U.S. weaponry and personnel to conduct drone attacks within Russia. Trump and his NATO minions are conducting a proxy war against Putin, risking a WW3 and nuclear scenario. And now, under the guise of fighting the drug war, he is blowing up speedboats and planning to overthrow Maduro in Venezuela. I’m sure this is about illegal drugs and not the 300 billion barrels of oil sitting under Venezuela’s footprint.

It seems the government shutdown, which 95% of the country didn’t even notice because the government does absolutely nothing but shake us down for tax dollars to distribute to their cronies and enrich themselves, has allowed Trump and his bureaucrat minions to pretend they can’t calculate and announce the true figures regarding GDP, CPI, and employment. If the numbers were good, they would be shouting them from the roof of the White House. The fact they are refusing to report key economic data tells you all you need to know.

Now no Q3 GDP report?

The wheels must be coming off the “Golden Economy” bus. https://t.co/wb0GnYa15b

— Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) November 25, 2025

I guess the fact government reported inflation in January 2025 when Trump took over was 3.0% (real figures of 5% to 10%) and it continues to run at 3.0% today doesn’t actually support Trump’s narrative of lower prices. And the average person, who shops for groceries, pays their monthly electric and gas bill, buys clothes, pays rent or a mortgage, and lives in the real world, knows they are being screwed while the ruling class reaps the windfall of inflated stock prices and want even more.

Trump threatening Powell to reduce interest rates isn’t to help you. It’s to help his real constituents on Wall Street, in corporate executive suites, and globalist billionaires who pull his puppet strings. Senior citizens who depend on interest income will be screwed coming and going, as their income will decline and the rise in inflation will make their living expenses rise further. I can’t understand why consumer confidence continues to fall and delinquencies on car loans, credit cards, student loans, and mortgages hit multi-year highs every month.

If Trump ever had any conservative principles, he has completely abandoned them. His totalitarian tendencies show themselves more each day, as he picks winners and losers within the economy, threatening to deport the Intel CEO one day and then investing $9 billion of your tax dollars in that company a week later. He is now all in on the AI scam, throwing billions of your tax dollars at these scam artists at Nvidia, Palantir, Oracle and the rest of the lying Silicon Valley scum, bilking investors and ultimately the tax payers out of their hard earned money. If this entire AI narrative is nothing but hot air and fraudulent promises, and it accounts for half of the country’s GDP growth, we will relive the Too Big To Fail 2008 bailout when it all blows up in the not too distant future.

If AI doesn’t work, it will risk recession, blowing out fiscal deficits into insufficient foreign UST demand.

If AI works, it will undermine the U.S. fiscal position (~half of US Federal receipts come from employment), blowing out deficits into insufficient foreign UST demand. https://t.co/z9koZiptU3

— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) November 24, 2025

Catherine Austin Fitts has been warning about the coming digital gulag for years. We now have a state sanctioned bubble in AI, with the billionaire club cheering it on, knowing they will be bailed out again when it all goes to shit, like bubbles always do. The fact Trump is encouraging this and adding fuel to the fire reveals this is all part of the ultimate plan to enslave us under the guise of saving the world once again. First it was the great financial crisis (2008/2009), then it was Covid (2020-2022), and now for the coup de grace with the implosion of the everything bubble and rollout of CBDCs, digital surveillance, social credit scores, and living under the thumb of a global authoritarian aristocracy.

Pulling the plug on massive subsidy invested in the digital gulag and shifting resources to investing in our young people is the pathway forward. https://t.co/l3Se9zw6NN

— The Solari Report | Catherine Austin Fitts (@solari_the) November 24, 2025

The globalists attempting to enact their WEF sanctioned Great Reset agenda see China as the template for enslaving the populations of the Western world. They are already monitoring the vast majority of all your communications, as Edward Snowden revealed over a decade ago. The noose tightens around our necks, as Trump and his acolytes enact measures to further reduce our liberty, freedom and rights. This is all building towards a final showdown. One day within the next few years the powers that be will pull the final block out of this jenga tower of unsustainable debt and it will all come crashing down. They will rush to assure you they can fix this if you just trust them once again and agree to their conditions of survival.

🚨 EDWARD SNOWDEN’S CHILLING WARNING IS NOW UNFOLDING IN REAL TIME

What China built… is exactly what Western governments are quietly preparing for.

Snowden is crystal clear:

Every photo, every purchase, every message, every movement — all of it is being fed into algorithms pic.twitter.com/X8RGFsRfY1

— karma (@karma44921039) November 23, 2025

I think I’ve connected the dots, and they paint a dire picture of the future, unless we refuse to comply with their plans. Will you and I have the courage to resist and fight their diabolical enslavement plans? Fourth Turnings always come down to a final battle between good and evil, with clear winners and losers. If they win, we become slaves in their digital gulag for eternity. If, against all odds, the liberty minded, freedom loving citizens of the world can somehow defeat these billionaire psychopaths in suits, along with their armies of feckless bureaucrats and politicians, future generations will have the opportunity to blaze a new path forward. I’m not a guy who hangs my hat on a hope narrative, but I am willing to fight for a better future for my children and their children. I hope you join me in this fight.

Authored by Nichaolas Zifcak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the trial of Linda Sun, the former aide to New York governors who is accused of acting as a Chinese agent, the court has heard evidence that Sun forged the signature of Gov. Kathy Hochul, had close contact with Chinese consular staff, and purchased luxury items with payouts from China.

The former aide to Hochul and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was indicted in 2024 over allegedly using her position to push the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party in return for millions of dollars paid to her husband’s business. Sun has pleaded not guilty.

Sun is on trial in federal court in the Eastern District of New York in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, with former colleagues and coworkers taking the stand to testify.

After almost two weeks of a trial that is expected to run until mid-December, here are some key takeaways so far.

Delegation Invitation Letters Allegedly Forged

Federal prosecutors alleged that Sun put together an official invitation letter to help Chinese officials travel to New York state. Without approval, she allegedly signed then-Lt. Gov. Hochul’s signature on the letter, which was on official letterhead. According to the prosecution, officials from Henan Province, China, used that letter to apply for visas to travel to the United States.

Prosecutors showed the letter to Jeffrey Lewis, who worked for Hochul for 13 years, including as her chief of staff. Lewis was authorized to use her signature.

Lewis testified that the signature on the invitation for Henan officials was not Hochul’s. He explained that Hochul connects and merges the “h” and “y” in Kathy; that the “h” in Hochul is connected with the “o”; and that the “h,“ ”u,“ and ”l” run together.

Lewis also testified that the only Chinese delegation invitation letter he could recall that Gov. Cuomo requested Lt. Gov. Hochul write was one in 2017, for a delegation from Jiangxi Province.

Lewis also pointed out that the alleged forged letters were on a generic letterhead from the governor’s office, which is distinct from the letterhead of the lieutenant governor, which was used in the Jiangxi letter. In 2018 and 2019, the years in which the Henan letters were issued, Sun worked in the office of the governor.

Liaison With Chinese Consular Staff

Prosecutors presented evidence suggesting that Sun prioritized requests of the Chinese Consulate over her duty to the state of New York.

In 2019, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen traveled to New York City and held a banquet on July 12. Taiwan’s representatives there invited Cuomo to join the event.

Prosecutors presented emails at trial that showed that when Sun received the banquet invitation for the governor, her first action was not to forward it to the governor’s scheduler, but to immediately alert the Chinese Consulate.

The emails showed that Sun received the invitation on July 5 at 6:32 p.m. One minute later, at 6:33 p.m., she emailed her contact at the Chinese Consulate in New York City, Li Li Hu, with the text “FYI.”

The following day, Sun replied to the representative for Taiwan and declined the invitation on the governor’s behalf.

According to Jessica Pulver, who worked in the governor’s Invitations Office in 2019, the office never received the invitation for Cuomo to join the banquet with Tsai. In testimony at the trial, Pulver explained that the expectation was that all invitations for the governor would be forwarded.

The incident is one example of the close collaborative relationship Sun had with the Chinese Consulate, according to prosecutors. When Consul General Zhang Qiyue left her post in New York City in May 2018, she sent Sun a farewell letter that ended with, “Your personal friendship and kind support will always be cherished.”

Luxury Goods

During FBI searches of Sun’s and her parents’ homes, the FBI found luxury cars, watches, and designer handbags. These items, prosecutors said, suggest means beyond that of her state employee salary, which in 2021 was $144,000.

In addition, documents and gifts from Chinese officials show a pattern of close ties with Chinese officials, according to prosecutors.

In July 2024, the FBI searched Sun’s home in Manhasset, New York, and her parents’ apartment in the Flushing neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, as well as their TD Bank deposit box.

During those searches, the FBI found luxury goods including a Rolex Submariner, a Patek Philippe Aquanaut watch, and several Hermès Birkin handbags.

Authorities also found several high-end cars—a 2024 Ferrari Roma, a 2024 Range Rover, a 2022 Mercedes GLB SUV, and an Audi Q5—as well as a deposit box with $130,000 in cash.

FBI agents also testified to finding a number of documents in Chinese and objects associated with the Chinese regime, including a 1-kilogram friendship coin of solid silver, likely worth more than $1,600 today.

Watch Live: 

*  *  *

A dramatic scene is unfolding near the White House on Wednesday afternoon, with reporters saying a National Guard member has been shot.

ABC News reports:

Two uniformed military personnel, appearing to be National Guardsmen, have been shot in downtown Washington just blocks from the White House, according to two sources familiar with the ongoing situation.

Mike Carter, White House Correspondent for NEWSMAX, wrote on X that “Secret Service tells me 2 National Guard members have just been shot near the White House.” 

BREAKING: Secret Service tells me 2 National Guard members have just been shot near the White House. pic.twitter.com/uGLCAPcDXX

— Mike Carter (@MikeCarterTV) November 26, 2025

Here’s more…

UPDATE – At least 2 National Guard troops were shot. Shooter still on the loose. In Washington DC. Close to White House. pic.twitter.com/c03bPh5O5U

— BREAKING: (@Breaking_HLO) November 26, 2025

🚨Per a source with knowledge, “Treasury just got email about active shooter. There’s a lockdown in place.” pic.twitter.com/GbbTQT1ZH9

— Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) November 26, 2025

🚨 BREAKING UPDATE: MULTIPLE National Guard soldiers have been SHOT near the White House

At least three casualties being reported

The shooter is reportedly still on the loose

Law enforcement racing from all throughout the city

PRAY FOR THESE TROOPS🙏🏻pic.twitter.com/u5tqnN9mVW

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 26, 2025

BREAKING — massive police and National Guard presence at Farragut West metro station. A block from White House. pic.twitter.com/Hz2wjjWa6d

— Jay O’Brien (@jayobtv) November 26, 2025

Just wait. Trump is about to go nuclear on Truth Social. 

*Developing… 

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the investigative journalist who broke the Clinton Cash corruption story, has uncovered what may be one of the most brazen grifts operating inside the Capital Beltway. His new reporting exposes deep cronyism and corruption inside the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development Program, where DEI-driven preferences opened the door for fraudsters to siphon off lucrative no-bid federal contracts.

Instead of supporting legitimate small business development, the 8(a) program has been a massive pipeline for pass-through entities that collect bidless contracts on silver platters while quietly outsourcing the real work to major consulting firms.

The result: Merit-based competition gets sidelined, and tens of billions in taxpayer dollars flow through shell operators, allowing the corrupt Beltway economy of parasites to loot taxpayers. The looting went into hyperdrive during the Biden-Harris regime years.

Remember the ‘Gold Bars‘ corruption story with the EPA? – Well, this 8(a) corruption turns out to be very similar: loot taxpayers as much as possible with Biden in the White House, who had no idea what was happening. 

Schweizer has built a career exposing this kind of institutional rot, and the developments in the news cycle so far suggest the Trump administration is preparing to slam down the accountability hammer and smash parasites across the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. 

“For years, DC insiders have exploited a federal DEI contracting program that provides windfalls to beltway elites. This open secret isn’t about helping the downtrodden; it’s about bagging no-bid paydays. The SBA’s 8(a) program is long overdue for reform,” Schweizer began the X thread post on Tuesday night, as well as publishing a report on The Drill Down.

🚨 MASSIVE FRAUD ALERT: For years, DC insiders have exploited a federal DEI contracting program that provides windfalls to beltway elites. This open secret isn’t about helping the downtrodden; it’s about bagging no-bid paydays. The SBA’s 8(a) program is long overdue for reform.🧵 pic.twitter.com/G7X0hCQdYt

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

He pointed out that his team “followed the money and found that the SBA’s ‘8(a) contracting program’ contains stunning levels of cronyism and corruption,” adding, “Corps win government contracts not due to merit but because they check the right DEI boxes. ZERO accountability!”

💰 My team and I have followed the money and found that the SBA’s “8(a) contracting program” contains stunning levels of cronyism and corruption. Corps win government contracts not due to merit but because they check the right DEI boxes. ZERO accountability! pic.twitter.com/eWKllrDzum

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

How the 8(a) scam works:

☎️ Here’s how the scam works: A small company gets special status by becoming “8(a) Certified” by the SBA. Then it turns around and hands the work to a major consulting firm. Taxpayers pay the premium, insiders pocket the difference, and Washington calls it “equity.” pic.twitter.com/QqYe3q3z8C

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

It’s one thing to catch fraud in Excel spreadsheets. It’s another thing to see it happening in the real world. As Schweizer’s team highlighted, undercover footage from O’Keefe Media Group showed 8(a) operators openly admitting to the racket… 

💸 Pass-through abuse is just the beginning. A recent DOJ bust exposed the depth of blatant 8(a) fraud when a USAID officer bagged $1M+ in BRIBES while steering $500M+ in contracts to firms exploiting their “special status.” Shout out to @lukerosiak for his EXCELLENT reporting. pic.twitter.com/Op3xJONNqb

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

“The floodgates opened wider when the Biden administration tripled contracting quotas for race-based awards.  Money was even diverted away from veteran-owned businesses. Identity first, performance second — and the costs exploded,” Schweizer emphasized. 

👴🏻 The floodgates opened wider when the Biden administration tripled contracting quotas for race-based awards. Money was even diverted away from veteran-owned businesses. Identity first, performance second — and the costs exploded. pic.twitter.com/FRfvkqLKLs

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

What makes the 8(a) scandal so critical is that no corner of the federal contracting world has been more gamed than the 8(a). 

The program may have begun with good intentions, but the road to hell really is paved with them. In practice, it’s morphed into an arbitrary tollgate that every major contracting firm knows how to subvert through pass-through entities.

Everyone in the DC consulting world understands how the game works: set up a compliant 8(a) “small business,” win the no-bid award, and let the big consulting firms do all the work. 

These DEI mandates have proven to make the government dysfunctional. It’s more hoops, more paperwork, more meaningless certifications, more administrative drag, and ultimately a worse product. Fraud is one thing. But the DEI overlay has turned the DC into a bloated and corrupt hellhole that ultimately sticks taxpayers with the inflated bill. 

Schweizer ends the thread with a hint that an enforcement phase may be approaching, and that the days of operating this DEI scam in the shadows of the DC beltway could be numbered. 

📈 After the ruling, every company was supposed to prove they faced discrimination. Instead, staff walked firms through how to write victimhood essays. One firm submitted twelve drafts until it “passed.” The number of special-status firms went up. pic.twitter.com/t7xZqbCycM

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

Now, @SecScottBessent has ordered an agency-wide probe into potential fraud stemming from the 8(a) contracting program which drains billions from taxpayers, military, & real small businesses. Sunlight is coming & the era of racial pass-through contracting is coming to an end. pic.twitter.com/jYfmoVIuIH

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent addressed the 8(a) fraud issue, stating, “Treasury will not tolerate the fraudulent misuse of federal contracting programs. These initiatives must benefit legitimate small businesses that deliver measurable value to the government and the public.”

Schweizer hints at the needed reforms: 

1. Congress needs to investigate the program and subpoena ALL contractors suspected of fraud

2. Every agency that has 8(a) contracts needs to audit those contracts (start with the Pentagon!)

3. The rules need to be rewritten to get rid of DEI focus, level the playing field, and close the “pass-through” loopholes

⚖️ Here’s what needs to happen to end the 8(a) waste, fraud, and abuse once and for all:
1. Congress needs to investigate the program and subpoena ALL contractors suspected of fraud
2. Every agency that has 8(a) contracts needs to audit those contracts (start with the Pentagon!)… pic.twitter.com/OnbcfsrpKr

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) November 26, 2025

Bessent’s comments are a clear signal that major reforms aimed at shutting down the Beltway parasites who’ve been gaming the 8(a) program through toxic DEI loopholes near.

Federalist senior contributor Benjamin Weingarten chimed in on X, saying, “The more you look at the DEI Industrial Complex, the more you realize it’s not just a destroyer of civil rights masquerading as a protector of them, but a massive multibillion dollar grift.”

The more you look at the DEI Industrial Complex, the more you realize it’s not just a destroyer of civil rights masquerading as a protector of them, but a massive multibillion dollar grift.

The rampant fraudulence and corruption under guise of virtue and justice is deplorable.… https://t.co/vRyC3AlYKR

— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) November 26, 2025

Weingarten ended with, “The rampant fraudulence and corruption under guise of virtue and justice is deplorable.”

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service warned earlier the same day as Bloomberg’s report that the Brits are hellbent on discrediting Trump in order to undermine his latest peace efforts for resolving the conflict from which they profit.

Bloomberg shared what it claimed to be the transcripts of calls between Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin’s top foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov as well as between Ushakov and Putin’s other advisor Kirill Dmitriev about the Ukrainian peace process. The gist of the Witkoff-Ushakov call was Witkoff’s proposal to have Putin suggest a Gaza-like 20-point peace deal for Ukraine during an upcoming call with Trump while the Ushakov-Dmitriev one implied that the leaked draft was Russian-influenced.

Ushakov declined to comment on his talks with Witkoff but said that “Somebody tapped, somebody leaked, but not us” whereas Dmitriev flat-out described his purported call with Ushakov as “fake”. For his part, Trump defended Witkoff’s alleged “coaching” of Ushakov on how Putin should deal with him by reminding everyone “That’s what a dealmaker does. You got to say, ‘Look, they want this – you got to convince them with this.’ That’s a very standard form of negotiations.”

As regards the possibility that the draft framework was Russian-influenced, the notion of which has been pushed by the legacy media to discredit the proposed mutual compromises therein, that was already debunked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as National Security Advisor, said that “The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”

Therefore, neither transcript is scandalous even if their contents were accurately reported, yet the question arises of who might have tapped and leaked these calls. Intriguingly, earlier the same day that Bloomberg later published their report, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service warned that the UK “aims to undermine Trump’s efforts to resolve the conflict by discrediting him.” Readers will recall the UK’s role in Russiagate, which they conspired with the CIA, FBI, and the Clinton camp to cook up to against him.

Seeing as how they can no longer collude in this way with their three prior conspirators, the UK might therefore have resorted to leaking those two calls with Ushakov that they might have tapped (possibly among many others) as a last-ditch attempt to discredit the latest unprecedented progress towards peace. This provocation might also have been meant to make Trump panic and fire Witkoff out of fear of another Russiagate 2.0 investigation if this scandal helps the Democrats flip Congress next year.

Firing Witkoff, who’s been central to the recent progress towards peace, could ruin the process right at its most pivotal moment as Zelensky is reportedly considering meeting with Trump very soon to finalize the details of the US-mediated peace framework with Russia. By holding firm, Trump is therefore obstructing efforts to ruin everything that he’s achieved thus far on a Russian-Ukrainian peace deal and consequently revive the Russiagate hoax for helping the Democrats during next year’s midterms.

Accordingly, Bloomberg’ Russian-US leaks can be considered a British intelligence operation for derailing the peace process and perpetuating the conflict from which the UK profits, not to mention meddling in the midterms by giving a fake news-driven boost to the Democrats. Trump revealed that Witkoff will meet with Putin on Monday and might even be joined by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who helped negotiate the Gaza deal, so more British provocations are expected out of desperation to ruin their talks.

Oil prices are steady this morning near one month lows, after a tempestuous few days swinging around Russia peace deal headlines.

US President Donald Trump said “there are only a few remaining points of disagreement,” as he sent negotiators to more meetings, while the Ukrainian leader’s chief of staff said talks in Geneva had laid a “good foundation.”

Goldman said a peace deal may shave off about $5 a barrel from its base-case forecast of $56 next year.

“That would put Brent in 2026 in the low $50s,” analyst Daan Struyven told Bloomberg TV.

API reported a lackluster set of inventory data that calmed the market too…

API

• Crude -1.86mm

• Cushing

• Gasoline +539k

• Distillates +753k

DOE

• Crude +2.774mm

• Cushing -68k

• Gasoline +2.513mm

• Distillates +1.147mm

US Crude stocks rose for the 3rd time in the last four weeks as did product inventories…

Source: Bloomberg

… while Cushing stocks continue to test ‘tank bottoms’…

Source: Bloomberg

US Crude production continues to hover near record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI is hovering around $58, near one month lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Much of Russia’s oil and fuel is subject to heavy Western sanctions, with US restrictions on the two biggest producers kicking in last week. However, China, India and Turkey have been eager buyers of the discounted crude, so the impact on global prices from any lifting of curbs is hard to gauge.

“Minute adjustments between the US, Russia, Ukraine and the EU on proposed peace deals have been carefully digested by the market,” Standard Chartered analysts including Emily Ashford wrote in a note.

“Any positive signs of collaboration or agreement have resulted in short-term sell-offs, while the dialing-back of enthusiasm has bolstered prices.”

Oil has retreated by more than a fifth since the middle of June as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies restored barrels, while producers outside of the group also pumped more. Worldwide crude supply is expected to exceed demand by a record 4 million barrels a day next year, the International Energy Agency forecast this month.

As chatter about an AI-driven market bubble grows louder across Wall Street, with nearly half of BofA’s Fund Manager Survey respondents calling the AI/data-center boom a bubble, UBS analysts are out with a note insisting there is plenty more bubble-blowing ahead. 

UBS analyst Andrew Garthwaite wrote that his bullish target for the MSCI AC World is 1,090 by end-2026 (+11%). But he noted that if GenAI delivers even half the productivity surge that late-1990s Tech was believed to produce, the S&P 500 could “easily” justify 7,000.

“We think Gen AI – ‘the steam engine of the mind’ – will increase productivity more than TMT did back in the late 1990s,” Garthwaite told clients. 

He continued, “We also now have all 7 preconditions for a bubble that we are not yet in (historically, the P/E at a bubble peak has been 45x-72x on 12-month trailing earnings for 30-43% of global market cap versus Mag 6 today on 33x).” 

Garthwaite pointed to a previous analysis in the UBS Global Economics and Strategy Outlook that shows today’s market performance patterns are similar to those in March 1998. 

“We also highlight that we believe we are far removed from any of the major catalysts that mark a bubble peak,” he said. 

The analyst continued:

We think there is more justification for a bubble (which we are not yet in) to form than any of the many others we have seen owing to the uniquely quick adoption rate of Gen AI and the threat of monetisation of government debt (which would lead to a move from nominal to real assets). We see at least a 35% chance of a bubble fully forming, and that would justify 1090 MSCI AC World.

Other factors that are supportive for equities: i) The well-behaved nature of US wage growth (this allows the Fed to be proactive if necessary); ii) the historical performance of equities when we just miss a bear market (2 years later up 43% on average versus 34.6% so far) or when the Fed cut and there is no recession (up 17% a year later); and iii) it is too early to call an end to AI or Tech+ outperformance. The P/E of Tech+ relative to the market is close to its norm, earnings growth is expected to be better than the market until Q2 27, and earnings revisions are better than the market. There are many other supports such as hyperscalers being able to increase capex by c40% before capex is above 2025 operating cash flow, with ICT investment as a % of GDP still at average levels.

Near term, there is a risk of ongoing consolidation continuing. In early November, UBS Risk Appetite had been at a 5-year high and CTA positioning at an 8-year high. These indicators are normalising but are still above average; however, we would be surprised if the sell-off extended by another 5%.

Most important charts from Garthwaite’s note:

Bubble preconditions are all in place … the only missing ingredient is looser monetary policy.

The audience at the UBS European conference held on November 11 was asked: “Are we in a bubble?” 

Here’s how they responded…

“In my opinion, the justification for a bubble to form is better than any of the many other bubbles that I have seen during the past 38 years doing global strategy,” Garthwaite said. 

Far removed from the peak of a bubble in terms of valuation or catalysts…

ZeroHedge Pro subs can read the full UBS note in the usual place. Notably, the bank’s position contrasts sharply with our earlier reporting:

• Fund Manager Survey: Most See AI As A Bubble, Are Done With Massive CapEx Spending, And Love EMs In 2026

• The Stunning Math Behind The AI Vendor Financing “Circle Jerk”

• Oracle Is First AI Domino To Fall After Barclays Downgrades Its Debt To Sell

• AI Megacaps Throw Off New Warning Lights — Or New Fuel — Depending on Your Religion

Meanwhile…

• Hedge Funds Unleash Stock-Buying Frenzy, Cover Tech Shorts

In short, it depends on which institutional desk you read – there’s clearly a gap in views about where we are in the bubble cycle. UBS believes the current phase could extend for a few years, a bullish scenario that would coincide with President Trump’s affordability push for low- to middle-income households during the midterm election cycle, while higher-income households continue to benefit from market gains: a perfect scenario.