Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Americans were taught about Paul Revere’s ride in school. He was said to have ridden from his home in the North End of Boston, to Lexington and Concord, to warn the people there that Federal troops had landed in Boston Harbour and would soon reach the townships.Of course, the story was tarted up a bit for the history books. First, it’s unlikely that he shouted, “The British are coming,” since, at the time of the ride, in 1775, he was in fact British – a British colonial – and would have regarded himself as British, as would the townspeople.

It’s also unlikely that he galloped through the towns shouting, “To arms! To arms!” since a major portion of the British colonists, particular those who were older and had a lot to lose, were loyalists, and taking up arms would be treasonous. (At that time, treason was one of only two capital crimes.)

So, what did he shout on his ride… or did he in fact shout anything? It’s more likely that he simply went to the back doors of select sympathisers and asked them to spread the word that the Federal troops were on the way. But, of course, that would have made for a far less colourful story.

It is likely, though, that the ride itself did actually take place and that he did succeed in rousing the townspeople. Amongst them were the minutemen, who later did quite a good job of picking off the Federal troops.

At that time, this practice was looked upon by armies as cowardly. It was considered honourable for columns of troops to march toward each other and fire. Those with the most troops to sacrifice usually won. The colonists could not have prevailed, had they followed this method of battle.

But the colonists’ cause was a laudable one, even if they were far outnumbered and not as well-trained or well-armed as the Federals. Under the circumstances, they succeeded because they swallowed their pride, used their wits and, fighting guerilla style, prevailed against a greater opponent.

In creating the United States, the founding fathers of the US endorsed the concept of a republic – a conglomerate of states in which the individual right was tantamount. They were deeply suspicious of sliding into becoming a democracy. As Thomas Jefferson said,

“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.”

Quite so. And yet, from the very first presidential cabinet, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton pushed for a move away from a republic toward a stronger federal government. (In 1789, he formed the Federalist Party and the contest began.)

Since that time, the US has moved away from being a republic and has become more of a federalist state.

This progression continued fairly steadily until 1913, at which time two major changes occurred. The banking interests in the US had become powerful enough to push through two bills that would serve to enrich them for generations. The source of that wealth would be the American taxpayer.

• First, income tax (which had been attempted previously, but never gained full acceptance) was introduced. 

• Second, to add insult to injury, the Federal Reserve was created. It was neither a federal body, nor was it a reserve. However, in addition to having the power to create all currency for the US, it had the power to set interest rates.

Through this control, it was possible to create steady annual inflation (defined as an increase in the currency in circulation). This had the effect of diminishing the purchasing power of the dollar by slow measures, effectively robbing the population incrementally through inflation.

Had Paul Revere been around in 1913, he might well have wished to get on his horse to warn the people that the Federals were coming. Only this time, it wasn’t the Federal troops, it was the Federal Reserve.

The Fed’s power made it possible to create large amounts of money out of thin air, to be loaned by banks. With this easy money, investors could borrow heavily and buy into the stock market a level previously regarded as impossible. This cornucopia was so forthcoming that, by 1929, a level of debt was reached that was unsustainable. If even a small increase in the interest rate was advanced, a stock market crash would occur, as debtors, who were up to their teeth in debt, would be underwater overnight.

What’s interesting here is that the very body that had taken over the economy in 1913 – the Federal Reserve – had created the artificially low interest rates, supplied the money, created the bubble, then, by raising interest rates in 1929, provided the pin to prick the bubble.

Not very sporting.

Today, the value of the dollar has been eroded by over 97% of its 1913 purchasing power and is due for replacement. If the owners of the Federal Reserve are to continue to regularly scalp the hoi polloi, the best approach would be to engineer a second major buildup of debt, trigger a crash, then introduce a new currency to “save the economy.”

This, they will most assuredly do. The debt has already been created. A crash can be triggered in many ways, including the tried-and-true method of raising interest rates.

And, after the predictable crash, the public will most assuredly cry out for those in power to “do something.” The warning signs have been in view for some time that that “something” will be digital currency – a currency that will make it necessary for virtually all economic transactions to pass through the hands of banks. Person-to-person transactions will virtually end, except for the possibility of barter, which would be likely to flourish as soon as the public have realized that they’ve been hoodwinked.

Unfortunately, our friend Paul Revere is nowhere to be seen on the horizon, but the Federals are indeed coming and the American people, in the not-too-distant future, will need to learn to survive the onslaught from the digital currency system that will take the place of the bullets of the late eighteenth century.

Once again, Americans will need to understand, as did their late eighteenth century forebears, that their only hope against a more powerful opponent is to use their wits – to adopt the minuteman approach and implement the economic equivalent of guerilla warfare.

*  *  *

Excessive money printing and misguided economic ideas have created all kinds of distortions in the market. All signs point to this trend continuing until it reaches a crisis… one unlike anything we’ve seen before. That’s exactly why Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video that explains how and why this is happening… and what you can do to protect yourself and even profit from the situation. Click here to watch it now.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

Why precisely were Anthony Fauci and his cohorts so anxious to blame SARS-CoV-2 on bats and later pangolins in wet markets? It was not just to deflect attention from the possibility that the novel virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan doing gain-of-function research. There was a larger point: to reinforce a very important narrative concerning zoonotic spillovers. 

It’s a fancy phrase that speaks to a kind of granular focus that discourages nonspecialists from having an opinion. Leave it to the experts! They know! 

Let’s take a closer look. 

For many years, there has been an emerging orthodoxy in epidemiological circles that viruses are jumping from animals to humans at a growing rate. That’s the key assertion, the core claim, the one that is rarely challenged. It is made repeatedly and often in the literature on this subject, much like climate claims in that different literature.

The model goes as follows. 

Step one: assert that spillover is increasing, due to urbanization, deforestation, globalization, industrialization, carbon-producing internal combustion, pet ownership, colonialism, icky diets, shorter skirt lengths, whatever other thing you are against, or some amorphous combination of all the above. Regardless, it is new and it is happening at a growing rate. 

Step two: observe that only scientists fully understand what a grave threat this is to human life, so they have a social obligation to get out in front of this trend. That requires gain-of-function research to mix and merge pathogens in a lab to see which ones pose the most immediate threats to our existence. 

Step three: in order to protect ourselves fully, we need to deploy all the newest technologies including and especially those which allow for fast production of vaccines that can be distributed in the event of the pandemics that are inevitably coming, probably just around the corner. Above all, that requires testing and perfecting mRNA shots that deliver spike protein through lipid nanoparticles so they can be printed and distributed to the population widely and quickly. 

Step four: as society breathlessly awaits the great antidote to the deadly virus that comes to us via these vicious spillovers, there is no choice but to enact common-sense public-health measures like extreme restrictions on your liberty to travel, operate a business, and gather with others. The top goal is disease monitoring and containment. The top target: those who behave in ways that presume the existence of anachronisms like freedom and human rights. 

Step five: these protocols must be accepted by all governments because of course we live in a globalist setting in which otherwise no pathogen can possibly be contained. No one nation can be permitted to go its own way because doing so endangers the whole. We are all in this together. 

If that way of thinking strikes you as surprising, ridiculous, and scary, you have clearly not attended an academic conference on epidemiology, a trade show for pharmaceutical companies, or a planning group feeding information to the United Nations and the World Health Organization. 

This is conventional wisdom in all these circles, not even slightly unusual or strange. It is the new orthodoxy, widely accepted by all experts in this realm. 

The first I had heard of this entire theory was the August 2020 article in Cell written by David Morens and Anthony Fauci. Written during lockdowns that the authors helped shepherd, the article reflected the apocalyptic tone of the times. They said humanity took a bad turn 12,000 years ago, causing idyllic lives to face myriad infections. We cannot go back to a Rouseauian paradise but we can work to “rebuild the infrastructures of human existence.”

I was obviously stunned, reread the piece carefully, and wondered where the evidence for the great spillover – the crucial empirical assertion of the piece – could be found. They cite many papers in the literature but looking at them further, we find only models, assertions, claims rooted in testing bias, and many other sketchy claims. 

What I found was a fog machine. 

You see, everything turns on this question. If spillovers are not increasing, or if spillovers are just a normal part of the complicated relationship between humans and the microbial kingdom they inhabit alongside all living things, the entire agenda falls apart. 

If spillovers are not a pressing problem, the rationale for gain-of-function evaporates, as does the need for funding, the push for the shots, and the wild schemes to lock down until the antidote arrives. It’s the crucial step, one that has mostly evaded serious public attention but which is nearly universally accepted within the domain of what is called Public Health today. 

Who is challenging this? A tremendously important article just appeared in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health. It is: “Natural Spillover Risk and Disease Outbreaks: Is Over-Simplification Putting Public Health at Risk?” by the Brownstone-backed team at REPPARE. It’s something of a miracle that this piece got through peer review but here it is. 

They present the core assumption: “Arguments supporting pandemic policy are heavily based on the premise that pandemic risk is rapidly increasing, driven in particular by passage of pathogens from animal reservoirs to establish transmission in the human population; ‘zoonotic spillover.’ Proposed drivers for increasing spillover are mostly based on environmental change attributed to anthropogenic origin, including deforestation, agricultural expansion and intensification, and changes in climate.”

And the observation: “If a genuine misattribution bias regarding spillover risk and consequent pandemic risk is arising, this can distort public health policy with potentially far-reaching consequences on health outcomes.”

Then they take it on with a careful examination of the literature generally footnoted as proof. What they find is a typical game of citation roulette: this guy cites this guy who cites this guy who cites that guy, and so on in spinning circles of authoritative-seeming apparatus but fully lacking in any real substance. They write: “We see a pattern of assertive statements of rapidly rising disease risk with anthropogenic impacts on ecology driving it. These are cited heavily, resting largely on opinion, which is a poor substitute for evidence. More concerningly, there is a consistent trend of misrepresenting cited papers.”

We’ve seen this movie many times before. What’s more, there does exist a largely ignored literature that closely examines many of the supposed causal factors that drive spillovers that reveals grave doubts about any causal connection at all. The authors then place the skeptical papers against the opinion papers usually cited and conclude that what has emerged is an evidence-free orthodoxy designed to back an industrial project. 

“There are several potential reasons for this tendency to reference opinion as if it is fact. The field has been relatively small, with authorship shared across many papers. This risks the development of a mechanism for circular referencing, reviewing and reinforcement of opinion, shielding claims from sceptical inquiry or external review. The increased interest of private-sector funders in public health institutions including WHO, and its emphasis on commodities in health responses, may deepen this echo chamber, inadvertently downgrading or ignoring contrary findings while emphasizing those studies that support further funding.”

See the pattern here? 

Anyone who has followed sociology of “the science” over these last five years can. It’s groupthink, the acceptance of doctrine believed because all their peers believe it. In any case, the gig pays well. 

Now we can better explain why it is that Fauci and the rest were so emphatic that the coronavirus of 2019 did not originate in a lab for which they had arranged the funding but instead leapt from a bat or something else from a wet market.

“Sadly, it appears we have a leak from a lab.”

“No worries. We’ll find some scientists and steer some grant money to prove the pathogen in question originated from zoonotic spillover, thus proving the point that we need more funding.” 

“Brilliant Dr. Fauci! Do we have contacts in the media?”

“We do. We’ll get on that.”

The wet market narrative was not only designed to cover up their scheme and avoid blame for a global pandemic of any level of severity. It was also to deploy the potentially catastrophic consequences and resulting public panic as a rationale for continuing their own biological experimentation and funding grift.

A $60 million fighter jet has been "lost" at sea at a moment American naval assets under US Central Command have been conducting bombing campaigns against Yemen's Houthis since March 15.

But as far as what's being reported from the Pentagon, the jet wasn't shot out of the sky during operations - it apparently rolled off an aircraft carrier. 

The US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet "fell overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier while it was being towed on board, the Navy said in a statement on Monday," CNN reports.

US Navy file image

Initial reports strongly suggest the mishap was caused due to the Truman carrier having to take sudden evasive action to avoid inbound Houthi fire:

A US official said that initial reports from the scene indicated that the Truman made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire, which contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard. The Houthi rebel group claimed on Monday to have launched a drone and missile attack on the aircraft carrier, which is in the Red Sea as part of the US military’s major anti-Houthi operation.

A naval crew member had been able to jump off the jet at the last minute when the accident occurred as it was being towed out of the hanger bay. One sailor reportedly sustained minor injury.

The Houthis said Monday they launched a fresh attack targeting the Truman carrier, following many other such claimed attacks. This appears to be the first time the US Navy has linked damage aboard a warship with an inbound Houthi assault (albeit somewhat indirectly). A prior incident involving 'friendly fire' against a US jet also resulted in the aircraft's loss (see below).

"The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard," a US military statement said. "Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway."

Suggests Truman carrier group is under Houthi fire more frequently (and with a greater impact) than is being publicly acknowledged. https://t.co/Vs2MZYRzJt

The aircraft has sunk in the Red Sea, at a loss of at least $60 million. The US Navy sought to emphasize Monday that the strike group and its air wing "remain fully mission capable."

This is the second known F-18 jet lost at sea related to the US patrolling regional waters in the wake of the Gaza War:

The Truman has repeatedly been targeted in attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. It made headlines in February when it collided with a merchant ship near Egypt; no injuries were reported. Another F/A-18 from the Truman was also “mistakenly fired” upon and shot down by the USS Gettysburg in the Red Sea in December ; both pilots ejected safely.

All of this brings up the possibility that US warships have suffered direct hits in the past, but the Pentagon has kept it quiet...

Amid news that an F/A-18E fighter jet made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire and fell overboard, worth noting: the Houthis have claimed direct hits on the USS Truman aircraft carrier, and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar aired footage it claims shows parts of the ship damaged and draped over. https://t.co/sbTUQLpoAp pic.twitter.com/OIOKpbYseS

Given these 'close-calls' and mishaps due to the chaos of the fight with the Houthis - which it should be noted is military action still not approved by Congress - it is perhaps only a matter of time until a bigger, more direct clash and incident. Thankfully, no US aviators or sailors have been killed or seriously wounded so far.

Click picture, add to cart, be prepared...

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Now You Know

"Being mean or telling the truth is indistinguishable to far too many people." 

- Mike Thompson on X

Woke liberalism is exactly what Christopher Lasch predicted in The Revolt of the Elites, published in 1995 the year after his early death at 61. Lasch saw how the juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom would slide into the narcissistic, sado-masochistic degeneracy of open borders, drag queen story hours, Covid-19 despotism, DEI racism, showbiz Satanism, censorship, forever wars, and now, the legal insurrection of lawfare.

In doing so, Lasch also predicted the “mass formation psychosis” described by Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet, spawned by a crisis of meaning and purpose in the thinking classes of Western Civ. And now you know exactly how come a place like Boston, with its concentration of “elites” in universities, computer tech, and medical research displays a batshit-crazy dedication to ideas bent on destroying our political culture: the American republic.

The word republic derives from the Latin, res publica: the public thing, the idea of a state dedicated to the common good. By “state” you can infer both a group of people in a certain place, but also the set of conditions they dwell in. You can’t have a common good without a common culture, which means a general agreement among citizens on values in that certain place — which is our country, the USA.

You can’t overstate the importance of shared ideas and values in that enterprise of being a nation, we-the-people in our particular place. 

The juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom wrecked the crucial idea of a common culture, and I will tell you exactly how that happened. 

Two crusades: first, the civil rights campaign, and second, stopping the War in Vietnam, defined the era.

The first of these climaxed in twin landmark legislative acts designed to abolish Jim Crow racism: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination in public places, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited unfair obstacles to voting. 

The idealism in that moment of history was extreme. 

The dominant old-school Liberal ethos displayed a sense of triumph. Its cardinal belief in human progress was validated in the new law-of-the-land. We were supposedly entering a utopia of racial harmony.

It proved to be a huge disappointment, a failure. 

In some fundamental ways, black and white America could not agree on certain values, especially language and behavior. These matters were so hypersensitive that discussing them became taboo, and when someone dared to — such as the rogue journalist Tom Wolfe in his book Radical Chic, which made fun of the cultural elites trying to socialize with the Black Panthers — he was buried in the most extreme censorious opprobrium by the elite good-thinkers of politics, academia, and the cultural media. They couldn’t believe old Tom dove clear through the Overton Window the way he did, head first.

In fact, a big segment of black America after 1965 became much more overtly separatist and oppositional, while white America became more frantically confounded and depressed by it. The result was the elite’s solution to that quandary: multiculturalism! Which basically meant: we don’t need a common culture in the USA. (We don’t need an agreement about values, language, and behavior.) Each group in America can have its own menu of these things. This accomplished two ends: it allowed criminal behavior to explode; and it allowed the elites to excuse themselves from any serious further attempts to manage the res publica. The people of the ghettos were free to do their thing; while the elites turned their full attention to Boomer careerism and Gordon Gecko style financial moneygrubbing.

As for the crusade to end the War in Vietnam, that was also an epic failure, never properly acknowledged. In fact, no one in the USA, no party or faction, ended the war. We simply lost the War in Vietnam. We just never said so, and still don’t. It ended in ignominy, with the last remnants of US officialdom in Saigon having to be rescued by helicopter from the roof of the American Embassy. The so-called “gooks” in their black pajamas beat the giant American “grunt” army with its bottomless supply of attack helicopters and napalm. Chalk up another “L” for old school Liberalism.

You can’t overstate how demoralizing this was. And so. . . the serial reenactments of our forever wars of recent decades, mostly botches and failures despite our vaunted “defense” establishment, our glorious war technology, and our fake commitment to “spreading democracy.” We simply need to prove that we can’t possibly lose wars against more primitive people — though we have lost repeatedly, the fiasco in leaving Kabul in 2021 being even more ignominious than the flight from Saigon. This can only be understood, finally, as a species of national neurosis.

As was absolutely everything about the George Floyd riots of 2020, Wokery-in-action, with the torching of cities, the looting flash-mobs, and the tearing down of statues honoring American heroes. Try understanding that as the latest chapter in civil rights egalitarianism gone awry, starting with the sanctification of the druggie thug George Floyd, who so perfectly personified the failures of multiculturalism. (What were his values? Ever ask yourself that?)

Now, try (if you can) to understand what the election of Mr. Trump represents: the drive to restore a viable American common culture, to re-set our agreement on values, to repair the broken res publica. 

And note how wildly that is resented and opposed by this corrupt and degenerate residue of idealism gone to hell (literally), this ragtag and bobtail of Democratic Party elites, consumed in their mass formation psychosis, addicted to lying and violence, and furious that they are no longer in command.

So, now you know how all this works. An American common culture matters, and if we can’t put it together, we’re sunk. This is our chance to put it together.

In our preview of today's Treasury borrowing estimate release, we said that we expect the Treasury to announce $507bn in Q2 borrowing, a "figure much higher than Treasury’s estimate of $123bn in February" and entirely due to a lower starting cash balance, which as regular readers know, has collapsed due to the debt ceiling impasse that has forced the Treasury to draw down on its TGA (cash) balance as well as use various extraordinary measures.

We were off by a tiny $7 billion, $507BN vs $514BN as per the table below:

Source:

At 3pm ET, ahead of Wednesday's Refunding statement, the Treasury published its debt borrowing estimates for calendar Q2 and Q3 and it was just as expected:

• During the April – June 2025 quarter, Treasury expects to borrow $514 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-June cash balance of $850 billion. The borrowing estimate is $391 billion higher than announced in February 2025, primarily due to the lower beginning-of-quarter cash balance and projected lower net cash flows, partially offset by lower QT (i.e. debt redemptions) to the tune of $60 billion. 

The above was completely expected, which means it is completely distorted due to the ongoing debt ceiling standoff. This is what we said earlier:

Treasury issuance in Q2 will most likely end up short of the estimate if the debt ceiling remains unresolved this quarter. Similarly, Q3 estimate will assume a normal beginning-of-quarter cash balance, but actual issuance could end up materially higher once the debt ceiling constraint is lifted during the quarter and Treasury begins to rebuild its cash balance (and if it isn't, and the US begins to default, there will be much bigger problems at hand than termed-out debt issuance).

Translation: the Treasury drew down its cash by $444BN from $850BN to $406BN, also as we said in our preview.

What we didn't say, because we didn't know it (and neither did anyone else), is what the Treasury reported as an endnote to its borrowing needs paragraph, namely that "the current quarter borrowing estimate is $53 billion lower than announced in February" which indicates that DOGE is indeed working and the US funding needs are actually declining. 

To be sure, this also should not be a huge surprise, because as we also reported just before the Treasury press release, "fiscal flows year-to-date are coming in better than expected (thank you DOGE). Gross receipts are tracking slightly above prior-year levels (adjusted for CBO forecasts for 2025), while outlays are closer to the bottom of the historical range, although sadly nowhere near enough to make a notable impression over the long-term."

And while fiscal flows could deteriorate in the coming quarters - especially if there is a sharp recession - that risk is largely viewed as relatively low, for now. Meanwhile, DB economists estimate the deficit impact from TCJA extension and other Trump proposals could be largely offset by higher tariff revenues this year, before the deficit widens out more substantially relative to the CBO baseline next year and onward.

Looking ahead to calendar Q3, or the July – September 2025 quarter, the Treasury now expects to borrow $554 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-September cash balance of $850 billion. It remains unclear if the Treasury will be able to restore cash to its "runrate" balance of $850BN, as that will depend entirely on when the debt ceiling deal will be concluded. As a reminder, earlier we highlighted the thoughts of DB's Steven Zeng who moved
his x-date estimate from late July to mid-August, indicating that there is a modest buffer, but not enough to push the debt ceiling date into Q4 without major damage.

Finally, looking at the historical data, during calendar Q1 which ended March 31, 2025 quarter, the treasury borrowed $369 billion in privately-held  net marketable debt and ended the quarter with a cash balance of $406 billion. In February 2025, Treasury estimated borrowing of $815 billion and assumed an end-of-March cash balance of $850 billion. The $446 billion difference in privately-held net market borrowing resulted primarily from the lower end-of-quarter cash balance. However, excluding the lower than assumed end-of-quarter cash balance, actual borrowing was $2 billion lower than announced in February.

In other words, DOGE is working: in Q1, US debt funding needs were $2BN less than the Treasury forecast in February, and in Q2 the Treasury is expected to need $53 billion less than it forecast 3 months ago.

This unexpected drop in pro forma debt issuance (because one way or another, the debt ceiling constraint will go away), may be the reason why yields have been sliding all day, and at 4.21% are at session lows.

Source: US Treasury

*  *  *

Support independent media. Grab a ZeroHedge hat at the ZH Store, or buy any 2 bags of coffee and receive a free ZeroHedge Tumbler!

Authored by Mark LaBrosse via FreightWaves.com,

We’ve all heard how emerging AI technologies will optimize the freight industry in ways we can only dream about. But the scary truth is that AI is already fueling our nightmares—by supercharging freight theft.

Why aren’t more people talking about the dark side of AI? For one, most of the worries are centered on job loss and plagiarism. But perhaps it’s largely because it’s so good that it’s hard to detect. Regardless, it’s clear some strategies are already in play.

What’s critical to know: Even those highly attuned to scams can fall victim as generative AI more closely mimics real business experiences and enables crime syndicates to operate at scale.

This is an arms race. It will take good-guy tech fighting bad-guy tech and a coordinated human response to protect cargo from these modern cyber pirates.

Discerning real from fake is getting increasingly difficult

Crime syndicates can already evade detection and prosecution by operating outside the United States and creating new fraudulent documentation whenever they’re discovered. 

With AI in play, these bad actors are orders of magnitude more effective.

“Generative AI makes fraud an infinitely scalable and near-automatic process,” warns BAYNCORE senior consultant Dr. Richard Paul, who earned his PhD in computer simulation and artificial intelligence.

“Anyone can now set up an AI bot to scan the internet for key fragments of information,” Paul explains. “When assembled, these simple AI tools can automatically create documents, emails, and text messages that appear legitimate.”

Monitoring a freight industry awash in phishing scams, Brittany Graft, COO of fraud prevention platform Highway, shares Paul’s concern.

“If we take phishing schemes, for example, we historically have been able to detect and avoid them because the English is broken, the grammar is poor, or a logo is misplaced. AI is going to help the bad guys create an experience that so closely replicates what brokers and carriers are used to,” says Graft, “that the discerning eye will have a harder time picking up that it’s a scam.”

“Already, we’re seeing phishing attempts work because the imitations are so good,” Graft continues. “If we click some of these links, they look exactly like the legitimate site.”

And once brokers and carriers enter their credentials into illegitimate login pages and websites, their accounts—even email inboxes—are immediately compromised. From there, it’s quick work for AI agents and those using the tools to insert themselves at every level, logging into load boards, capturing freight, and creating havoc.

Complicating matters further, bad actors can use generative AI to beat the numbers game by creating tens or even hundreds of fraudulent carriers or brokers—complete with cloned sites, identical documents, and perfectly written emails. 

One, two, even fifty fraudulent carriers could be caught, and it would barely be a dent in the coming cyber threat onslaught.

“At the same time, freight brokers are being held to ever-higher standards of accountability in the court of law,” according to FreightWaves Group President, Kaylee Nix. “The situation has reached a crisis, and it’s time for the industry to come together to address this critical problem and share best practices on how to mitigate it.”

In response, the logistics industry’s largest media platform is hosting a FreightWaves Fraud Symposium on May 14 to help brokers better protect their businesses and customers.

FBI raising the alarm on deepfakes

In December 2024, the FBI issued an alert, drawing attention to how criminals are using generative AI to scam the general public. These same tactics are also being deployed against freight industry businesses and their customers.

In addition to creating fraudulent credentials, the FBI specifically cites how vocal cloning, audio bots, and generative video can falsely confirm the identity of the person you’re speaking to.

Now classic verification methods, like a simple phone call to confirm identity, can be thwarted.

“They can convince you they are from someone you know,” Paul says. “Complete with intimate details about you, in a familiar tone, even convincingly cloning a voice you know well.”

Paul adds, “The content and messaging these custom AIs generate is near-perfect, even better than legitimate actors frequently create—and thus is very hard to detect.”

Graft shares these concerns.

“We go really deep on verifying the identities of motor truck carriers and the individuals who represent them,” she says. “We collect their driver’s license, ask them to take a live photo, and verify that their digital identity matches their physical identity.”

“We’re aware of the potential for generative AI to replicate that live photo step and potentially try to brute force the system by creating multiple attempts to see which one will work,” Graft continues. “We’re bringing machine learning into that process to detect the visual signals on AI-generated photos and monitor the number of attempts.”

It’s clear—we’ll need tech solutions like this to get ahead of AI-enabled fraud.

Building trust face-to-face: The freight industry’s human response

If you’re worried about strategic cargo theft, you’re not alone. A Freight Caviar poll found that double brokering was the leading fraud concern among brokers, topping outright theft and hijacking. 

In this threat landscape, it’s highly likely that every broker and carrier in the country has already been targeted—or will be in short order. It’s the worst-kept secret in the industry. Unfortunately, victimized brokers and carriers have experienced a shocking lack of action when they’ve turned to the FMCSA. This rapidly rising fraud simply hasn’t been an agency priority.

While the federal government has yet to take meaningful action, freight brokers and carriers aren’t standing idle. They are taking their own actions, adopting new tools, and opening up dialogue.

Partly in response to this chaos, they’ve banded together and launched the Broker-Carrier Summit to deliver critical education, build relationships, and open up the lines of communication necessary to strengthen the industry and help fend off scammers.

Fighting fire with fire: The freight industry’s tech response

While emerging technologies have enabled a whole new level of criminality, brokers and carriers also leverage cutting-edge tech to protect against AI-powered scammers. In fact, tech-enabled fraud prevention tools have done more to combat this increasingly sophisticated threat than anything else out there.

Graft agrees.

“We’ll have to increasingly rely on technology to help us ascertain identities because AI is going to get better at impersonating reality,” she says.

What tools do we have at our disposal?

Digital identity wallets, like the well-established ID.me, are now taking direct aim at deepfakes, leveraging biometrics for facial verification and liveness detection. (Privacy concerns aside.)

Carrier vetting platforms, including FreightValidate and Carrier411, surface an operator’s entire history—or, in the case of many bad actors, the lack of a legitimate history.

Some carrier identity SaaS systems and plugins, like Highway, feature machine learning (ML) to monitor inbound phone calls and email inboxes, looking for various fraud signals, like spoofed phone numbers and email addresses.

As this digital war rages on, some fraud detection tools are getting into a more proactive position, now executing real-time behavioral and intent monitoring—detecting increasingly subtle patterns.

It’s a lot to take in, I realize. The growing scale of strategic freight theft—up 1,500% since 2021, according to the American Trucking Association—is enough to leave you breathless.

We’ll need every human and tech-enabled arrow in our quiver to protect our supply chain.

In an unexpected development on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine on the occasion of Russia's Victory Day celebrations, coming next week.

This year's observance will mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Kremlin published a statement calling for the ceasefire to being at midnight on May 8, lasting until midnight on May 11. The Kremlin intends for all Russian military operations to be suspended.

This full three-day ceasefire would mark the longest such pause in fighting of the war, following on the heels of this month's 30-hour Easter truce, which largely held but saw accusations of repeat violations hurled between both sides in some locales.

Prior 'Victory Day' parade, via AP

The ceasefire is “out of humanitarian considerations," the statement indicated. "Russia believes that the Ukrainian side should follow this example," the Kremlin added.

"In the event of ceasefire violations by Ukraine, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will respond appropriately and effectively."

Moscow further said it "reaffirms its readiness for peace negotiations without preconditions, aimed at addressing the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis and engaging constructively with international partners."

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, was the first to respond on behalf of Kiev, and asked why there can't be an immediate ceasefire, if Moscow is willing to declare one for May 8.

"Why wait until May 8th? If the fire can be ceased now and since any date for 30 days — so it is real, not just for a parade," Sybiha wrote on X. "Ukraine is ready to support a lasting, durable and full ceasefire. And this is what we are constantly proposing, for at least 30 days.”

One Russian source has been quoted as pointing out this is largely about signaling the Trump administration:

“We are sending a signal to the outside world: we are peace-loving, and they [in Ukraine] are terrorists — referring, for example, to the recent killing of General Moskalik,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to talk candidly about the situation.

“Another intended recipient of this signal is the U.S. president himself: ‘Look, Mr. Trump, we are trying,’” the official added.

Trump has been increasing the pressure not only on Zelensky but on Russia too, warning both sides that US patience will run out, and urging the forging of a ceasefire within days.

But in reality neither side has budged, given also just on Monday FM Lavrov set forth maximalist demands to end the war: full recognition of Russian control over the four territories, 'deNazification', and a pledge for Ukraine to never joint NATO, along with protection of the Russian language in Ukraine.

New on MoA:
Russia Rejects Trump's Freeze Of The War In Ukrainehttps://t.co/Adz8e0loFS pic.twitter.com/Gxk7JTtvZ5

However, Trump has lately suggested he thinks Zelensky is ready to give up Crimea, but there's been no official confirmation of this as of yet. The Ukrainian leader would face immense pushback from many of his own military commanders if he formally relinquishes territory.

Authored by Peter Hitchens via The Daily Mail,

In my trade I have long grown used to the way governments lie and get others to lie for them. 

It is what they do.

But I have seldom seen such a cloud of lies as we face now. Hardly anyone in this country knows the truth about Ukraine. 

There has been nothing like it since we were all lied to about the Iraq invasion, with bilge about fictional ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. The liars were caught out. 

And they learned from it. They learned to lie more skillfully.

Meanwhile, many of those in our society who knew how to challenge such lies died off or retired and were not replaced.

We have never had a debate about the Ukraine crisis which started from the beginning. Did anyone in power ever tell you truthfully how, when or why this war began? No. Did anyone in power explain why Britain, crime blighted, decrepit, rubbish-strewn, rat-infested, broke Britain, had to get involved in it? Never.

You have just been fed propaganda rubbish about ‘democracy’, freedom and an invented Russian menace. Here are some of the lies you have repeatedly been told.

The war, they say, was not provoked. Seldom in history has a war been more provoked.

Russians, nice ones like the liberal, democratic politician Yegor Gaidar, and nasty ones like the bloody despot Vladimir Putin, begged the West to stop trundling its military alliance, Nato, eastwards towards Russia.

ALL Russians, including the great anti-Communist author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, had been shocked and angered when Nato in 1999 abruptly gave up its defensive posture and launched attacks on Yugoslavia – which had not attacked a Nato member.

These protests reached their peak in February 2007, when Putin made a dramatic speech in Munich. He said Nato expansion was ‘a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. We have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?’

Look, if someone as gaunt as Putin spoke to you like that in a pub late in the evening, you’d take it as a warning that he was seriously riled. And unless you wanted a fight, you’d back off. But we didn’t back off.

US President George W.Bush, the genius who invaded Iraq, deliberately raised the temperature the following year. Can it be that Bush likes wars?

In April 2008, Bush said that Ukraine should be placed on the path towards joining Nato. Even the Guardian, the Liberal Warmonger’s Gazette, conceded that this was ‘likely to infuriate the Kremlin’. And so it did. I suspect we were on the path to war from that moment.

I am always accused, when I say that, of making excuses for Putin. I am not. 

I think he was stupid as well as wrong to be provoked. Wise men ignore provocations. But to claim he was not provoked is just to lie.

Another lie we are repeatedly told is that Russia attacked Georgia later in 2008. But anyone can find, on the web, a 2009 Reuters news agency story headlined ‘Georgia started war with Russia: EU-backed report’.

The dispatch summarises an inquiry by the respected Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini. She had been asked by Brussels to look into that war. That is what she said. But, somehow or other, a lot of Western media outlets failed to find space for it. I still meet supposedly informed people who have never heard of Ms Tagliavini or her report.

And then there is the claim that this is about democracy and freedom. It isn’t. The more the West claims to care for these things, the less it does to help them.

Some examples: 

Ukraine’s elected president was lawlessly overthrown by a mob in 2014. Britain and the USA condoned this shameful event because they preferred the illegal rebels to the elected government. You just can’t do that and pretend to be the guardian of democracy. But then, we aren’t anyway.

You will search in vain for protests against the treatment of Romania’s presidential candidate, in a country that is in the EU and Nato.

CALIN Georgescu’s election was annulled by judges in December when he looked like winning the first round. And he has been banned from standing in the second round – all because he has the wrong kind of politics. And if that’s not enough, look at the West’s deep, shaming silence over the frightening, thuggish behaviour of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan.

A few weeks ago, this Turkish Putin arrested and jailed Ekrem Imamoglu, an opposition politician who looked likely to beat him at the polls.

Mr Imamoglu joined the many journalists and democrats who already rot in Turkish prisons.

Erdogan has crushed free media, free speech and the freedom to protest. But his country is still allowed to stay in Nato, and Western states have made less noise than an angry vole guarding its nest. They’re scared of Erdogan.

I won’t even try to explain how Germany recently recalled its old, dead parliament to push through laws the newly elected parliament would not pass. This was done to allow the spending of extra billions on the Ukraine war. But I hope you get my drift.

Demand proper debate. Demand the truth. Don’t be dragged into more stupidity, or we will end up with bomb craters as well as potholes.

*  *  *

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

By Philip Marey, senior US strategist at Rabobank

For now, Trump’s advisors seem to have talked him out of firing Powell, easing market stress last week. The VIX fell from almost 36 on Monday to 25 by the end of the week. However, as we warned a year ago and last month, the Fed and Trump are on a collision course and we are likely to see further confrontations as the Fed’s cutting cycle is slowed down by the inflationary impact of the tariffs. At a closed door IMF meeting on Friday, Powell is reported to have stressed that central banks must be shielded from politics to ensure they can focus on keeping inflation stable and employment high. While he drew applause for these remarks, his audience can do very little to keep him safe from Trump.

On Saturday, the FOMC’s external communications blackout started. However, Powell has already made clear that May 7-8 is not a live meeting. This also means that we are not going to get Fed reactions to some interesting data points that are scheduled for this week, including Q1 GDP, March PCE inflation and April payrolls and unemployment. 

Week ahead

Today, the Canadians go to the polls. The two largest parties are the Liberals (Mark Carney) and the Conservatives (Pierre Poilievre). Justin Trudeau resigned as Prime Minister of Canada on January 6, following declining poll numbers and the resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a snap election for today. 

After Trudeau's resignation, Liberal Party support surged from 20% to 43% under Mark Carney, and the Liberals are leading polls for the first time since 2022. Carney's agenda focuses on economic growth, affordability, and global trade, including eliminating the carbon tax, ambitious housing plans, and infrastructure investment. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

Poilievre and the Conservatives, with the slogan "Canada first, for a change," aim to lower the lowest income bracket and introduce a tax cut to defer capital gains taxes when reinvesting within Canada, as their campaign gains momentum. 

For more details on the Canadian election, please read the preview of the Canadian elections by Christian Lawrence and Molly Schwartz. 

Meanwhile, the American interest in Canada has not waned. In an interview with Time magazine, published on Friday, US President Trump repeated his claim on Canada. He said: "I'm really not trolling. Canada is an interesting case.…  I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state."

Tomorrow, we get the US goods trade balance for March, which turned more negative since December due to rising imports that are likely caused by front-loading because of the tariffs. In February, the trade deficit declined a little due to a rise in exports. Trump’s intended reciprocal tariffs are proportional to the trade deficits with the various trading partners, but many are now trying to negotiate their way out of them. Trump expects some results in a few weeks. Keep in mind that the specific part of the reciprocal tariffs (i.e. above the 10% universal tariff) were delayed until early July for most countries.

We also get the Conference Board report on US consumer confidence, which has declined, also because of the tariffs. While the assessment of the present situation has fallen back to levels shortly before the November elections, the expectations index has plummeted to the lowest level since 2013. So American consumers are very pessimistic about the impact of Trump’s policies.

On Wednesday, we get the Australian CPI for March and the Chinese PMIs for April. Eurozone CPI data for April and GDP growth for Q1 are also scheduled, with separate data for individual Eurozone countries.

In the US, the advance estimate of Q1 GDP growth will be published. The consensus expectation is only 0.2% growth (this is at an annualized rate!), a substantial slowdown from 2.4% in the final quarter of last year. Strong imports, likely caused by front-loading the tariffs, have been a major drag on GDP growth in Q1.

US personal income and outlays for March will also be published. This report includes the PCE deflator, the Fed’s preferred measure of consumer price inflation. The consensus expectation is a decline in headline PCE inflation to 2.2% in March from 2.5% in February. The core PCE deflator is expected to fall to 2.6% from 2.8%, which would suggest continued stickiness. Another data point that the FOMC usually pays attention to is the Employment Cost Index for Q1, which is expected to remain at 0.9%. However, both the ECI and the PCE may now be seen as rearview mirror data points in light of the anticipated inflationary effects from the tariffs.

Finally, the ADP statisticians will publish their estimate of US employment growth in the private sector, which they think is informative regarding Friday’s payrolls. The ADP measure is expected to slow down to 128K in April from 155K in March.

On Thursday, the Bank of Japan is expected to keep the target rate unchanged at 0.50%. However, the BoJ will publish its quarterly outlook, which will extend projections through March 2028.

We also get the US initial jobless claims for the week ending on April 26. They have been moving sideways recently, hovering around the post-2021 average, so they have not been a cause for alarm yet.

The ISM manufacturing report for April will also be published. Last month, the headline index fell below the neutral level again, but remains in the range it has been moving in since 2023. The employment sub-index has been sliding downward, albeit slowly, since 2021 as the Fed has tried to rebalance the labor market. In contrast, the prices paid sub-index has been on the rise since the elections.

On Friday, all eyes will be on the US Employment Report for April, featuring the nonfarm payrolls and the unemployment rate. The consensus expectation is a slowdown to 130K in April from 228K in March. This would still be better than the slow first two months of the year. Unemployment is expected to remain unchanged at 4.2%. Average hourly earnings are also expected to remain stable at 0.3% month-on-month, which should lead to a modest increase to 3.9% from 3.8% in year-on-year terms. A report like this would certainly not make the Fed’s May meeting a live one. However, the Fed will stay alert for signs of deterioration in the labor market that would warrant a rate cut in June.

Apart from these data points, the daily tariff news will likely move markets.

Russia on Monday made clear that it is sticking by initial demands raised by Moscow at the start of the war in February 2022, after President Putin last week issues statements which appeared open to compromise for the sake of peace talks.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has declared that Russia will never give up its hold over Crimea, as well as the annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. He named as a condition for peace negotiations that Russia's control and sovereignty over these territories is vital and essentially non-negotiable.

"The international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, the DPR, the LPR, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as part of Russia is another imperative," he said. "All the commitments Kiev assumes must be legally binding, contain enforcement mechanisms and be permanent," Lavrov added.

Image: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

"Russia proceeds from the premise that Kiev’s non-accession to NATO, as well as reaffirming its neutral and non-aligned status as per the 1990 Declaration on Ukraine’s State Sovereignty - these factors form one of the two pillars for a final settlement to the Ukraine crisis that would meet Russia’s security interests," he continue.

The top Russian diplomat also demanded that Ukraine enact legislation that restores and protects Russian language, culture, and churches and monasteries in Ukraine. Some one-third of the country has long spoken Russian as their first language, and many more know it as a second language.

Zelensky has been waging a state persecution campaign against the largest Orthodox Church in Ukraine, because it has not broken spiritual communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, at times outright seizing monasteries and churches, and arresting bishops and priests. Russian media broadcasts and media have also long been banned.

Lavrov detailed of Moscow's demands, "The second pillar consists of overcoming the legacy of the neo-Nazi regime which took power in Kiev after the February 2014 putsch, including the initiative by its perpetrators to eradicate and cancel, in both physical and legislative terms, everything Russian, be it the Russian language, media, culture, traditions, or the canonical Orthodox faith," as conveyed in TASS.

"Demilitarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine is also on the agenda, along with lifting sanctions, withdrawing lawsuits and cancelling arrest warrants, as well as returning Russian assets subjected to the so-called freeze in the West," he emphasized.

Of course, there's also the ban on Ukraine ever becoming a member of NATO, which is a key compromise already being offered by the Trump administration.

Again, all of this is essentially identical to the demands articulated by Putin at the very beginning of the full-scale war. President Trump, coming off the brief Rome meeting with Zelensky, thinks he's ready to give up Crimea:

US President Donald Trump has said he thinks Volodymyr Zelensky is ready to give up Crimea, despite his Ukrainian counterpart’s previous assertions on the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Speaking to reporters at an airport in New Jersey on Sunday a day after meeting with Zelensky at the Vatican, Trump said “Oh, I think so,” in response to a question on whether he thought Zelensky was ready to “give up” the territory.

But is the Ukrainian leader really ready to do this and face attacks - possibly even assassination attempts - from within his own far-right paramilitaries and even army commanders? 

A Ukrainian Army brigade commander openly threatens Zelensky on a Ukrainain TV show.

He warns him not to negotiate with Russia, not to concede territory, or he will "Regret it"

Open threats to the commander in chief from his own troops, Ukraine is a lawless basket case. pic.twitter.com/McN1GjlkIM

While the common Ukrainian populace is likely more willing to find compromise for the sake of peace, there are still Azov militants and their associates running the show in many places - and their position remains that no compromise whatsoever should be made and the fight must continue, even as Ukrainian forces are being beaten back.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned in a media interview that if Washington imposes more sanctions on Russia, this basically assures more war for years to come. "The minute you start doing that kind of stuff, you're walking away from it, you've now doomed yourself to another two years of war and we don't want to see it happen," he said.

He added: "There is no other country, there is no other institution or organization on the Earth that can bring these two sides together, no one else is talking to both sides but us and no one else in the world can make something like this happen but the president."

* * *

More headlines via Newsquawk... Geopolitics: Ukraine

• US President Trump met with Ukrainian President Zelensky at the Vatican for 15 minutes which Zelensky’s staff said was constructive, covered a lot of ground and they agreed to meet again, while the White House said the meeting was very productive.
• US President Trump said the meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky went well and we'll see what happens in the next days, while Trump is very disappointed with Russia and wants Russian President Putin to stop shooting and reach a deal. Furthermore, Trump said the confines of a deal are there and that Zelensky is calmer now and wants to make a deal, while it was separately reported that President Trump said he thinks Ukrainian President Zelensky is ready to give up Crimea, according to Al Arabiya.
• US President Trump said there was no reason for Russian President Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns over the last few days which makes him think that Putin doesn’t want to stop the war and is just ‘tapping’ him along, while Trump added too many people are dying and this has to be dealt with differently through banking or secondary sanctions.
• US Secretary of State Rubio said Russia and Ukraine are generally closer to a peace deal than in the last three years and a peace deal needs to happen soon, while he added that the US has options to hold responsible those that don’t want a Ukraine peace deal, according to NBC.
• Russian President Putin confirmed Russia’s readiness to negotiate with Ukraine without preconditions during a meeting with US envoy Witkoff, according to IFAX.
• Russian President Putin said Kyiv’s adventure in the Kursk region completely failed and Chief of General Staff Gerasimov said Ukrainian saboteurs in Russia’s Belgorod region have been liquidated. Furthermore, Russia’s military commander told Russian President Putin that scattered remnants of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region will be destroyed soon, according to RIA.
• Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said Russia will continue to target sites used by Ukraine’s military, foreign fighters and military instructors sent by Europe, while he added that Russia would be willing to store Iran’s enriched nuclear material if both the US and Iran believe that was useful.
• Ukrainian military said Moscow’s assertion it has ended Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region is not true and operations inside Kursk continue, while its forces are still on active operations in the Belgorod region.
• French President Macron said he had a very positive exchange with Ukrainian President Zelensky and that Ukraine is ready for an unconditional ceasefire, while the coalition of the willing will continue working on a ceasefire and lasting peace in Ukraine.
• German Defence Minister Pistorius said US demands for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia are going too far.
• North Korea confirmed troop deployment to Russia and said it will faithfully implement its agreement with Russia, according to Yonhap. Furthermore, South Korea said North Korea's confirmation of Russia troop deployment is an admission of a criminal act and the US State Department noted it is concerned by North Korea's direct involvement in Russia's war in Ukraine, while it added that North Korea's military deployment to Russia and any support provided by Russia to it in return must end.

Authored by Ciaran Lyons via CoinTelegraph.com,

SEC Commissioner and head of the crypto task force, Hester Peirce, says US financial firms are navigating crypto in a way that’s similar to playing the children’s game “the floor is lava,” but in the dark.

“It is time that we find a way to end this game. We need to turn on the lights and build some walkways over the lava pit,” Peirce said at the SEC “Know Your Custodian” roundtable event on April 25.

The lava is crypto, says Peirce

Peirce explained that SEC registrants are forced to approach crypto-related activities like “the floor is lava,” where the aim is to jump from one piece of furniture to the next without touching the ground, except here, touching crypto directly is the lava.

“A D.C. version of this game is our regulatory approach to crypto assets, and crypto asset custody in particular,” she said.

Peirce said that, much like in the game, firms wanting to engage with crypto must avoid directly holding it due to unclear regulatory rules. 

“To engage in crypto-related activities, SEC-registrants have had to hop from one poorly illuminated regulatory space to the next, all while ensuring that they never touch any crypto asset,” Peirce said.

Source: US Securities and Exchange Commission

Peirce said that investment advisers are often unsure which crypto assets qualify as securities, what entities count as qualified custodians, and whether “exercising staking or voting rights” could trigger custody violations.

Peirce also said that a broker or ATS that cannot custody or manage crypto assets will struggle to facilitate trading, making it unlikely for a “robust market” to develop.

Echoing a similar sentiment, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said at the event that as more SEC registrants work with crypto assets, it’s essential that they have access to custodial options that meet legal and regulatory requirements.

Uyeda said the agency should consider letting advisers use “state-chartered limited-purpose trust companies” with the authority to hold crypto assets as qualified custodians.

Meanwhile, the recently sworn-in chair of the SEC, Paul Atkins, said that he expected “huge benefits” from blockchain technology through efficiency, risk mitigation, transparency, and cutting costs.

He reiterated that among his goals at the SEC would be to facilitate “clear regulatory rules of the road” for digital assets, hinting that the agency under former chair Gary Gensler had contributed to market and regulatory uncertainty.

“I look forward to engaging with market participants and working with colleagues in President Trump’s administration and Congress to establish a rational fit-for-purpose framework for crypto assets,” said Atkins.

After three consecutive days of reports of mutual gunfire at army outposts along the Line of Control (LOC) disputed border area, Pakistan's defense minister declared Monday that a military incursion by India is imminent.

"We have reinforced our forces because it is something which is imminent now. So in that situation some strategic decisions have to be taken, so those decisions have been taken," Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Reuters from Islamabad. This confirms Pakistani Army build-up along the border.

Protest against the suspension of Indus Waters Treaty by India, in Karachi, Pakistan, via Reuters.

A severe war of words has been on since last Tuesday's deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir, which saw 26 Indian tourists get executed after the gunmen sought to identify Hindus among the group. The Indian government promptly accused Pakistan of harboring the Islamist terrorists which committed the atrocity, which Islamabad angrily rejected.

The nuclear-armed neighbors have already fought two historic wars over the Kashmir region, and fears are rising that another one may soon be on the horizon - also after both sides have sent military reinforcements to the respective regions they administer. Amid a massive manhunt, India identified two detained suspected militants as Pakistani.

"Asif said India's rhetoric was ramping up and that Pakistan's military had briefed the government on the possibility of an Indian attack," Reuters continues of the defense chief's statements. "He did not go into further details on his reasons for thinking an incursion was imminent."

And very alarmingly, the question of use of nuclear weapons was broached in the interview:

Asif said Pakistan was on high alert and that it would only use its arsenal of nuclear weapons if "there is a direct threat to our existence".

Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s defense minister

The Indian army over the weekend announced there has been "unprovoked" firing "initiated by Pakistan" along the Line of Control (LOC) which divides Kashmir into two. Pakistan in the aftermath of the accusation neither confirmed nor denied.

The New York Times described Saturday that "Pakistani solders fired at an Indian position first and India responded in kind, according to local news reports, which said that "the exchange was brief and that there were no casualties." Precise locations of these live fire incidents have not been disclosed.

Soon after the crisis land borders were been shut, visas and military exchange programs mutually canceled, and a landmark water treaty was suspended. Pakistan blasted India's cancelation of the Indus Water Treaty as an "act of war" and warned it would respond accordingly if water flows are violated among the two rivals' shared rivers.

Unverified videos like the below have been widely circulating online:

Non stop Pakistan military movement to India’s border. pic.twitter.com/tUDsmhhHnI

But if gunfire continues to be exchanged between the two militaries, also amid reports that Pakistani visa holders are being promptly booted from the country amid the diplomatic crisis - clashes could accelerate toward open war. 

India's Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah has meanwhile said there must be a "decisive fight against terrorism and its origin." Indian officials have continued to heap accusations that ultimately Islamabad either supports these groups or at least turns a blind eye.

Air Force and army activity along the border ramping up?

Pakistan has activated its Swat & Skardu airbases amid tensions with India. The Airforce were seen conducting sorties today. pic.twitter.com/U5GK17xLAd