Military analysts have told the Financial Times that even if President Trump decides to approve US Tomahawk transfers to Ukraine, this will have limited impact on the trajectory of the war, given especially that a mere dozens will be available to send.

The report also suggests that the US is involved in too many conflicts at once, and that Pentagon stockpiles of advanced weapons are being depleted.

Trump started this week by issuing more ambiguous and vague statements on the Tomahawk issue. On Monday he had said Tomahawks are a “very offensive weapon,” noting, “honestly, Russia does not need that.” He hinted he ‘might’ pull the trigger on this escalation, amid Moscow warnings and threats.

FT found that out of over 4,000 Tomahawk missiles in the US arsenal, only “a few” could be given to Ukraine:

Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank, estimated in a recent war game that the US had 4,150 Tomahawks in total. However, the US would probably be able to supply only a few to Ukraine.

This is in light of the fact that, out of the 200 the Pentagon has procured since 2022, it has already fired more than 120, according to defense experts. The defense department has requested funding for only 57 more Tomahawks in its 2026 budget. Washington would probably also need Tomahawks for any strike on Venezuelan soil.

Again, this reference to Venezuela is interesting, at a moment of unprecedented American military build-up in the southern Caribbean near the Latin American country’s coast. The US has also been expending its missiles on defending Israel, which happened at an increased pace especially over the past year.

Another Washington-based US military analyst put a number to how many Tomahawks American could afford to hand over:

Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security think-tank, said Washington could spare some 20 to 50 Tomahawks for Ukraine, “which will not decisively shift the dynamics of the war”.

While the long-range missiles could complement Ukraine’s own long-range attack drones and cruise missiles “in large complex salvos to greater effect”, they would “still will be a very limited capability . . . certainly not enough to enable sustained, deep attacks against Russia”, they added.

And of course, the understated if not unspoken part is that all of this risks WW3 with Russia, something that Trump has repeatedly and openly voiced that he wants to seek to avoid at all costs.

On Monday former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a chilling response which spelled out that this “could end badly for everyone… most of all, for Trump himself,” according to a translation of his Telegram post.

“It’s been said a hundred times, in a manner understandable even to the star-spangled man, that it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight,” Medvedev, who serves as the Russian Security Council Deputy Chair, further noted.

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

For many years, there have been those who have been prognosticating an economic crisis – not just a recession lasting a year or two, but a full-blown Greater Depression that would eclipse any major event we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

That may appear to be an overstatement, but historically, it’s the norm for a time of major upheaval to occur every eighty years or so. And although some of us began analysing and commenting on the Greater Depression many years ago, it’s clear to all of us that we’ve now entered the leading edge of the crisis.

All of the traditional warning signs are present, and although technology has changed considerably over the millennia, human behaviour has not. We are witnessing the same symptoms that were present in major collapses of the past, going back at least as far as the Roman Empire.

We are therefore seeing not only the initial stages of an economic collapse but the concurrent events, such as an almost total corruption of the political structure, a move toward totalitarian rule, the destruction of currencies, and a loss of faith in leadership across the board. Along the way, we’re also experiencing a decline in logic and morality and an eroding sense of humanity.

That’s quite a lot to take in, yet, sorry to say; we’re only in the first stages of collapse. It will get quite a bit worse before it gets better.

As the economy begins its collapse in earnest, what we shall witness will be a population that will be unable to adapt quickly to the symptoms of the crisis as they increase in frequency and magnitude. The reaction to each will be, first, shock (an inability to comprehend that the impossible has occurred), then fear (a state of confusion and inability to adjust to rapidly-changing conditions), and finally, anger.

This last development should give pause to us all, as it’s the stage when those who have been most strongly impacted realise that there’s precious little that they can do to regain normalcy. When they find that they can’t get their hands around the necks of those who actually are to blame, they’ll take out their anger on whomever is in their proximity – each other.

So, the questions arise: Where will these problems be most prevalent? Where will the situations exist that should be avoided as much as possible, in order to minimize the likelihood that we’ll become collateral damage of the crisis?

Having studied previous similar historical periods, I can attest that this is a question that, unfortunately, requires an extensive and complex answer. However, as a rough guide, there are three considerations that will be overarching.

Regardless of any other concerns that may affect the reader individually, all persons would do well to stay clear (as much as possible) from the following:

First World Countries

Since 1945, the First World countries (the US, UK, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) have led the world in both prosperity and power. Under the driving force of the US, they’ve created not only the advances of the last eighty years but also the rot that has led to the current crisis. As such, these countries are not only the countries where we’re seeing the most dramatic oppression of people; they will also experience the most precipitous fall economically, politically, and sociologically.

Although these countries have, until recently, seemed to be the most attractive locations in which to live, that condition has now begun a reversal, and in the coming years, they’ll represent the very nexus of decline. As such, they’ll become the most unpredictable and even the most dangerous places to be.

Conversely, the choicest countries in which to live will be those countries where change will be minimal. Those countries where the populations and governments have been relatively unambitious over the last half century or more, will be the locations that are the least likely to change dramatically during the crisis. That one fact speaks loudly to the reader’s economic, political, and social well-being in this period.

Cold Climates

The colder a location is, the less hospitable it will be in a crisis. When governments collapse economically and seemingly basic amenities can no longer be paid for, politicians will look after their own needs before those of the people they are meant to represent. Simple services such as snow ploughing may be dropped from city budgets that must experience cutbacks.

More importantly, during an energy crunch, you’re likely to experience periods in which heat cannot be attained. This doesn’t mean that you will necessarily freeze to death, but it does mean that life will be much harder. In addition, produce cannot be grown in colder climates, which eliminates even the possibility of a kitchen garden in colder months.

Cities

By far, this is the riskiest of the three concerns. The more concentrated the population is the greater the risk. The larger your building, the less control you have over utilities. If the water, electricity, or heat is shut off due to energy shortages, you will have little or no recourse.

But, by far, the greatest risk in a city will be the inherent depersonalisation that exists even in the best of times. Even if you live in a very nice apartment building in a nice neighbourhood, you’re likely to be socially isolated from others. (You may not even know the people in the apartment across the hall.) People in cities tend not to help each other much at the best of times, but in a crisis, those around you can become a threat to your very existence.

Most importantly, food supplies are likely to be interrupted for indeterminate periods and, as Isaac Azimov stated, “After nine missed meals, a man will kill for food.” Even if you’re able to obtain a loaf of bread at a neighbourhood store, you may not be able to walk home with it without being waylaid. Even brief periods of interruption of food delivery to a population centre may result in a simple loaf of bread being worth killing for.

And even for those who live in prosperous neighbourhoods where the neighbours tend to be civil, poorer neighbourhoods are not so far away that their residents, if desperate, will not make the short trip to where they think others have the essentials.

Such breakdowns, as described above, tend to occur slowly, then suddenly. Those of us who have lived through city riots understand that tension builds as people attempt to maintain normal decorum, then some small event sparks off rioting. A citywide riot can go off like popcorn spontaneously. In good times, police can quell a riot in a few days or weeks, but when rioting is citywide, and the cause cannot be quickly remedied, riots can last for extended periods, potentially turning formerly-safe city streets into the equivalent of a war zone.

Of course, there’s the tendency to say, “Don’t be ridiculous – it can’t get that bad.” However, history tells us that whenever a major crisis period occurs, the above conditions almost always occur.

The reader may wish to assess his exposure to the three conditions above. Ideally, he’ll find a location to sit out the crisis – a country that’s likely to be less affected by the events that are now unfolding. He may choose a location that’s warm year-round, where food is plentiful even in harder times. And he may try to locate himself in a community of lower population density, where neighbours habitually help each other.

But regardless of what the reader chooses to do, he should be aware that the future of his well-being and that of his family may hinge on the choices he makes in the very near future.

*  *  *

The challenges described above are not hypothetical—they are unfolding now, and the pace of change is accelerating. Knowing where not to be is only part of the equation; what matters just as much is understanding the practical steps you can take today to protect yourself and your wealth before the situation deteriorates further. That’s why we’ve prepared an urgent, free PDF report: Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse. It reveals strategies to safeguard your assets, secure your freedom, and even find opportunity in the turmoil. You can access it immediately by clicking here.

Apple is reportedly shifting its focus from the unaffordable, bulky Vision Pro headset to AI-powered smart glasses, as Ray-Ban Meta continues to dominate the fast-growing smart glasses space.

A wave of new AI and AR glasses has flooded the consumer market in the second half of this year. Goldman Sachs analysts, led by Allen Chang, provided clients with a breakdown of what the next phase of the smart-glasses boom will look like.

Wave of New Launches:

• Meizu StarV Snap (AI glasses),

• Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 (AI glasses),

• Oakley Meta Vanguard (AI glasses),

• Meta Ray-Ban Display (AR glasses),

• and HTC Vive Eagle (AI glasses).

Another round of launches this month:

• INMO GO3 and RayNeo Air 4 AR glasses will be released in Oct 2025. INMO GO3 will come with a longer battery life as a result of new hardware design solutions, with enhanced AI features.

• RayNeo’s Air 4 AR glasses will be the first product after their announced collaboration with audio player Bang & Olufsen.

AR glasses pipeline: New models in Oct and Dec

AI glasses pipeline: New models in Nov

AR / AI glasses price and shipments trends

Specification of recent AI / AR smart glasses

Ray-Ban Meta’s shipments have been leading. 

Related:

• There’s Something Odd About Meta’s New Ray-Ban AR Glasses…

Hmm.

Important to note: Apple’s Vision Pro was an outright flop (read here & here). Meta, on the other hand, has been dominating the market with its Ray-Ban smart glasses – a trend we believe will continue with the next iteration featuring an integrated AR display. 

Authored by Alfred Bui via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Australian Climate Service (ACS) says it did not scrutinise data in a Climate Council report that underpinned last month’s National Climate Risk Assessment.

The Assessment, released in mid-September, was the first of its kind and warned of a dangerous future for Australia if climate change was not dealt with.

Questions on the Assessment were put forward by Liberal Party Senator Dean Smith during a Senate Estimates hearing featuring the heads of the ACS.

The Assessment contained alarming figures, including the conclusion that 1.5 million Australians would be impacted by rising seas by 2050, and that property values could plunge $611 billion (US$398 billion) by 2050, and $770 billion by 2090.

While the report was welcomed by climate advocacy groups and other organisations, it also attracted criticisms, with some alleging that it exaggerated risks and amounted to a scare campaign.

Reviewed But Not Scrutinised

As the hearing progressed, Smith noted that the Assessment relied on a 2019 report by the Climate Council, a non-profit organisation that advocates for stronger climate action.

He then questioned asked ACS representatives whether any government agencies had assessed the accuracy of the Climate Council’s work.

In response, Judith Landsberg, ACS general manager, said her agency did not scrutinise the report.

“We had a policy and economy reference group that reviewed all of the evidence that went into the economic assessment,” she said.

“It’s normal scientific practice to collect evidence from a range of previous studies. So they were not involved in assessing the work … for the Climate Council report.

“Part of their role was to review the report and ensure it was reflected accurately.

Smith then pointed out that not examining the Climate Council’s accuracy was a key matter of interest, as the document was referred to several times in the Assessment.

Landsberg said that was “normal scientific practice.”

“It’s a normal scientific practice to cite previous reports without … going back and checking the accuracy of those reports,” she said.

The response prompted the Liberal senator to probe further.

“That doesn’t sound scientific. Excuse me, I’m not a scientist, but that doesn’t sound scientific to me,” Smith said.

Landsberg said her agency had reviewed the Climate Council report and approved its inclusion in the Assessment, but that process did not necessarily involve scrutinising data.

“What is assessed as the preponderance of evidence, and the way that the evidence was synthesised was reviewed by our economy and policy reference group, which included officials from Treasury, from APRA [Australian Prudential Regulation Authority], from the climate change authority and a number of academics,” she said.

Question Over Why Impending 2030 Climate Harm Estimate Not Included

At the same time, Smith asked the ACS why the Assessment did not include the Climate Council’s 2030 estimate that property value losses could reach $571 billion—over $110 billion a year for the next five years from 2025.

Landsberg said that for the sake of “consistency” the Assessment often used 2050 and 2090 scenarios, rather than try to model a 2030 scenario.

“It’s consistent with the other facts and impacts that were cited in the overview report, so [this is] consistency across systems and across different points of evidence,” she said.

Landsberg’s remarks were disputed by Smith, who noted that the omitted information was only a few words long and would not affect the so-called “consistency.”

The Liberal senator then questioned the reliability of the 2030 scenario, saying the figures did not convince him.

“A 2019 report … suggests that Australian property values are going to fall by $571 billion in the next five years.

“To put that in context, that’s $114 billion a year. And assuming about 9.8 million households across Australia, this report is suggesting that Australian household values are going to fall in the order of $11,600 each year for the next five years,” Smith said. “That’s just not scientific. That’s just not believable.”

Landsberg noted that the figures in the report were not predictions of what would happen in the future.

“It is not a prediction. None of this is a prediction. It is an assessment of potential impacts which potentially could be avoided by adaptation and intervention,” she said.

 Hamas returned just four of 28 hostages’ bodies on Monday, upon releasing all remaining living hostages. But Israeli leaders have condemned what they call a serious breach of what was agreed to in the Trump-brokered ceasefire deal.

The Israeli military has so far confirmed the identities of at least two of them – Guy Illouz from Israel and Bipin Joshi, a student from Nepal. Hamas indicated Tuesday it plans to hand over four more of the deceased in late evening hours.

Israel is now saying it will not reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Wednesday and will also take the punitive step of reducing the flow of aid into the territory, until Hamas follows through with returning all of the deceased.

The Red Cross has been warning it could take “much more time” to retrieve the remains of all the hostages due to the extreme conditions inside the Strip.

Some of the families of the hostages which have not been returned are calling on the government to put the Gaza deal on hold until they are returned.

Thus this appears to the be first significant challenge and hurdle in the post-swap part of the deal. Likely some among the hawks and hardliners within the Israeli government want to use this as a justification for the resumption of the war.

But Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to want to provoke Trump, who has boasted that the deal will stick and that this marks a new dawn in the Middle East.

As for Israel not reopening Rafah, per what was agreed, the consensus within the IDF is that Hamas hasn’t made a significant effort to retrieve the bodies.

Hamas accused of a “blatant breach”…

Hamas will release only 4 of the 28 hostage bodies — a blatant breach of the ceasefire deal.
Even in death, they break their word.https://t.co/lNASHpXPWc pic.twitter.com/zUQMjDPR9X

— Trisha Posner (@trishaposner) October 13, 2025

“The moves followed assessments by Israeli defense officials that Hamas has not made significant efforts to return the remaining bodies of the hostages and amid rising anger among their families, with the main group representing them demanding that the ceasefire agreement’s implementation be halted until their loved ones are returned,” Times of Israel writes.

As for the other two bodies handed over, Hamas has said they are 53-year old Yossi Sharabia and 22-year old military officer Cpt. Daniel Perez. Egypt is said to be assisting in the retrieval of the remaining hostages’ remains.

Elon Musk’s xAI is setting its sights on something that could revolutionize everything from video games to AI-humanoid robots: “world models.”

These next-generation artificial intelligence systems promise not just to read about the world but to understand it – to reason about gravity, motion, and cause and effect in a way that large language models never could.

Large language models (LLMs) excel at statistical patterning in text. “World models” aim at something deeper: they learn compact internal representations of how environments evolve over time, so an agent can imagine futures, evaluate them, and choose actions – before touching the real world. Foundational work by David Ha and Jürgen Schmidhuber showed how a learned generative model can compress visual environments and power a lightweight policy; the agent effectively practices inside its own learned simulator, FT reports.

If successful, world models could enable:

• Smarter humanoid robots,

• Fully simulated 3D environments, and

• AI-assisted design tools that blend text, image, and motion understanding.

Nvidia recently told the Financial Times that the potential market for world models could approach the size of the entire global economy, because of how broadly they could be applied.

“What is the opportunity for world foundation models? Essentially . . . $100tn if we can make an intelligence that can understand the physical world and operate in the physical world,” said Rev Lebaredian, vice-president of Omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia.

From Words to Worlds

Unlike current video generation tools – like OpenAI’s Sora, which “generate frames of images for videos by predicting patterns learned from training data” – xAI’s world models aim for a causal understanding of physics and real-time object interaction.

This is the leap from imitation to intuition. A world model doesn’t just replay what it’s seen; it learns the rules that govern reality. That could eventually allow AI systems to plan, experiment, and adapt inside virtual environments – an essential capability for robotics, autonomous vehicles, and perhaps even digital life forms that evolve in simulation.

xAI’s near-term application is interactive 3D game generation, with Musk signaling a “great AI-generated game” on the roadmap. Games are an ideal training ground: rich physics, controllable complexity, abundant feedback loops, and safe failure. At the same time, the industry’s simulation stack is getting serious: Nvidia’s Omniverse and robotics tools let developers create digital twins and physics-accurate training stages for “physical AI.” Nvidia is also pushing foundation models for robots (e.g., GR00T/Isaac), arguing that generalist robotics is arriving as data generation and simulation pipelines scale.

These models could allow AI to move from guessing to grasping — predicting not just what should happen next in a sentence, but what will happen next in the real world. Instead of seeing frames of pixels, a world model perceives forces and trajectories, cause and effect – a physics engine for intelligence.

Here’s what makes world models different:

• Causality over correlation: Instead of predicting pixels frame-by-frame, the model learns state transitions—how objects and forces evolve—enabling planning rather than mere imitation. (Ha & Schmidhuber; Dreamer; MuZero.)

• Latent imagination: Agents can “practice” billions of steps in their internal simulators, improving data efficiency and safety before touching reality. (Dreamer; DayDreamer.)

• Bridging sim and real: Modern simulation stacks (Omniverse, Isaac) plus learned models create a virtuous cycle—generate diverse scenarios, learn robust policies, transfer to real robots with fewer surprises.

Musk’s Manhattan Project for Reality Simulation

According to the Financial Times, xAI has hired Nvidia specialists Zeeshan Patel and Ethan He, two researchers with experience developing simulation-based AI. Nvidia’s own Omniverse platform has been a testbed for this technology, enabling digital twins of real environments to train both AIs and robots.

 xAI is on a hiring spree. Its listings call for engineers in image and video generation to join an “omni team” focused on “magical AI experiences beyond text.” Salaries range from $180,000 to $440,000, signaling the level of technical expertise the company expects.

It’s even seeking a “video games tutor” — someone who will train Grok to design games and help users “explore AI-assisted game design,” for $45 to $100 an hour.

Musk has teased that xAI will release a “great AI-generated game before the end of next year.”

Not everyone is convinced. Building accurate, scalable world models requires enormous amounts of data — video, robotic telemetry, sensor streams — and collecting it is slow and expensive.

Even within the gaming industry, some see limits. Michael Douse, head of publishing at Baldur’s Gate 3 studio Larian, argued this week that AI can’t fix the industry’s core problem: “leadership [and] vision.” The industry doesn’t need “more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops,” he said, “but rather more expressions of worlds that folks are engaged with, or want to engage with.”

Still, Nvidia recently told the Financial Times that the potential market for world models could be almost as large as the global economy itself – an audacious claim that underscores the scale of expectation.

h/t Capital.news

Authored by Madison Fossa via The College Fix,

Arguing that preventable and chronic diseases can be ratcheted back through diet, nutritional health and lifestyle choices, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has directed medical programs to embed nutrition education into curricula and testing.

“Every future physician should master the language of prevention before they even touch a stethoscope,” he said in announcing the initiative recently.

“In the future, doctors won’t just prescribe drugs, they’ll be able to prescribe diets as well.”

The directive comes as the Department of Health and Human Services works to develop updated U.S. dietary guidelines, expected to be released by December.

The Health Department, along with the Department of Education, has tasked all medical programs across the nation with adding nutrition education into curricula, medical licensing exams, residency requirements, and board certification, according to a news release. 

Kennedy, in a video announcing the development, said poor nutrition takes over one million American lives per year through “diet-related illnesses.” 

He wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that nothing is being done to address this.

“Accrediting bodies and medical organizations look the other way, declining to set clear requirements. We train physicians to wield the latest surgical tools, but not to guide patients on how to stay out of the operating room in the first place,” Kennedy wrote.

A news release announcing the new requirements stated that while “recent Association of American Medical Colleges data shows that all U.S. medical schools claim to cover nutrition, other studies show the majority of medical students report receiving fewer than two hours of instruction.”

“Research published in 2024 documents that 75% of U.S. medical schools have no required clinical nutrition classes, and only 14% of residency programs have a required nutrition curriculum.”

“Future physicians must graduate prepared to prevent disease—by assessing risk, guiding lifestyle change, providing nutritional counseling, educating patients and addressing environmental factors, with nutrition education as the most proven and powerful tool,” Kennedy stated in his op-ed.

Dr. Joe Kosterich, a well-known medical expert, said he believes the effort is a bipartisan one.

He said he agrees that Kennedy has correctly identified the food chain as a significant contributor to ill health. Furthermore, Kosterich said that in his own experience, nutrition is given very little attention in medical school, which he equates to mechanics not knowing what fuel is best for a car. 

Using medical schools as the starting point for a reformation of nutrition education is a good start, according to Kosterich, but added that current doctors should not be neglected either; they need this fundamental knowledge as much as their successors.

Med school representatives at the University of Pennsylvania and UC San Diego did not respond to requests from The College Fix for comment.

Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley and other top business leaders are “terrified” over China’s breakneck technological advancements, warning that the Asian superpower’s innovations could crush American companies if they don’t act fast, according to a stunning report from The Telegraph.

Farley, after touring Chinese factories, was left reeling by the cutting-edge tech packed into their vehicles – including self-driving software and facial recognition systems [zh: yikes] “Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned, per The Telegraph.

The Chinese aren’t just outpacing U.S. car companies.

Greg Jackson, head of British energy supplier Octopus, described a jaw-dropping visit to a “dark factory” churning out mobile phones with barely a human in sight. “We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” Jackson told the outlet.

“The process was so heavily automated that there were no workers on the manufacturing side, just a small number who were there to ensure the plant was working. You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad.”

Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest scrapped plans to build electric vehicle powertrains after witnessing China’s dominance firsthand. “We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford,” Forrest told The Telegraph.

Forrest described futuristic factories where robots rise from the floor, assembling trucks with zero human involvement. “I can take you to factories [in China] now, where you’ll basically be alongside a big conveyor and the machines come out of the floor and begin to assemble parts,” the titan said. “And you’re walking alongside this conveyor, and after about 800, 900 metres, a truck drives out. There are no people – everything is robotic.”

The humanoid robotics market could explode into a $5 trillion industry by 2050, driven by supply chains, maintenance, and support networks, with Morgan Stanley analysts predicting a surge in adoption by the late 2030s. Over 1 billion humanoids could be in use by 2050, with 90% in industrial and commercial roles.

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, an early OpenAI backer, predicts a robotics breakthrough akin to ChatGPT within two to three years, envisioning robots that can chop vegetables or wash dishes.

China’s Unitree is already dominating, claiming 60% of the global quadruped robot market, leaving American players like Boston Dynamics scrambling to catch up. But there’s hope on the horizon: Tesla’s humanoid bots could give American consumers a fighting chance against China’s robotics juggernaut in the coming years.

Authored by Aaron Kheriaty via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A recent article in MIT Technology Review carries the strange ­title, “Ethically sourced ‘spare’ human bodies could revolutionize medicine.” Three Stanford biologists and ethicists argue for the use of so-called bodyoids in science and medicine. This infelicitous term refers to hypothetical modified human bodies created from stem cells – bodies that have been genetically altered so that they lack brains, and thus, presumably, are without consciousness. The authors acknowledge that we do not yet have the technical capability to create such beings, but recent advances in stem cells, gene editing, and artificial uteruses “provide a pathway to producing living human bodies without the neural components that allow us to think, be aware, or feel pain.”

Strictly speaking, artificial uteruses are not necessary for the development of bodyoids. Such a reprogrammed embryo could ­theoretically be created in a lab and implanted in a woman’s uterus, as is done with IVF. But the notion that an entity regarded as subhuman should be born from a human mother seems too gruesome even for these bioethical pioneers to contemplate.

The authors admit that many will find the prospect of bodyoids disturbing, but they argue that a “potentially unlimited source” of “spare” human bodies will be immensely useful and should be pursued. We could, for example, harvest the organs of these ­presumably nonsentient humans and conduct experiments on them in order to test drugs and other medical interventions. The authors even suggest that it would be more ethical to do drug testing on humans who cannot feel pain, because they lack nervous systems, than on animals that can feel pain. There are other potential benefits for animal species as well, they aver, since we could use animal bodyoids to avoid causing pain and suffering in the cows and pigs we slaughter for food.

Human bodyoids are not entirely within the realm of science fiction. Scientists have recently produced “embryoids,” or “synthetic ­embryos,” from reprogrammed stem cells, without the use of sperm and eggs. Embryoids are living entities that seem to develop as human embryos do but that presumably lack the capacity for full human development. (We do not know for sure that they do, as they are typically destroyed after fourteen days, before the heart and brain have begun to develop.) Just as advocates for embryoids argue that their innovation allows us to avoid the ethical problems associated with embryo-destructive research, so advocates for bodyoids propose to provide us with “ethically sourced ‘spare’ human bodies.”

The Christian ethicist Oliver O’Donovan described “a position too familiar to technological society, that of having achieved something that we do not know how to describe responsibly.” In the case of bodyoids, I submit, advocates do not know how to describe them at all. One can hear them stumbling over their words and fumbling with descriptors.

Bodyoids are human bodies. Or rather, human-like bodies. But not human in any morally relevant sense – they lack brains, after all. But sufficiently human that we can harvest their organs for transplant and conduct experiments on them to see how “real” humans would respond to drugs. Indeed, they are of interest to scientists precisely because they are so, well, so very human. But not really. For the most part.

Well, then, what are human bodyoids? [ZH: Ask the dead guy from Kill Bill]

*   *   *

Long before ethicists began to contemplate living – or at least, undead – human creatures who lack all brain function, such entities were explored in science fiction and horror films. The precise name for such a creature is zombie. The concept has roots in Haitian folklore, where the term is zonbi, referring to a person who has been brought back from the dead through magical means to serve as a mindless slave. The problem with creating zombies, our stories suggest, is that they always come back to bite us. Creating them ­diminishes our humanity.

Are not zombies precisely what advocates of bodyoids want to conjure into existence—a mindless slave, biologically and physiologically human in all relevant ways, that can nevertheless be experimented upon, harvested, and killed with impunity? Indeed, by our current definition of brain death, such an entity cannot actually be killed because it is already dead. In this, too, it resembles a zombie. One can easily imagine a B-movie horror feature titled “Revenge of the Bodyoids.”

The concept of brain death – defined as total cessation of all brain function – arguably paved the way for advocates of the ­creation and exploitation of bodyoids. As the authors of the article point out, “Recently we have even begun ­using for experiments the ‘animated cadavers’ of people who have been declared legally dead, who have lost all brain function but whose other organs continue to function with mechanical assistance.” What are we to make of the term “animated cadaver,” which seems to express a manifest contradiction?

Advocates for the brain-death criterion argue that death is the disintegration of the unified organism, and the brain is responsible for maintaining organismic unity. Liberal bioethicists also argue that, without consciousness, though there may be a living human being, there is no morally or legally relevant “personhood.” But these arguments do not withstand scrutiny. The brain modulates the coordinated activity of the other organs; it does not create that coordinated activity. That is accomplished by the organic formal unity of the body as a whole—which modern science, with its reductionistic analysis of the body into component parts, fails to discern.

Although a brain-dead patient has no functional electrical activity of the brain, the patient continues, with the help of machines, to breathe and to circulate blood. The organs continue functioning and remain fresh for transplant. The body of a brain-dead person on a ventilator maintains homeostasis and ­coordinated unity of functions: The kidneys make urine; the liver makes bile; the immune system fights off infections; wounds heal; hair and fingernails grow; endocrine organs secrete hormones; broken bones ­heal and broken skin repairs; children grow proportionately as they age. Pregnant mothers can even gestate babies after brain death, sometimes for months. Consider the contradictions and manifest absurdities in this headline: “Brain-dead Virginia woman dies after giving birth.”

*   *   *

To all appearances, a patient in this state is not, in fact, dead. Some medical ethicists have therefore—quite sensibly—questioned the validity of “brain death” as a criterion for death. The brain-death criterion was developed by a Harvard Medical School committee in 1968 to free up ICU beds and promote organ ­transplantation—with death itself forming the foundation of the organ-transplant enterprise. For organ transplantation rests upon a paradox, perhaps an outright contradiction: a “dead” donor whose body, with its precious organs, is still living.

After a person is pronounced brain dead, if the family refuses transplantation or if the organs are deemed unsuitable for transplant, the following situations emerge. Once the ventilator is turned off, the patient’s heart may continue beating for several minutes, or even a few hours (especially if the patient is a newborn). Surely we would not send such a “dead” patient to the morgue, cremate her, or bury her while the heart still beats. Should we then give a drug, like potassium chloride, to stop the heart of the supposedly already dead patient? In some cases, we wait a day or two to shut off the machines of a patient who is pronounced brain dead, to allow family to travel and be at the bedside when the ventilator is discontinued and, eventually, the heart stops. Will the family witness the death of the patient, or merely the cessation of efforts to animate an already dead corpse? If the latter, why would family members want to be present for that?

Considering these oddities and absurdities, which stem from the legal fiction that brain death is the death of the person, “total brain failure” is a more accurate term than “brain death.” It indicates an irreversible coma, not a dead body. Perhaps such a person is “better off dead,” as many people assume. Certainly, it is ethically justifiable in such a situation, where meaningful recovery of human functioning is impossible, to discontinue life-extending measures such as ventilators or antibiotics. Even so, such a person is not yet dead.

Indeed, advocates of bodyoids, which would similarly lack all brain function, do not argue that a bodyoid is dead – merely that it is not human. Bodyoids are of interest precisely because they are living and human in all scientifically relevant respects. To their credit, the Stanford authors do mention the following danger: “Perhaps the deepest [ethical] issue is that bodyoids might diminish the human status of real people who lack consciousness or sentience” – such as those in a coma or babies born without a cerebral cortex (a severely disabling condition known as anencephaly).

However, the authors go on to dismiss this concern. They argue that, like bodyoids, a sufficiently detailed mannequin would look much like us; that does not make it human. But nobody is proposing scientific experiments on mannequins, and for good reason. However realistic they might appear, they are not human, and thus, unlike a bodyoid, they have no value for ­science and medicine.

A bodyoid’s value for science and medicine lies precisely in what it would be, which is not a zombie, not a dead person, not a mannequin that mimics the human form. It would be a profoundly disabled human being, designed and created to be profoundly ­disabled—a ­vulnerable human being so ­totally defenseless and voiceless that it could be exploited with ­impunity.

If this is the case, we would endorse this macabre project only if we ourselves had become, so to speak, moral zombies.

Originally published on First Things, reposted from the Brownstone Institute

President Trump has announced another military strike against a boat off Venezuela suspected of trafficking drugs on Tuesday, which killed all six people on board.

Trump stated that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” but did not name any organization or issue specific evidence to back this, only releasing unclassified video of the strike.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” the US President said on his Truth Social platform.

“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed,” he added.

This marks the fifth known strike on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent months, with the prior four instances having killed 21 people total. A prior strike had been disclosed by the Pentagon in early October.

President Trump at the start of this month formally notified Congress this week that the US was entering a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

Trump’s rationale for the attacks in his memo to Congress stated that the cartels are “non-state armed groups” whose actions smuggling drugs “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.

In particular the administration has essentially declared war on the Tren de Aragua cartel, and says it is cooperating with the Maduro government, which Caracas has rejected, and so the presence of the cartel’s members in the US is a “predatory incursion” by a foreign nation.

But human rights monitors, and a tiny minority in Congress, have questioned the legality of such deadly military attacks – especially given there has appeared no attempt to warn or intercept the boats.

Newly posted video of the Tuesday strike shows a fast-moving missile enter the frame and utterly destroy the small vessel:

Breaking news:

President Trump announces that another kinetic attack has been carried out, eliminating six male narco-terrorists off the coast of Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/jV2sHZmlud

— GG (@LuillyDRR) October 14, 2025

Back when he was briefed by the DOD on an initial strike, Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “They have offered no positive identification that the boat was Venezuelan, nor that its crew were members of Tren de Aragua or any other cartel.”

Such pushback hasn’t abated these operations, at a moment of strong Pentagon build-up of assets off Venezuela, but now they’re becoming somewhat routine.