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Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Over the next decade, the US government plans to spend nearly $1 trillion on its nuclear arsenal — with the actual cost certain to run even higher than that. The huge outlay is driven in part by the sheer size of America’s doomsday-weapon collection, which comprises an estimated 3,700 deployed or stockpiled nuclear warheads, not counting another 1,500 that are purportedly “retired” and awaiting dismantlement.

Though Americans have been conditioned to think it’s reasonable to maintain such a large arsenal, the idea that thousands of warheads are required to deter nuclear aggression rests on flawed thinking about the nature of deterrence. While defense contractors and military bureaucracies enriched by the status quo will tell you otherwise, the truth is that an adequate arsenal of nuclear warheads can be measured not in thousands, but mere dozens.

During the Cold War, two successive doctrines guided nuclear war strategy. First came Massive Retaliation, which rested on the threat of a disproportionate, devastating nuclear response to either conventional or nuclear aggression. That gave way to Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), in which any nuclear attack was guaranteed to escalate to the point where both countries are completely destroyed.

Both doctrines shared a cornerstone premise -- that effective, credible deterrence requires the capability to completely destroy the opposing country. That’s the wrong yardstick. Deterrence is achieved by the ability to impose an intolerable level of retaliatory destruction on a country that’s contemplating a nuclear first-strike -- a threshold far lower than border-to-border annihilation.

For perspective, in World War II, Russia and China each suffered roughly 20 million total civilian and military deaths. The same unfathomable fatality counts that spanned several years in World War II can be achieved in mere minutes with only 20 modern nuclear warheads -- 15 striking Russian cities and only five hitting the more densely-populated cities of China, according to calculations by University of Maryland professor Steve Fetter.

If the United States chose to opt against the morally-repugnant targeting of population centers with little military significance (that is, cities similar to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), a second-strike could instead vaporize the enemy’s economy, targeting power generation, refinery complexes and vital ports (though even these nuclear attacks would inflict civilian death on a huge scale, not only from the blasts but also the economic destruction). Here, Fetter calculates 100 detonations would suffice.

The fatalities and destruction associated with either of those two targeting scenarios that pursue some level of societal devastation -- so-called “countervalue targeting” -- are well beyond what any foreign ruler would consider tolerable, suggesting that the anticipation of even one or two second-strike warheads would be sufficient to deter an adversary from striking first.

Note, this approach to deterrence, which focuses on the power to retaliate and inflict “intolerable” destruction, does not require adversaries with high moral character. It matters little whether an opposing ruler regards his citizens with loving empathy or depraved indifference. Rulers are ultimately driven by self-interest -- and no leader can expect his hold on power to survive a nuclear gamble that brings about the vaporization of cities or irreplaceable economic assets in his own country. (Indeed, there may be no “power” to hold on to.) As political scientist Kenneth Waltz wrote in a milestone 1990 paper that promoted the peacekeeping value of nuclear weapons while making the case that small arsenals are sufficient, “Rulers like to continue to rule.”

Given these realities of deterrence, the size of an adversary’s nuclear arsenal has no bearing on the appropriate size of America’s. “So long as two or more countries have second-strike forces, to compare them is pointless,” wrote Waltz. “If no state can launch a disarming attack with high confidence, force comparisons become irrelevant…beyond a certain level of capability, additional forces provide no additional coverage for one party and pose no additional threat to others.”

In contrast to countervalue targeting, “counterforce targeting” aims to inflict military defeat by destroying a large, diverse array of military targets, such as missile silos, bomber and submarine bases, command and control facilities, and conventional forces.

Counterforce-targeting is what led both America and Russia to amass far larger arsenals than that of any other nuclear-armed country. Beyond the elevated general risk associated with securing, transporting, maintaining and training with these large volumes of warheads, the mutual targeting of nuclear weapon delivery platforms pursuant to counterforce doctrine encourages first strikes -- launched out fear that an opponent’s first strike would render one’s own weapons unusable.

Aside from the heightened risk of miscalculations during crises and accidental explosions during peace, America’s outsized nuclear arsenal threatens national security in a way that has nothing to do with mushroom clouds -- by nudging the United States further along its path to financial catastrophe. As then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen warned in 2010, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” His statement came when the national debt was only about a third of its current $36.8 trillion.

Of the trillion dollars to be spent on nuclear weapons through 2034, $460 billion will be spent on a “modernization” program that encompasses warheads, missiles and silos and submarines. Of that, the Pentagon expects to spend $120 billion to replace the current generation of land-based, Minuteman III ICBMs with Sentinel ICBMs made by Northrop Grumman. Last year, the Air Force notified Congress that the Sentinel program would cost 37% more than the previous estimate, and take two years longer to implement. If the history of Pentagon weapon procurement is any guide, we can count on more such announcements in the coming years.

Considered in the context of second-strike deterrence, the Sentinel program is particularly exasperating. Given their fixed locations in satellite-observable silos, land-based ICBMs represent the most vulnerable leg in the nuclear-arms triad, which also includes bombers and submarine-launched missiles. Put another way, it’s the leg that does the least to convince a nuclear adversary that the United States has a guaranteed second-strike capacity -- which is the only strike capacity that matters. At the same time, land-based ICBMs are a magnet for enemy missiles, with one study suggesting nuclear strikes on US ICBMs could kill 300 million people across North America. 

Hiding in plain sight: Land-based ICBMs -- like this one near Monarch, Montana -- comprise the most vulnerable leg in the nuclear triad (via

In February, President Trump expressed dismay at the ongoing development of new nukes:

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

Trump’s remarks came as he expressed interest in opening new arms control negotiations with Russia and China. That’s a noble pursuit, but when a second-strike capability is all the United States needs for defense, a case can be made for blazing a unilateral path toward rational and frugal nuclear deterrence -- particularly when you consider the dangerously destabilizing nature of a huge arsenal built for counterforce targeting.

“There is no compelling military or strategic rationale for linking the size of U.S. nuclear forces to those of other nuclear weapon states,” wrote Fetter. “As long as the United States has enough survivable warheads to deter and respond to nuclear attacks, it should not matter how many weapons other countries have.” That’s not to discount the risk-reducing value of a far smaller Russian arsenal.

Ballistic missile submarines -- like the USS West Virginia -- do the most to assure an enemy of America's second-strike capability (US Navy)

Alas, any move toward a dramatically slimmer US nuclear warhead inventory will face fierce opposition from those who benefit from today’s emphasis on numerical superiority. The status quo is a prime example of the principle of “concentrated benefits and diffused costs.” Via both taxation and inflation, the $1 trillion cost of sustaining and upgrading the arsenal over the next 10 years will be spread across hundreds of millions of Americans, including many who haven’t been born yet. Shuffled into the $90 trillion the US government is projected to spend over that same period, the cost flies under the radar of everyday Americans, precluding major political opposition.

The financial benefits, on the other hand, accrue to a relatively small number of stakeholders, from arms manufacturers to Pentagon and Department of Energy bureaucracies. The enjoyment of concentrated benefits incentivizes these stakeholders to fiercely defend the status quo, deploying a formidable influence arsenal that includes lobbyists, campaign contributions, the promises of jobs in 50 states and hundreds of congressional districts, and financial sponsorship of national security think tanks that steer policy.

While those who are enriched by America’s excessive nuclear arsenal have the upper hand, the status quo is so dangerous and wasteful that Americans of all political leanings should unite in challenging it.

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe for free at starkrealities.substack.com  

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge

* * *

Both Israel and Turkey have long been the major regional players with a "hidden hand" in Syria - with both at times covertly leading the drive to weaken and overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

And now the scramble for the spoils have been on since Assad's exiting the country to Moscow on December 8. Israeli tanks and ground units have moved up toward Damascus from the South, and Turkey's "Syrian National Army" proxy fighters have been active in Aleppo province and in northern Syria.

Turkey has also reportedly been involved with the new Syrian government under al-Qaeda linked Jolani (Sharaa), establishing anti-air defense infrastructure at Syrian bases, particularly near Palmyra in the center of the country.

Illustrative, via EPA

But Israel has since December been busy bombing Syrian military sites and equipment out of existence. Syria once had to most advanced (Russian-supplied) air defense missile systems in the whole region, but now these batteries have been destroyed.

Further, there's no longer a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to man or operate sophisticated systems. This means Israel's air force has had free reign over Syria's skies. But Tel Aviv increasingly has a rival in Syria: Turkey's military.

With sectarian fighting this week resulting in dozens of deaths among Syria's Druze community, Israel has been sending 'warning' strikes, including near the presidential palace in Damascus.

Regional reports say Turkey is at the same time quietly engaging in anti-Israel operations:

Turkish fighter jets reportedly issued electronic warning signals and engaged in jamming operations late on Friday in an effort to deter Israeli aircraft operating in Syrian airspace, amid a new wave of airstrikes across the country.

The rare move came as Israeli warplanes launched attacks on multiple sites, including in the Hama and Damascus regions, drawing renewed scrutiny over ongoing violations of Syrian sovereignty.

"Turkish fighter jets issued warning signals and jammed Israeli aircraft during Tel Aviv's latest deadly bombing campaign in Syria," The New Arab writes.

The Netanyahu government has already been strongly warning Turkey against getting more deeply involved in Syria, but clearly Jolani and his HTS rulers have found their biggest backer in Erdogan.

There does seem to be confirmation coming from Israeli sources on the Turkish jamming story:

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority confirmed the Turkish interference, reporting that "Turkish aircraft are sending warning signals and jamming Israeli fighter jets to make them leave Syrian airspace."

Turkish officials have voiced increasing frustration at Israel's expanding operations in Syria, which Ankara regards as a threat to its interests and to regional stability.

Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned against Israeli strikes late this week. "In this context, Israel must put an end to its airstrikes, which harm efforts toward Syria’s unity and territorial integrity," a statement said.

Jolani and the “Syrian revolution” destroying Syria’s air defence systems and radars since 2013. https://t.co/To9c4djkZy

As for Israel's support to the Druze religious minority, many Syrians see this as but a pretext for Israeli invasion and occupation of the south - where most Druze happen to be. The ruling HTS is made up of hardline Sunnis, who consider Druze to be 'apostates' and 'heretics' - given their outlier and esoteric beliefs. 

Turkey, on the other side, has long supported Sunni interests in Syria. Erdogan has long been accused of 'neo-Ottoman' policies, also as Turkey wages war against the Kurds of northern Syria.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

It was once said that possession is nine-tenths of the law, an acknowledgement that the possessor of property generally has the advantage in keeping it. This principle has been taken to absurd extremes in some squatter cases, where people invade homes and then demand the right to stay pending long legal challenges. Today, under both our housing and immigration laws, mere occupation often appears to be nine-tenths of our laws.

Obviously, unlawful immigrants are not the same as squatters. Some of these migrants have legitimate asylum and other claims. We have to separate those meritorious cases from the vast majority with no cognizable claims. Yet, our legal system is failing the public by allowing unlawful immigrants with no meritorious claims to game the system for years and then simply vanish into the nation.

In courtrooms across the country, the nation seems trapped in a type of Squatter Syndrome, a macro version of the housing cases. The slowness of the removal process is being used to keep millions in the country indefinitely. It may prove to be President Joe Biden’s most lasting legacy, a de facto residency by simply overwhelming the system by the sheer number of unlawful entries.

For years, residents in some major cities have expressed frustration as officials threw up their hands after their homes were occupied by squatters. Even though the owners could show officers that the squatters are home invaders (including their own family pictures on the walls), they are often told to seek other housing to let the courts sort it out. That can take months or even years and the squatters play out the litigation (often with the help of some public interest groups) – only to move on to another home when they run out of appeals.

There is a sense of the same helplessness in dealing with unlawful immigration. After over eight million unlawful immigrants entered the country under Biden, Democrats are again shrugging and saying that these immigrants must be allowed to remain for years as they raise asylum and other claims that are overwhelmingly rejected.

Most unlawful immigrants immediately seek out border agents after being led across the border by coyotes and gang members. They know that, upon arrest, they would be given “notices to appear” that are years in the future and then released.

They often come across the border with printed instructions on claiming asylum.

It may be the greatest political scam ever pulled on the American people. The polls show that an overwhelming percentage of the public favors the deportation of aliens with criminal records and roughly half support mass deportations of those here unlawfully. According to a new Associated Press-NORC poll, roughly half of the country still approves of Trump’s handling of immigration.

Knowing that the public opposes such unlawful entries, politicians mouth their concerns about open borders while doing nothing to seek any change that might meaningfully increase removals.

For years, the Biden Administration claimed that it could not close the Southern border without immigration reform, including the new pathways to citizenship. Donald Trump then effectively shut down the border in a matter of weeks with the same authority that Biden had for four years. Entries are down a breathtaking 97 percent under Trump.

The record conclusively shows that Biden and the Democrats could have closed the border at any time but chose to keep it open despite daily images of waves of migrants entering the country. These same politicians knew that, once in the country, it would be practically impossible to remove a significant number of these individuals due to a court system that takes years actually to deport an individual. They become de facto resident aliens and Democrats then insist that the length of their time in the country warrants a pathway to citizenship.

After he came into office, Biden fueled this migration by negating the immigration orders of the Trump Administration, including stopping the successful Remain in Mexico policy. (It was later reinstated after legal challenges.) The Administration also resisted every major effort of border states to fill the vacuum left by lax federal enforcement, even cutting state-constructed barriers along the border.

The result was a deluge of unlawful crossings. Some border agents complained that they felt like little more than travel agents asking immigrants where they would like to go on public expense.

Trump was elected to increase deportations and he has sought to use every possible means to do so. He has met opposition at every turn from the Democrats and the courts. I have criticized the Administration in some of these cases. However, Trump is right that we need to create faster and final avenues for removal for the millions who entered during the Biden Administration.

The Congress has sought to expedite removals without such prolonged litigation.

After his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements” that ordered the increased use of “expedited removals” under a 1996 law. Prior administrations extended this law to include any apprehended person within 100 miles of the land border who cannot prove they were legally admitted to the country or have been present in the country continuously for more than 14 days.

The Trump Administration has expanded that law to anyone who cannot prove continuous presence for two years. Their removals are generally unreviewable by an immigration judge and dramatically limit judicial relief under asylum claims. These removals also come with a five-year ban on reentry or even a lifetime ban if the individual made false claims to immigration officers.

This same expedited process can be used for those who entered the country legally but overstayed their visa or who have been convicted of certain crimes.

Some 44 percent of removals were accomplished under expedited removal designations by circumventing the standard immigration hearing process. President Obama, who was called by critics “the Deporter in Chief,” expanded the use of this process.

The Trump Administration is also using the administrative removal process of anyone who is not a permanent resident who has been convicted of aggravated felonies. Such offenses actually go beyond such felonies as murder, sexual assault, and firearms offenses. They can include nonviolent misdemeanors as failure to appear in court, burglary, and document fraud.

The benefit of this process is that it does not matter how long the individual has been in the country. Only permanent residents under this system have the right to go before an immigration judge. However, there are still appeals allowed under the system. That is why more immigration judges are needed.

The Administration is also using a process called reinstatement of removal, which applies to anyone who has illegally reentered the United States. Many of these repeat offenders immediately claim asylum. While they are not entitled to an immigration hearing, they can appeal the reinstatement.

The public deserves a better system that can handle a crisis of millions of unlawful immigrants to avoid more expedited reviews and removals.

Otherwise, we become a type of squatter nation where our inefficient legal system is being used to make a mockery of our laws.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage

Authored by Jules Winnfield via CoinTelegraph.com,

What is AGI?

When the lines blur between man and machine, you’re looking at artificial general intelligence (AGI). Unlike its counterpart, artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), which is the use of AI for solving individual problem statements, AGI represents artificial intelligence that can understand, learn and apply knowledge in a way that is indistinguishable from human cognition.

AGI is still theoretical, but the prospect of artificial intelligence being able to holistically replace human input and judgment has naturally attracted plenty of interest, with researchers, technologists and academics alike seeking to bring the concept of AGI to reality. 

Yet another strand of prevailing research seeks to explore the feasibility and implications of AGI vs. ANI in a world increasingly shaped by AI capabilities. 

Indeed, while ANI has already transformed various industries, AGI’s potential goes far beyond. Imagine a world where machines can not only assist humans in their tasks but also proactively understand the drivers behind specific tasks, predict outcomes, and autonomously create innovative solutions to achieve optimal results. This paradigm shift could revolutionize healthcare, education, transportation and countless other fields.

Why is AGI so powerful?

Unlike ANI, AGI is not confined to pre-programmed tasks or predefined responses within a limited domain. Instead, it has the potential to generate and apply knowledge across various contexts.

Imagine a self-driving car powered by AGI. It can collect a passenger from a train station but also personalize the journey with custom recommendations for pit stops, sightseeing avenues or navigating unfamiliar roads to arrive at the desired destination. And because it’s a machine, AGI would not experience fatigue and would continue learning and improving at exponential speeds. 

Here’s a definition of AGI by Vitalik Buterin, who highlights the sheer potential of AGI:

The example highlights some interesting features of AGI, which include:

• Learning capability: AGI can learn from experiences and improve its performance over time without a concerted effort by human programmers to perform additional data set training. This learning is not limited to specific tasks and instead encompasses a broad spectrum of activities.

• Problem-solving skills: AGI can solve complex problems by applying logical reasoning just as a human would. This includes consideration of non-traditional variables, such as emotional impact, which can highlight an even wider range of potential outcomes.

• Adaptability: AGI can adjust to new situations and environments without explicit programming, which means it can thrive in dynamic and unpredictable settings.

• Understanding and interpretation: AGI is equipped to comprehend natural language, abstract concepts and emotional nuance, allowing for sophisticated human-machine interactions.

Did you know? Blockchain timestamps could serve as a legal memory for AGI systems, allowing future audits to determine exactly what an AGI knew — and when.

The pursuit of AGI: Where does it stand as of April 2025?

AGI is currently the science-fiction version of AI. However, while still theoretical, the sheer potential of the concept makes AGI the science fiction equivalent of artificial intelligence. 

While existing models, such as ChatGPT, are constantly evolving and improving with each day, the journey to bringing AGI to life involves overcoming significant technical challenges, such as:

• Defining the tech stack: The purely hypothetical nature of AGI makes it exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, to determine the precise nature of the technological stack required for practical implementation.

• Neural networks: Advances in deep learning have propelled this field forward, but AGI would also require specialist neural networks that mimic the human brain’s structure to process information and introduce a layer of emotion and nuance.

• Natural language processing (NLP): Significant advances are required in the field of NLP to enable machines to better understand and generate human language, incorporating nuance, emotion and complexities. This includes a more complex analysis of language syntax, semantics and context, which is still evolving in traditional machine learning models that leverage NLP. 

• Reinforcement learning: Using reward-based mechanisms to teach machines to make decisions would allow AGI to learn optimal behaviors through trial and error.

Despite advancements, creating AGI that can truly think like a human remains an elusive goal.

Did you know? DeepMind warns that not all AI risks come from the machines themselves — some start with humans misusing them. In its paper titled ‘An Approach to Technical AGI Safety and Security’, DeepMind identifies four key threats: misuse (bad actors using AI for harm), misalignment (AI knowingly going against its developer’s intent), mistakes (AI causes harm without realizing it), and structural risks (failures that emerge from complex interactions between people, organizations, or systems).

Can AGI think like a human?

The question of whether AGI can think like a human delves into the very core of human cognition. Human thinking is characterized by consciousness, emotional depth, creativity and subjectivity. While AGI can simulate certain aspects of human thought, replicating the full spectrum of human cognition is a formidable challenge.

Several dimensions of human cognition are particularly difficult to emulate:

• Consciousness and self-awareness: One of the defining traits of human thinking is consciousness, the awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings. AGI, as sophisticated as it may become, lacks the intrinsic human ability to introspect. AGI operates on an underlying set of algorithms and complex, learned patterns, without any subjectivity or genuine emotion.

• Emotional intelligence: Humans experience a wide range of emotions that influence their decisions, behaviors and interactions. While AGI can be trained to recognize and respond to such emotions, the lack of genuine emotional experience means that it cannot wholly replicate these emotions. Emotional intelligence in humans involves empathy, compassion and moral considerations, elements that are challenging to encode into machines.

• Creativity and innovation: Creativity involves generating novel ideas and solutions, often through intuitive leaps and imaginative thinking. AGI can mimic creativity by combining existing knowledge in new ways, but it lacks the intrinsic motivation and subjective insight that drive human innovation. True creativity stems from emotional experiences, personal reflections and cultural contexts, which AGI cannot authentically replicate.

Key benefits of AGI

The litmus test for AGI lies in its ability to holistically replicate a human experience. When realized, the potential benefits are enormous and stretch across various industries, spawning various aspects of daily life.

Despite its limitations, AGI is increasingly viewed as a force for good across a range of industries, including:

• Healthcare: AGI can assist in diagnosing diseases, developing personalized treatment plans and predicting customized health outcomes, leveraging a vast body of underlying training data.

• Education: It can provide customized learning experiences, tutoring and academic research support. AGI can adapt to individual learning styles and pace, enhancing educational outcomes.

• Economics: It can optimize financial models, predict market trends, and enhance productivity. It can analyze economic data to forecast market trends and guide investment decisions.

• Environmental Science: AGI can analyze climate data, model ecological impacts, and propose sustainable solutions.

Additionally, AGI’s potential extends to areas such as transportation, communication and entertainment, offering new frontiers for innovation.

Did you know? Some futurists believe AGI systems could eventually negotiate with each other autonomously using blockchain-based smart contracts — forming agreements, trading data or even co-developing solutions without human intervention.

Ethical and societal considerations

The rise of AGI raises significant ethical and societal questions. 

While powerful, AGI requires careful consideration for safe usage, which has prompted the creation of nonprofit societies, such as the AGI Society, as shown in the image below.

Fundamentally, it is crucial to address concerns such as:

• Safety: Ensuring AGI operates within safe and controlled parameters to prevent unintended consequences. This includes robust testing and the introduction of regulatory frameworks to oversee AGI deployment.

• Privacy: Protecting personal data from misuse by AGI systems. As AGI can process vast amounts of data, safeguarding privacy is paramount.

• Bias and fairness: Preventing discriminatory practices and ensuring equitable access to AGI benefits. Developers must ensure that AGI systems are free from biases that could lead to unfair treatment.

• Employment: Addressing the impact of AGI on job displacement and workforce dynamics. As AGI automates tasks, there is a need to consider its impact on employment and provide support for affected workers.

The integration of AGI into society requires a thoughtful approach to its governance, ensuring that it serves the common good and respects social values.

Can blockchain power AGI?

AGI could create computers as smart as humans, revolutionizing fields like cryptocurrency trading or market analysis. But AGI needs trust and fairness to work for everyone. Blockchain, the tech behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, offers a secure, transparent way to make this happen. 

Here’s how blockchain can supercharge AGI with crypto-inspired solutions:

• Clear training records: Blockchain works like Bitcoin’s open transaction log, recording every piece of data (e.g., crypto trading patterns) used to train AGI. This helps ensure the system is fair and free from hidden biases.
• Shared decision-making: Similar to Ethereum’s smart contracts, blockchain will allow developers, traders and users to vote on AGI’s rules, ensuring no single company controls it.
• Safe data sharing: Like crypto wallets safeguarding funds, blockchain could protect sensitive data from crypto exchanges, allowing secure sharing for AGI training without leaks.
• Rewards for fairness: Developers who build unbiased AGI, such as accurate trading predictors, could earn digital tokens, just like crypto mining rewards, encouraging ethical work.

However, ongoing challenges such as blockchain’s slow speed, delays in crypto transactions and limited storage capacity could make it hard for AGI to process data quickly or handle large datasets.

To make blockchain AGI-ready, researchers are already exploring:

• Offchain storage: Decentralized systems like InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) are used to store large files offchain, while the blockchain keeps only verifiable hashes, reducing congestion.
• Sharding and danksharding: Like Ethereum’s scalability upgrades, sharding splits data across multiple nodes, allowing AGI to process more information without slowing down the network. Also, danksharding, an advanced form of sharding being developed for Ethereum, combines rollups and data availability sampling to scale data access efficiently — ideal for real-time AGI applications.
• Data pruning: Advanced blockchain models like Decentralized Artificial Intelligent Blockchain-based Computing Network (DAIBCN) prune old or irrelevant data, keeping the system lean and optimized for high-demand tasks like AGI. DAIBCN also enables secure, distributed AI computing — blending blockchain trust with AI performance.

The future of AGI

Artificial general intelligence represents the pinnacle of AI development, promising capabilities that rival human intellect. 

While AGI can simulate aspects of human thinking, achieving true human-like cognition remains a distant goal. Consciousness, emotional depth and creativity are intrinsic to human experience and pose significant challenges for AGI. 

Nevertheless, the pursuit of AGI continues to drive innovation and reshape our understanding of intelligence. As we advance toward this frontier, it is imperative to navigate ethical considerations and societal impacts to responsibly harness AGI’s potential.

Ongoing research, identifying practical opportunities and technical requirements, and initiating dialogue across society are all essential steps to address the challenges and opportunities posed by AGI. 

The future of AGI holds promise, but it requires a balanced approach to ensure that its eventual integration into society enhances human well-being and respects ethical standards.

Via The Cradle

US President Donald Trump is facing growing scrutiny for withholding information about US military casualties resulting from the ongoing illegal military campaign in Yemen.

According to a report by The Intercept published Saturday, US Central Command (CENTCOM), the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the White House have refused to disclose how many US service members have been killed or wounded since the launch of Operation Rough Rider in March 2025.

Source: US Fleet Forces Command

The operation has involved over 1,000 US airstrikes against the Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) and killed hundreds of Yemenis, including many civilians.

Representative Ro Khanna of California criticized the White House, calling for full disclosure. "The administration should be transparent about the number of US casualties from the attacks on the Houthis," he said, referring to Ansarallah. His colleague, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, echoed the sentiment, warning that US forces should never have been put in harm’s way through unconstitutional military action lacking Congressional approval.

One recent incident underscored the risks: an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell off the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier earlier this week after the ship reportedly made a sharp turn to avoid a Yemeni missile. One sailor was injured, and the $60 million jet was lost.

When The Intercept asked the Pentagon for casualty figures, officials deflected and directed the inquiry to CENTCOM. After this CENTCOM referred the request to the White House, which has remained silent.

Under the previous administration of Joe Biden, detailed casualty and attack data from across West Asia were regularly released, The Intercept noted.

The contrast has alarmed advocacy groups. Erik Sperling of Just Foreign Policy stated, "Withholding basic information from the public makes it harder for the media to shine light on how these officials are violating one of Trump’s most broadly popular campaign promises."

The Intercept report follows an order issued by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday for the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to remain in West Asia for another week, marking the second time its deployment has been extended amid ongoing military operations against Yemen.

The U.S. government is keeping American casualty numbers for the undeclared war on Yemen secret. This is not normal. https://t.co/ExZGVllJyq

Meanwhile, Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Waltz, was dismissed this week in part for including a journalist in sensitive discussions about Yemen strikes. Waltz had also pushed for greater military action against Iran and reportedly coordinated closely with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — actions that clashed with Trump’s more cautious approach, according to administration sources.

Authored by Will Jones via The Brownstone Institute,

Top US virologist Ralph Baric engineered the Covid-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 in his lab at the University of North Carolina as part of his work in connection with the 2018 DEFUSE funding proposal. That’s the story that’s been going round the internet for some months now (and not just in alternative media) and it all looks very damning for Baric and those connected with his research.

Details of the DEFUSE project were first leaked by Major Joseph Murphy, an employee of US military research agency DARPA, in the summer of 2021 and further details of earlier drafts have come to light this month thanks to public record requests from U.S. Right to Know (USRTK).

In DEFUSE, Baric proposed to create a virus that was, to most intents and purposes, SARS-CoV-2. The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus spike protein, an order for the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, the search for a binding domain that would infect ACE2 human receptors and a requirement for a viral genome around 25% different to SARS.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus contains a furin cleavage site in its spike protein, its genome includes the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, it has a receptor binding domain finely tuned to infect the ACE2 human receptor and its genome is around 25% different to SARS. A number of virologists have said that such features make SARS-CoV-2 a smoking gun for an engineered virus.

Baric obtained a patent for such novel viruses in 2018, just as he was putting DEFUSE together. In DEFUSE he proposed to infect wild Chinese bats with his newly patented viruses.

Many regard this as case closed for the lab leak.

But this is not the full story. That’s because Baric’s DEFUSE proposal did not win the DARPA funding. 

And while it is rightly pointed out that, with or without the funding, much of the work was already in hand, it’s what happened next with the winning DARPA proposal where the story really gets interesting.

US researcher Jim Haslam has done an incredible job on his Substack article Reverse engineering the origins of SARS-CoV-2 documenting all the toings and froings among the virology community in connection with the creation of this peculiar virus and the subsequent cover-up. What follows is in large part indebted to his meticulous research, though any errors are of course my own.

The winning 2018 DARPA bid was for a project called PREEMPT led by Dr. Vincent Munster (pictured above) based at Anthony Fauci’s NIH Rocky Mountain Lab. Both PREEMPT and Baric’s losing DEFUSE project had the same basic idea: to try to prevent a (hypothetical) future pandemic by using an engineered SARS virus to vaccinate the bats from which it is believed such a virus was likely to spill over.

The idea being, of course, that the vaccinated bats would no longer be a reservoir for the virus, thus ‘defusing’ or ‘preempting’ the zoonotic spillover. Sounds crazy? Too right – far too much meddling with nature and placing too much faith in the ability of vaccines to prevent infection and transmission. But crazy or not, that’s what the scientists proposed, and PREEMPT won and DEFUSE lost.

The key difference between Baric’s DEFUSE and Munster’s PREEMPT – aside from PREEMPT coming in around $4 million cheaper at $10 million – is that rather than relying on spraying bat caves with a non-transmissible virus-vaccine, Munster’s plan involved making the virus-vaccine transmit between the bats via aerosols. This made it a self-spreading vaccine, able (in theory) to reach all the bats without humans having to go and find all their caves and spray them. The risks of such a plan should have been obvious. Indeed, Baric himself, who went awfully quiet after his DEFUSE project leaked in mid-2021, resurfaced in mid-2023 to say that such work involving engineering transmissible virus-vaccines was “too edgy” for him.

After the DARPA funding went to PREEMPT, Fauci rode to Baric’s rescue with a bumper $82 million programme called CREID, awarded in summer 2019, in which both Baric and Munster’s teams would cooperate in the research into Munster’s concept of self-spreading bat vaccines.

Exactly what happened next is not publicly documented, so we do need to fill in some gaps. 

It appears that Munster took Baric’s patented SARS virus-vaccine and made a transmissible version at his Rocky Mountain Lab (Baric’s version was not intended to be transmissible). What is the evidence for that? Perhaps most telling is that, as Haslam observes, SARS-CoV-2 transmits efficiently in only five known mammals, and those five – American deer, American deer mice, Syrian hamsters, American mink, and Egyptian fruit bats – are all found in Munster (and Fauci’s) Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana. SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t infect lab animals common in Chinese labs or present in the WIV, such as Chinese horseshoe bats. This would suggest that SARS-CoV-2 acquired its transmissibility in an American lab context and not a Chinese one or elsewhere.

The virus-vaccine having been made transmissible in Montana, it would then have been sent to the WIV to be tested on Chinese bats, which were not available in American labs. There can be little doubt who would have done this testing at the WIV, as there was only one scientist with the necessary connections and expertise.

Dr. Danielle Anderson, known as Dani to her colleagues, gained fame in June 2021 as the “last and only foreign scientist in the Wuhan lab” as she went public to make the case for a zoonotic origin. Dani was a member of the Lancet origins commission, chaired by Jeffrey Sachs and disbanded by him in October 2021 over frustrations that the Western virologists like Dani weren’t cooperating. Dani was based on and off at the WIV in the high security BSL4 lab (not Shi Zhengli’s BSL2 lab), but she didn’t work for the WIV. She worked for Duke-NUS, the Singapore-based medical school of North Carolina’s Duke University, under the virologist Dr. Linfa Wang. Linfa and Anderson were part of Baric’s DEFUSE proposal, and Duke-NUS was later a partner in Fauci’s CREID project.

Anderson’s role in DEFUSE was to test the virus-vaccines on “wild-caught captive” Chinese horseshoe bats at the WIV. It is thus reasonable to assume it is her who would be responsible for testing Munster’s self-spreading virus-vaccine on the same Chinese bats. This would explain how the virus got to Wuhan.

It would explain, in other words, how a non-transmissible virus-vaccine designed by Ralph Baric at UNC as per the DEFUSE proposal became a transmissible virus and ended up on the loose in Wuhan. Namely, because it escaped via a laboratory-acquired infection during Anderson’s testing of it on Chinese horseshoe bats in her WIV BSL4 lab, with Dani herself or a colleague as patient zero.

Admittedly, we don’t have direct evidence of this – we don’t have direct evidence that a Munster-Baric SARS-2 virus-vaccine was being tested on Chinese bats in the WIV in 2019, nor that Dr. Anderson or a colleague was infected by it in the lab. But there is a heap of evidence that points to it as a likely scenario.

We know, for instance, that both Baric and Munster were proposing to vaccinate Chinese bats using an engineered virus based on SARS, with a furin cleavage site inserted to increase infectivity. We know that Munster’s PREEMPT proposal, in which the virus-vaccine was to be self-spreading, won the DARPA funding, beating Baric’s DEFUSE proposal for a non-self-spreading virus-vaccine, and that in 2019 both teams were brought together in an $82 million grant from Fauci’s NIAID.

We know that SARS-CoV-2 readily transmits in the lab animals found in Munster’s Rocky Mountain Lab but not in the lab animals found in the WIV. From this we can further conclude that Dr. Anderson’s experiment to infect Chinese horseshoe bats with the new virus at the WIV presumably failed. This may be why she left Wuhan at the end of November, which was the deadline for the ‘scientific merit review’ for CREID.

We also know that where Dani and her colleagues lived in central Wuhan was an early epicentre for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, based on social media data.

It also appears that Dani’s supervisor Linfa Wang may have quickly realised that SARS-CoV-2 was one of his viruses. This would explain why he resigned from his post as Director of Duke’s Emerging Infectious Disease programme, a position he had held for nearly a decade, on the same day that the genome was published, January 10th 2020. The reason for his abrupt resignation has never been disclosed.

Four days earlier he had told the New York Times he was frustrated that scientists in China were not allowed to speak to him about the outbreak. He cautioned against panic, arguing the virus was likely not spreading between humans because health workers had not contracted the disease. But privately was he fretting that it was from his lab – is that why he immediately resigned when the genome was published? It is hard to understand what else could have led him to quit so suddenly at that point, and the lack of explanation adds to the suspicion. He later called January 10th “the most important day in the Covid-19 outbreak” because it was when the genome was published.

If Linfa was anticipating the bad news, it could have been because he and Dani had been aware of the leak at the time it happened. Analysis of mobile phone records discovered an apparent shutdown of Dr. Anderson’s BSL4 lab between October 7th and 24th 2019 (identified by the lack of mobile phone usage in the vicinity). Nothing further has come to light about this incident and what lay behind it, but if it does denote a laboratory-acquired infection that Anderson and Linfa (and presumably others) were aware of, it would explain a lot.

Such a scenario would also explain why Shi Zhengli had been eager to publish the sequence for the RaTG13 virus she held (the preprint appeared on January 23rd 2020), despite this suggesting to many a non-natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. In the paper, the WIV scientist implied that SARS-CoV-2 had not emerged naturally from RaTG13, despite it being the closest known virus (“no evidence for recombination events was detected in the genome”). Publishing it showed that her (BSL2) lab had nothing to hide as it was not involved in the work. The realisation that it was an engineered virus from the US may also have driven the panic that pushed the Chinese Government to lock Wuhan down around the same time.

Since 2021, Ralph Baric has thrown himself into developing vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, even entertaining fantasies of “ring vaccination,” as is done with Ebola, to try to stop the outbreak in its tracks. 

Is this his way of trying to make amends, however misguided?

I wonder if we are also able to detect a hint of him pointing to who he thinks is really to blame for the debacle, when he remarks that “governments, rather than scientists” are primarily responsible for choosing which risky gain-of-function experiments to fund and run – a reference perhaps to how Munster’s “edgy” engineering of transmissible virus-vaccines was picked over his non-transmissible version.

“It looks like American science is going to get shredded for a pandemic that started in China,” he told Time‘s Dan Werb, reverting to denial. When Werb suggested to him that despite the “conspiracy theories” there are many people happy that he became a scientist in the first place, he replied:

“A fair number that probably wished I hadn’t. Let’s be honest.”

Is that the closest we’ll get to a confession?

Republished from The Daily Sceptic

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Elvis Chan, the FBI’s Assistant Special Agent in Charge in San Francisco, has reportedly been placed on “terminal leave” and has not accessed agency systems for over a month, according to independent journalist Breanna Morello.

Chan has faced scrutiny for his alleged role in coordinating with social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), to censor conservatives during the 2020 presidential election, which saw President Joe Biden defeat President Donald Trump. In September 2023, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) issued a subpoena compelling Chan to testify about the FBI’s interactions with tech companies, which Jordan described as potential “coercion and collusion” to censor speech, according to the New York Post.

Chan, who served as a liaison to companies like Facebook and Twitter through the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, did not attend a scheduled interview with the committee, prompting the subpoena, Jordan said, per the Post.

During a 2023 deposition with attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri, Chan denied having “internal knowledge” of efforts to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Morello notes:

The controversy surrounding Chan coincides with a 2023 ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that the FBI, White House, U.S. Surgeon General, CDC, and CISA likely violated First Amendment rights by “coercing or significantly encouraging” social media platforms to censor content.

...

Chan, who identifies with “he/him” pronouns on his LinkedIn profile, still lists himself as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the FBI’s San Francisco Bay office, where he has served for over 19 years.

The FBI has not commented on Morello’s report.

The allegations against Chan come amid broader efforts by the Trump administration to protect free speech. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting federal agencies from labeling citizen speech as “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Addressing the World Economic Forum, Trump said the order aimed to “safeguard free speech” and halt practices that “stifle the exchange of ideas.”

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the Global Engagement Center, a State Department entity criticized for its role in monitoring online speech. In an op-ed published in The Federalist, Rubio cited a 2020 GEC report that flagged speculation about COVID-19’s origins, including theories about a Wuhan lab, as part of a “Russian disinformation” campaign.
"Finally, as we recommit this country to its core constitutional free speech principles at home, we will remain vigilant abroad — not just against threats from adversaries such as Communist China but also from less expected countries where authoritarian censorship is gradually strangling true freedom of speech," Rubio added. "We are not afraid. At her birth, America was a lone beacon of freedom to the world. If necessary, we will happily be that lone beacon once again."

US federal investigators have launched a probe after two commercial flights were ordered to abort their landings at Reagan Washington National Airport on Thursday when a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter approached the area en route to the Pentagon Army Heliport.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on May 2 that air traffic control told Delta Air Lines Flight 1671, an Airbus A319 that had originated in Orlando, and Republic Airways Flight 5825, an Embraer 170 that had departed from Boston, to perform go-arounds at around 2.30pm due to a priority military air transport helicopter in the vicinity.

The incident is under investigation by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the US Army are also investigating.

“While conducting flight operations into the Pentagon in accordance with published FAA flight routes and DCA Air Traffic Control, a UH-60 Black Hawk was directed by Pentagon Air Traffic Control to conduct a ‘go-around’, overflying the Pentagon helipad in accordance with approved flight procedures,” the US Army said in a statement.

“As a result, DCA Air Traffic Control issued a ‘go-around’ to two civil fixed wing aircraft to ensure the appropriate de-confliction of airspace.”

As Rudy Blalock reports for The Epoch Times, following a deadly mid-air collision on Jan. 29 involving an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, which resulted in 67 fatalities, the FAA has imposed permanent restrictions on non-essential helicopter operations around Reagan Washington National Airport.

The FAA told Congress it is reviewing the Army helicopter’s route in Thursday’s “loss of separation” incidents and is determining whether the route violated an agreement with the Army.

“It appears the Black Hawk operation did not proceed directly to the Pentagon Heliport. Instead it took a scenic route around the Pentagon versus proceeding directly from the west to the heliport,” the FAA said in a memo.

Delta Air Lines reported that Flight 1671 was carrying five crew members and 97 passengers. 

“Nothing is more important at Delta than the safety of our customers and people. We’ll cooperate with the FAA as they investigate,” the airline said on Friday.

In separate statements to NTD News, Delta and Republic Airways said they are cooperating with the authorities investigating the incident. 

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, criticized the fact that the same Army brigade flew a helicopter too close to Reagan Washington National Airport months after the fatal collision in January.

“It is outrageous that only three months after an Army Black Hawk helicopter tragically collided with a passenger jet, the same Army brigade again flew a helicopter too close to passenger jets on final approach at [the airport]. This comes less than a week after this brigade resumed flights in the National Capital Region. It is far past time for Secretary Hegseth and the FAA to give our airspace the security and safety attention it deserves,” she said in a statement.

The FAA in March permanently closed one key route and banned the use of two smaller runways at the airport when helicopters conducting urgent missions are operating near the airport.

The FAA is also investigating helicopter traffic near other major airports and recently announced changes to address safety concerns in other regions.

According to the NTSB, between October 2021 and December 2024, 85 recorded events at the airport involved a potentially dangerous near-miss between a helicopter and a plane, defined as a lateral separation of less than 1,500 feet and a vertical separation of less than 200 feet.

Submitted by Tephra Digital,

Executive Summary 

Since the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971, the U.S. Dollar has functioned as a fiat currency. The petrodollar agreement in 1974 tied the Dollar indirectly to oil, reinforcing global demand for the Dollar. Today, with increasing skepticism toward fiat currencies and a rising interest in decentralized assets like Bitcoin, the U.S. could consider a new monetary system backed by Bitcoin as a digital, scarce, and decentralized asset. Bitcoin effectively delivers a more modern, automated and software-based approach to central banking.

This piece explores the viability of a Bitcoin-backed monetary system in the context of key historical financial developments, as well as the strategic path for its implementation. 

The report concludes with an actionable strategy relevant to policymakers, financial institutions and investors. 

• July 1944 – The Bretton Woods Agreement: The Bretton Woods Conference established the U.S. Dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency, backed by gold. Under this system, the U.S. Dollar was pegged to gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce, while other major currencies were pegged to the U.S. Dollar. This agreement created a stable global monetary framework anchored by the U.S. Dollar’s convertibility into gold, and it laid the foundation for post-World War II economic growth. 

• August 1971 – Nixon Closes the Gold Window (“Nixon Shock”): President Nixon suspended the Dollar’s convertibility into gold. This marked the transition of the U.S. dollar from a gold-backed currency to a fiat currency whose value was determined by government decree rather than any fixed and independent asset. 

• October 1973 – The Oil Crisis and Price Shock: In response to U.S. and Western support for Israel, OPEC (led by Saudi Arabia) imposed an oil embargo on the U.S. and several Western nations. The embargo led to a severe shortage of oil, causing prices to quadruple from around $3 per barrel to $12 per barrel by early 1974. This sudden spike in energy costs triggered widespread inflation, economic disruption, and a global crisis that drove stagflation (simultaneously high inflation and high unemployment) in the Western economies. 

• June 1974 – The U.S.-Saudi Petrodollar Agreement: The U.S. and Saudi Arabia reached a pivotal agreement that laid the foundation for the petrodollar system, which later expanded to include other OPEC nations. The establishment of the petrodollar solidified the U.S. Dollar’s status as the world’s primary reserve currency, as the global demand for Dollars increased in conjunction with oil transactions. This arrangement also supported the growth of oil production worldwide and reduced OPEC’s strategic leverage, while providing the U.S. with a reliable source of foreign investment and demand for US government debt. 

• October 2008 – Release of the Bitcoin Whitepaper: In the wake of the global financial crisis and major bank failures, an anonymous inventor known as Satoshi Nakamoto published Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The paper described a transaction network requiring no third-party financial institutions or government intermediaries whatsoever. 

• March 2009 – The Federal Reserve Launches Quantitative Easing (QE): In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve implemented its first round of Quantitative Easing (QE), purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities to inject liquidity into the financial system. This unprecedented monetary policy expanded the Fed’s balance sheet and marked the beginning of a prolonged period of U.S. Dollar debasement, fueling sustained asset price inflation. 

• December 2012 – The U.S. Debt-to-GDP Ratio Surpasses 100%: For the first time since World War II, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 100%, signaling a shift to a highly leveraged fiscal position. This milestone underscored the growing reliance on debt-financed government spending and raised concerns about long-term fiscal sustainability. 

• April 2020 – The Fed Launches Aggressive Quantitative Easing Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: To counter the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve initiated a new round of aggressive QE, again expanding its balance sheet by purchasing Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities at an even greater scale. This increase in the money supply significantly debased the U.S. Dollar and drove a surge in asset prices, further exacerbating wealth inequality. 

• February 2022 – The U.S. Freezes Russia’s Foreign Currency Reserves and Weaponizes the U.S. Dollar: In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies imposed severe financial sanctions, freezing Russia’s foreign currency reserves held across Western banks. This action marked a turning point in global financial diplomacy, as it weaponized the U.S. Dollar and raised concerns among other nations about the risks of holding dollar-denominated reserves.

• March 2022 – Shift Away from the U.S. Dollar in Global Oil Trade: Amid escalating geopolitical tensions, several oilproducing nations began entering bilateral agreements with their trading partners to settle oil transactions in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar. This signaled a potential erosion of the petrodollar system, as countries sought alternatives to reduce reliance on the U.S. Dollar in global trade. 

• June 2023 – Suspension of the U.S. Debt Ceiling: Congress eliminated the debt ceiling, removing the statutory limit on federal government borrowing. This decision effectively allowed unlimited borrowing, raising concerns about unchecked fiscal policy and the potential acceleration of U.S. debt growth, putting further pressure on the Dollar’s stability.

• January 2024 – Bitcoin ETF Approved: The SEC approved the first spot Bitcoin ETF, paving the way for broader retail and institutional investment. This milestone legitimized Bitcoin, and the ETF wrapper provided easier access for investors, driving increased demand and significant capital inflows. 

• July 2024 – Trump Privately Refers to Bitcoin as “The New Oil”: In a private conversation leaked to the media (but not covered by the mainstream media), former President Donald Trump described Bitcoin as “the New Oil,” signaling a potential shift in U.S. policy toward digital assets. The statement suggests a recognition of Bitcoin’s growing role as a strategic asset in the global financial system. 

• November 5, 2024 – Donald Trump Wins U.S. Presidential Election: In a decisive and landslide electoral victory, Donald Trump is re-elected as President of the United States, with Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate. The election outcome marks a turning point for U.S. policy on digital assets and an end to unfettered regulatory hostility. The Trump administration commits to regulatory clarity, favorable tax policies, the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and a framework that supports widespread digital asset adoption by individuals, institutions, corporations, pensions and governments. 

• November 8, 2024 – First Middle Eastern Crude Oil Transaction Using Tether Trade Finance: The world’s largest stablecoin firm, Tether, used its trade finance platform to complete its first funding of a crude oil transaction in the Middle East, settling in USDT. This groundbreaking deal appears to herald a major shift in global trade finance, showcasing the adoption of stablecoins as an alternative settlement mechanism for major commodity transactions outside of the traditional banking system. 

The Future, and the Case for a Bitcoin-Backed U.S. Monetary System: 

Under the petrodollar system, the U.S. effectively allowed the price of oil to rise (in Dollar terms), which increased global oil production and mitigated the strategic threat posed by OPEC. By creating a large, Dollar-denominated asset class (oil), the U.S. also established a mechanism to support the Dollar’s dominance abroad and finance its growing deficits at home. Surplus oil revenues from OPEC nations were recycled into U.S. Treasuries, reinforcing demand for the Dollar and giving the U.S. tremendous economic power globally. 

Domestically, this system enabled politicians to engage in extensive borrowing and spending, driving U.S. debt from 36% of GDP in 1971 to ~125% today, a trajectory that now poses a serious challenge to the U.S. as a financial superpower, as well as its energy and national security. 

Even at a ~$2 trillion market value, and with over ~$20 billion in average daily trading volume, Bitcoin is not yet large enough to replace the petrodollar as the backbone of the U.S. monetary system. However, a significant increase in Bitcoin’s price could catalyze a new paradigm.

Higher Bitcoin prices would likely drive substantial growth in U.S. Dollar-backed stablecoin issuance (due to the greater total market value of the asset class, and as the network effects of Bitcoin and digital asset transactions take hold);.

In turn, stablecoin issuance would directly boost demand for U.S. Treasury bills, effectively shifting the backstop of U.S. deficits from oil to Bitcoin. 

This would allow the U.S. to maintain its monetary dominance while undermining the strategic power of the BRICS nations, who have turned to gold in an attempt to challenge and circumvent the Dollar system. 

There are several recent developments that indicate the groundwork for this transition may already be underway. 

The framework that follows is a preliminary outline of the potential steps towards a Bitcoin-Backed Monetary System.

The 21-Step Integration of Bitcoin into the U.S. Financial System:

Calculating the Required U.S. Ownership of Bitcoin: 

When considering the transition to a Bitcoin-backed monetary system, M2 money supply provides the most comprehensive measure of U.S. Dollar liquidity in the economy. M2 includes not only cash and checking deposits (collectively defined as M1), but also savings accounts, money market funds, and other near-money assets. 

This broader measure captures the full extent of Dollar-denominated assets that circulate and store value within the U.S. economy. 

Key Assumptions: 

• Current U.S. M2 Money Supply: $22 trillion 

• Projected U.S. M2 Money Supply in 2045: $79 trillion (applying the 6.7% CAGR from 2000-2024) 

• Projected Bitcoin Price Target in 2045: $13 million (per Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin24 Model) 

• Capital Investment Today: Funded through partial monetization of official existing U.S. gold holdings (8,133 tonnes with a current market value of $764 billion); for simplification, assumes constant price of gold 

• Fully Diluted Bitcoin Supply: 21 million Bitcoin 

  • Adjustment for Theoretical versus Actual Supply: It is estimated that 3 to 4 million Bitcoin may be lost or irretrievable, making the effective supply closer to 17 to 18 million Bitcoin. However, for simplicity and to maintain a conservative estimate, the maximum supply of 21 million Bitcoin is used 

Below is a table showing the required U.S. ownership of Bitcoin for different levels of backing by 2045:

Bitcoin Backing Scenario Analysis

Note: Analysis is for illustrative purposes only; market data is as of 2/26/2025 and from publicly available sources.

Scenario Overviews: 

1) 25% Backing 

• This level of backing by the U.S. could serve as a hedge or partial reserve, similar to the role gold used to play in the early 20th century. 

2) 50% Backing 

• A 50% backing level implies a much more substantial reliance on Bitcoin within the U.S. monetary system. Increasing Bitcoin’s allocation not only accelerates its global adoption and reinforces its credibility as a reserve asset, but it also provides a meaningful hedge against escalating U.S. debt. With projections suggesting that the national debt could balloon to approximately $115 trillion by 2045 (based on extrapolation), a 50% backing could potentially offset up to 34% of that burden.

3) 100% Backing 

• Full backing would represent a Bitcoin standard, where the entire U.S. M2 money supply is backed by Bitcoin. 

• A full Bitcoin backing serves as a complete hedge against fiat debasement and central bank policy errors, positions the U.S Dollar as a purely hard-money asset, and reduces Net Debt to GDP to under 100% by reducing nearly 70% of the nation’s debt burden.

A Bitcoin-backed system would leverage Bitcoin’s superior characteristics as a harder and scarcer asset than gold, positioning the U.S. as a first mover in adopting a supranational, independent and digital reserve asset. The concept of transitioning to a new U.S. monetary system backed by Bitcoin as collateral is both ambitious and transformative. It represents a profound shift from the current fiat-based, debt-financed model towards a digital, decentralized, and scarce foundational asset.