The Financial Logic Behind the Parade of the World's Most Powerful Military

China Beckons Global Capital -
A Strategic Display for the World’s Investors

China’s September 3rd grand military parades are far more than spectacles for domestic and world audiences—they are meticulously orchestrated broadcasts to the world’s capital markets. Beneath the orchestrated marches and thunder of steel lies a financial logic, one attuned to the instincts of global capital.

The Real Message to Global Capital

What do investors see beyond the flags and formations? Not sentiment, not ideology, not the thunder of the crowd. They see security—a clear signal that, in a world roiled by pandemics, war in Ukraine, Middle Eastern conflict, shipping disruptions, and ballooning Western debt, there is a place of stability.

Capital cares about only one thing: safety. Money lost can be earned again, but when security vanishes, all assets become bubbles. Militaries worldwide grow their budgets and speak of peace, but markets remain jittery—seeking havens resilient to shock.

So when Beijing unveils its missile arrays, naval assets, drone swarms, and integrated systems on live television, Wall Street and City analysts take notice. This is not just a show of strength for the public—it’s a public safety manual for capital: “Place your assets here; they will be protected.”

War, if it comes at all, will be short. The balance is no longer in question. Against all of its adversaries combined, China’s advantage is systemic and overwhelming—rooted in industrial scale, electronic dominance, and logistical reach that no coalition can match. Modern war is not won by individual platforms but by networks that see farther, strike faster, and replace losses instantly. In such an environment, the first hours would decide the outcome; within days, the conflict would be over—not through attrition, but through paralysis of the opponent’s entire command, supply, and economic lifelines.

Industrial Power as the Ultimate Moat

The true foundation of national strength is industrial power. Modern conflict is a contest of supply chains, technology, and resilience. The parade is a window into decades of accumulation: green energy materials, rare earth reserves, advanced chip production, and self-sustaining manufacturing chains.

What was once imported or controlled by others—gallium nitride, rare earths, satellite navigation—has become domestically mastered.

“Made in China” was expected to falter; instead, the supply chain underwent a decisive reshuffle and upgrade. EVs conquer export markets, shipbuilding leads the world, robotics and high-end machine tools rapidly close the gap. This resilience is the true strategic moat—one that global capital cannot ignore.

Weaponry is the manifestation of this industrial might. A deindustrialized nation can neither innovate nor defend. Each missile, tank and drone at the parade signals the health of the wider industrial ecosystem. II/

China’s Ascendance in the Arms Market

The arms trade reflects capital’s vote of confidence. In just a decade, China’s share of global arms exports has surged to 10%. Its competitive edge? Reliable, affordable equipment, free from political strings and with flexible financing.

Clients span from Pakistan (the largest, accounting for over half of exports) to Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Bangladesh. Growing demand in Africa and Latin America stems from a simple capitalist logic: proven cost-effectiveness, reliability, and practical results.

Battlefields themselves serve as advertisements. When Pakistani JF-10Cs bested Indian Rafale fighters, capital watched not only the dogfight but the systems behind it—early warning, data links, integrated weapons. This shattered the stereotype of Chinese arms as mere “budget alternatives.”

China now exports not just hardware but complete combat solutions: aircraft, missiles, and data networks as unified systems. The value multiplies, and the cash flow becomes stable—an asset class in itself, prized by capital for its resilience to volatility.

The Parade as an Economic Signal

Thus, the September 3rd spectacle is a strategic economic message: China is more than the world’s factory—it is the safest harbour for global assets. The real broadcast is not the roar of engines but the promise of secure, stable, RMB-denominated investments, underpinned by an unbreakable supply chain and industrial capability.

Capital, ever unsentimental, measures risk and return. As the Federal Reserve signals rate cuts and global hot money seeks new ground, the parade emits a clear beacon: “Here lies certainty. Here your capital will not just be safe—it will grow.”

This is not mere showmanship; it is a calculated layout. A robust defence industry means a stable foundation for the currency, assets protected from external shocks, and a supply chain that will not be easily broken, even in times of crisis.

In the past, capital trusted the dollar, undergirded by US military and a relatively stable global order. Now, as China’s industrial moat deepens, investment flows are shifting. From Europe to Africa, the Middle East to Southeast Asia, funds are moving—into RMB, into Chinese supply chains, into defence-linked tech. They follow certainty and resilience, not slogans.

History is clear: without protection, wealth is but a lamb for slaughter. From the bruisings of the late Qing to Ukraine’s capital flight, the lesson endures. Today, China’s parade lays its cards on the global table—China is not only a place to create wealth, but to guarantee its safety. That is what capital craves. That is the real future.

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Beyond Chips and Sanctions: Why the US is Losing the AI War to China

The stakes are enormous if the US loses the AI race to China — and all signs suggest that’s exactly what’s happening.

Wall Street’s worst nightmare just came true. A bombshell MIT study reveals that a staggering 95% of AI investments are generating zero returns. And if that wasn’t enough—DeepSeek just announced its next-gen model will run entirely on homegrown Chinese chips. So how long can the U.S. AI bubble keep inflating? Let’s break it down.

Two brutal truths are shaking American investors to the core.

First: the sheer scale of the AI froth. U.S. firms have poured hundreds of billions into artificial intelligence—a historic frenzy fueled by private capital chasing mythical future returns. But MIT researchers sliced through the hype, analyzing 30 major companies. What did they find? Despite colossal investment, 95% of organizations see no ROI. Zero. Returns aren’t just low—they’re nonexistent.

Think back to last month: Meta dangled hundred-million-dollar packages to lure AI talent. To some, it signaled an industry on the verge of explosion. But behind the glitter, it reeked of desperation—the kind of last-gasp euphoria that screams bubble. Sure enough, weeks later, Meta slammed the brakes on all AI hiring.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek is Already Profitable – A Rare Feat in AI

While American AI giants like OpenAI and Google are burning billions with no clear path to profitability, DeepSeek stands out as a remarkable exception. According to recent financial disclosures, DeepSeek has achieved profitability with an estimated $200 million in annual revenue, driven by its scalable open-source model offerings and strategic partnerships across industries including manufacturing, healthcare, and fintech. Its R&D ROI is estimated at 35%.

The profitability of an AI firm like DeepSeek is not just a metric; it is a seismic signal to the global market. While Western AI giants hemorrhage cash in a speculative race for scale, DeepSeek’s reported 35% profit margin demonstrates a sustainable, commercially viable path. This divergence will inevitably redirect the flow of capital. There will be a fundamental reallocation of the financial and talent resources necessary to win the AI race, decisively tilting the competitive balance of the AI race in China’s favor.

But here’s the second, even darker reality: even among American big companies actively deploying AI, there’s no evidence of transformative impact. Projects aren’t scaling. Efficiency gains? Mostly theoretical. This isn’t just a correction—it’s a direct challenge to Wall Street’s belief in AI’s inevitability.

The MIT report doesn’t dismiss AI’s potential—it exposes a fatal flaw in America’s approach. Success isn’t about who spends the most. It’s about strategy, execution, and real-world application. And that’s where China’s AI ascendancy begins.

Four structural advantages set China apart—and no one else can replicate them.👇
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1. Talent Dominance

Jensen Huang isn’t shy about it: China produces nearly 50% of the world’s top AI researchers. Data from MacroPolo’s AI Talent Tracker shows China’s share of elite researchers surged from 29% in 2019 to 47% in 2022. At top AI conferences, Chinese-authored papers jumped from 10% to 26% in just three years. The numbers vary—but the trend is unmistakable. China is overtaking the U.S. in the brain race.

Patents tell the same story. In generative AI, Google leads with 560 applications—but Zhejiang University is right behind with 480. Among the top 10 patent filers, six are Chinese. Talent translates into tangible output.

And then there’s the Trump effect. The China Initiative, a U.S. Department of Justice program launched in 2018 to counter Chinese economic espionage - spectacularly caused mass flight of top Chinese scientists out of U.S. institutions and back home. Professor Zhou Ming, a key architect behind software used in Boeing and Airbus jets, left his U.S. post last month to return to China. Now, with U.S. research funding in free fall—NIH slashed $8 billion in R&D, NSF is cutting staff by up to 50%—America is practically gift-wrapping its talent advantage to China.

2. The Open-Source Revolution

Today, the top three open-source general-purpose AI models are all Chinese: DeepSeek, Minimax, and Qwen. In video generation, the best open-source tools also come from China.

Why does open-source matter? It bridges academia and industry, creating a feedback loop where research meets real-world application. It’s free, customizable, and since the model can be downloaded and run locally, it's secure—no risky data uploads, no black-box algorithms. Open-source dismantles monopoly. It denies giants like OpenAI the luxury of recouping massive losses—$5 billion last year, $14 billion projected this year—through locked-in user bases. China’s open-source ecosystem is draining their moats.

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India: Once the West’s Trump card against China; today, an object for Trump’s disdain

In Trump’s eyes, India has lost all value. Now it’s just a liability Washington is eager to discard — even shove into the arms of Russia and China. Whoever takes in India inherits a burden.

On July 30, 2025, Trump managed to humiliate India from head to toe in the span of 48 hours — four consecutive posts, each sharper than the last.
First came the announcement: a 25% tariff on Indian goods, the highest rate ever imposed on a so-called U.S. “quasi-ally.”
Then, he dug up old grievances — accusing India of buying Russian oil to fund the war.
Next, he proudly declared a new U.S.–Pakistan oil deal, sneering that India might as well go buy its fuel from Pakistan in the future.
Finally, with maximum sarcasm, he called India a “dead economy.”

The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Bessent, quickly picked up the baton, declaring to the effect that India was an insignificant country with no real role in shaping the global order. For a proud nation obsessed with becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council, that was a dagger straight to the heart.

Inside India, the outrage was instant. Tens of thousands of Indian netizens flooded Trump’s accounts, calling him everything from a pedophile to a dog.
Celebrity anchor Palki Sharma dedicated a full 15-minute morning segment to tearing into the unreasonable Trump. Members of parliament demanded that Prime Minister Modi issue a strong response.

But Modi stayed silent. Instead, he repeated — over and over — that India would one day become the world’s third-largest economy.

Why the silence? Because Modi is cornered.

For nearly a decade, India has basked in the warm glow of Western — especially American — strategic attention, hailed as a pillar of the “Indo-Pacific” strategy against China. But look closely at the Quad — the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India — and it’s clear who is the intruder. Japan is Washington’s adopted son, hosting U.S. troops. Australia is the younger cousin, also home to American bases. India has neither sentimental ties nor military dependence.

So why choose India? Not for its cow dung as fuel and medicine or the taste of its curry. The reason is simple: since the U.S.–China trade war, Washington has been desperate to reduce reliance on Chinese goods. Full decoupling proved impossible — it might collapse the U.S. before China. So “de-risking” became the new mantra: shift supply chains, replace Chinese products step by step. India is key to this decoupling/derisking from China strategy. India is central to this strategy. The U.S. urged multinationals to relocate manufacturing there. Yet reality quickly set in: India is not up to the mark. Multinationals soon realize that India will never replace China.

Under Biden, relations with India warmed rapidly. New factories, Apple’s supply chain moving south, arms sales — even talk of selling the F-35. Washington bankrolled Modi’s allies, financing Adani Group's Colombo port project in Sri Lanka with $553 million. The goal was clear: turn India into a heavyweight capable of making trouble for China — economically, militarily, politically.

And how did India repay this generosity? By reselling Russian oil to Europe for massive profits. By snatching oil contracts from American companies. By wrecking U.S. plans for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. By passing laws that hiked compliance costs for Apple and Google, and squeezed American NGOs out of 40% of their operating space. Even plotting assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a U.S.-Canadian dual citizen and Sikh separatist leader on U.S. soil during Modi’s state visit on June 22, 2023.

In short — a partner in name, a spoiler in practice. II/

The breaking point came in the air. Despite U.S. and Israeli intelligence, French Rafales, and Australian electronics, India lost the air battle 0–6 to Pakistan on May 7, 2025. The defeat exposed systemic failures in coordination, equipment, and command — shattering the expensive deterrence image built on overpriced arms imports. Washington was wondering: if India couldn’t even match Pakistan’s export version of the Chinese warfighting system, how could it challenge China itself? The US has counted on India to wage a proxy war with China like Ukraine. Obviously India is impossible to draw China into a long war of attrition like Ukraine.

For years, India played the coquette — luring the U.S. with mixed signals and half-promises, reaping benefits while giving little back. But when the charm wears off, the tragedy writes itself. And a country stripped of its geopolitical value to Washington ends up in only one place: on the menu.

The Americans have always lived by a simple rule: if you can’t sit at the table, you’re served on it. India didn’t make the cut — so now it’s the main course.

Relations with the West have turned on a dime. Trump broke precedent to host Pakistan’s army chief for lunch at the White House — the first time a U.S. president has welcomed a non-head of state from Pakistan. Soon after, Trump publicly claimed Pakistan had shot down five Indian fighters — right after India’s “victory tour” ended. At the G7 in June, Modi didn’t even get an invitation, ending a six-year streak as observer.

A lost battle cost India more than just Rafales — it cost its strategic utility as a “must-have” ally. The red carpet is gone; the closed door is back.

India’s fall from “indispensable ally” to “dispensable background actor” has been swift — and brutal. Which is why both Trump and Bessent can mock India without restraint, without fear of retaliation, without worrying about breaking U.S.–India relations. The truth is simple: now that India is useless, Washington looks down on India and doesn’t care about its feelings.

And when India’s “united front value” evaporates, a hard-nosed Trump administration has no hesitation in putting India on the menu. The target? That $45 billion annual trade surplus India runs with the United States — year after year.

On July 30, Trump announced that starting August 1, all Indian goods would face a 25% tariff, plus an unspecified fine. A week later, on August 6, Trump doubled down — literally — announcing another 25%, pushing total tariffs to 50%. If implemented, Indian exports to the U.S. will crater.

And this hits India where it hurts most — the jugular. Without that surplus, the Indian economy suffocates.

Here’s the little-known fact: India is one of the most foreign-exchange-starved major economies in the world. Its forex reserves have always been stretched thin. In 2024, India’s GDP was $3.91 trillion, but its external debt reached $2.1 trillion — roughly 54% of GDP. Repayments can’t be made in rupees; creditors demand hard currency. And India’s total foreign reserves? Barely $49 billion — less than 3% of its debt. After covering essential imports, it doesn’t even have enough left to pay interest.

This isn’t just a theoretical risk. In 2019, after its reserves were nearly depleted, India had to literally fly its gold reserves to London as collateral, then accept the IMF’s harsh reform terms.

Why is India always short on dollars? Mainly because its manufacturing base is weak. It has to import huge amounts of industrial raw materials — oil alone costs $56 billion a year. On the export side, India has very few globally competitive products. The result? Chronic trade deficits and constant forex leakage.

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Russia’s staggering war corruption (on the same level as Ukraine) and Putin's purge

The scale of corruption within Russia’s military and political elite is staggering: billions embezzled, frontline troops left with expired rations and improvised body armor, and defensive fortifications collapsing under pressure.

What began as a plan for a swift conquest has devolved into a drawn-out slaughter. What should have been, in Putin’s mind, a lightning strike on Kyiv within seventy-two hours has turned into a grinding war of years — with over a million casualties and nearly a trillion dollars burned.

At the heart of this failure lies corruption: oligarchs, defense contractors, and state officials feeding off the war machine while starving soldiers of training, food, and equipment. Their theft hollowed out Russia’s military from within. While elites were siphoning off wealth, Russian soldiers had to steal food to survive on the front.

And when the rot became too visible, Putin’s answer was a brutal purge—quiet “suicides” and arrests to remove the rot.

Since the war began, Russia has witnessed a grim wave of “suicides” among government officials, oligarchs, and members of the elite. Each death carries the mark of a system cracking under its own corruption.

For Ukraine and Russia, both countries operate on almost the same pattern. The oligarchs, the corruption, the money flowing through the same channels of power — it’s all there on both sides. The only real difference is the source of the money and the volume of funds to be embezzled. In Ukraine it comes from the United States and NATO countries, while in Russia it comes directly from government spending and the volume of funds is 3 times bigger. Strip away the flags and slogans, and you see the same machine running in both places.

What caused the extraordinary casualties of one million on the Russian side? They are a direct consequence of rampant systemic corruption. Russia’s corruption has destroyed its own war effort.

Consequences of Russian elite corruption:

Little or no training for mobilized men: Russians are being sent to the front with minimal or no training because the funds for training have been embezzled. Russian soldiers were told to buy their own gear. Novaya Gazeta Europe and summaries collated by reputable outlets traced this to chaotic mobilization and missing equipment (1.5 million uniform sets “disappeared,” per Duma deputy Andrei Gurulyov).

Expired/insufficient rations and widespread looting for food: Early-war reporting and verified CCTV showed Russian soldiers looting grocery stores and banks; Ukrainian officials said many units entered with only a few days’ rations.

Shoddy fortifications & materials diversion (2024–2025): Popov’s conviction for embezzling materials intended for frontline defenses is a courtroom-proven link between graft and compromised battlefield readiness.

Defective or improvised body armor (2025 case): The new embezzlement probe alleges troops received makeshift armor while money was siphoned off—another case of procurement corruption causing heavy Russian battlefield casualties. II/

The case of Roman Starovoit

In Russia’s war, corruption has claimed as many lives as Ukrainian artillery. The story of Roman Starovoit, the former governor of Kursk, tells it all.

Not long ago, he was celebrated. After hurriedly building new border defenses, the Interior Ministry awarded him a pistol of honor, and Putin himself elevated him to Minister of Transport in May 2024. Starovoit spoke proudly to the press: “I'm proud to serve Russia.” For a brief moment, it looked like he would be the next Prime Minister of Russia.

But war stripped away the mask. In August that same year, Ukraine struck Kursk and tore through its defenses in days, exposing them as shoddy and half-built. The media soon reported investigations into Starovoit’s role in embezzling funds earmarked for fortifications. By July 2025, he was dismissed. Sitting in his car with the same pistol once given to him as an honor, he remembered his promise to serve Russia—then pulled the trigger. From ministerial office to suicide on the roadside within a few months, his fall could not have been more revealing of the current state of Russia.

He was not alone. Since the “Special Military Operation” began, at least 27 oligarchs, executives, and dozens of politicians have “fallen from windows” or been found dead in staged accidents and suicides. Some deaths were almost ritualistic: in January 2023, Colonel Vadim Boiko, involved in planning the invasion, shot himself five times in the chest inside his office—a grotesque and awkward attempt at honor. Major General Vladimir Makarov also shot himself after being dismissed by Putin. The message was clear: failure meant death whether due to corruption or incompetence, whether voluntary or forced.

Kursk became the showcase of systemic rot. Moscow had poured billions of roubles into its defenses, with emergency decrees giving local officials free rein to hand out contracts. Those contracts came with a 25% kickback “tax”—contractors had to pay to play. Insiders say 19.4 billion roubles were allocated; 4.5 billion simply vanished into private pockets. Defensive walls were left unfinished, others crumbled at first contact: tank traps made with cheap M20 concrete collapsed under the weight of armored vehicles. The paperwork said the fortifications were complete; the battlefield proved otherwise.

When the Ukrainian counteroffensive shattered Kursk in weeks, seizing towns and driving deep into Russian soil, prosecutors opened sweeping corruption probes. The Kursk Development Company, senior officials, and the acting governor himself were all arrested. As a direct consequence of the setback on the war front, the Kremlin turned to North Korea, paying dearly in oil and aid to bring foreign soldiers into the fight—an astronomical price to cover a 4.5 billion rouble theft.

Starovoit’s suicide was only one chapter in this wider tragedy. In the name of honor, some Russian officials chose a pistol. For others, “accidents” and poison did the work. The phenomenon has become so common that Russians joke about it: with so many oligarchs leaping from high-rise apartments, the price of ground-floor flats in Moscow has soared. The punchline is that the joke is true—the price of ground-floor apartment really has gone up in Moscow.

But there is nothing funny here. The war has made suicide “fashionable” among Russia’s ruling class, because corruption, failure, and betrayal have left them no other way out. Kursk’s collapsed defenses and Starovoit’s final shot stand as a warning: in Russia’s war, the thieves may profit for a moment, but the reckoning is always fatal.

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It would be a miracle if the Russia-Ukraine war actually stops - the Russia’s War Dividends

I have already argued that Putin cannot end this war, even if he wanted to. What appears to the outside world as a bloody quagmire has, within Russia, become a roaring engine of renewal and opportunity.

Russia is reaping three distinct “war dividends” that will be extremely difficult to relinquish.

The First Dividend: Economics

The war has breathed new life into forgotten towns. Nowhere illustrates this better than Tula, the old military city south of Moscow. Once known for its guns and cannons, for Kalashnikov and for being the hometown of Dostoevsky, Tula today produces 70% of the shells fired by Russian artillery. Its factories run day and night, its workforce swelled by ethnic Russians who returned from Central Asia after the Soviet collapse. Wages here have doubled or tripled since the war began — most workers now earn at least 150,000 (US$1800) rubles a month.

Across Russia, the same pattern repeats. German companies left under sanctions; their plants were taken over by Russians who kept the machines running. Even a factory making salad dressing and cakes now runs at full capacity, its cakes catering to the war front. This is war-driven industrialization. Rusting Soviet smokestacks are suddenly alive again.

The numbers are startling. GDP grew 3.6% in 2023, 4.1% in 2024, and in the first quarter of 2025, an impressive 5.6%. Unemployment is below 1%. Everyone can find a job. A Kyrgyz taxi driver in Moscow earns 250,000 rubles (US$ 3000) a month. Prices too are rising — water at $2, a 6-km taxi ride at $12, — but wages have risen just as fast. Russians do not see inflation; they see full wallets.

And then there are the soldiers. A recruit today gets a 400,000 ruble federal sign-on bonus (about $4,600), topped up with 1.9 million rubles in Moscow (around $22,000). Monthly pay is 200,000 rubles or more — $2,000–$3,000, among the top 10% of Russian incomes. Volunteer battalions sometimes pay double. Death itself has been priced: families receive about 3 million rubles (over $35,000), sometimes plus debt cancellation worth 10 million rubles ($120k). Whole new “professions” have emerged — women who marry soldiers just to collect the compensation when they are killed.

This is why Russia’s outcasts — the unemployed, the alcoholics, the prisoners — have become heroes overnight. Once despised, they are now breadwinners, prodigal sons turned golden boys, national martyrs. The war has given them status and dignity. They are now the new sex symbols of Russia.

The former “Prodigal Sons” of Russia — the lower-class men once written off as losers, riffrafs, outcasts — have now become the new golden boys of the military economy. After returning from the front, they are showered with pay, sometimes up to 3 million rubles ($36, 000) per deployment. For some, the money disappears in a blur of 10-day benders, spent on alcohol, prostitution, and extravagant vacations; 30,000 rubles may vanish in a single night. Others invest wisely, buying houses, cars, and luxuries for themselves and their families. Imagine the psychological transformation: once, these men had nothing, wandering drunk through semi-abandoned towns. Now, wealth, booze, sex, and excitement flood their lives. The morale boost is unparalleled — the war has created a whirlwind of opportunity and indulgence, and these men have never felt more alive. Life is exciting in Russia thanks to the war.

In truth, this is a war economy on steroids — like a real estate boom, pulling every sector along. Soldiers eat and drink, they need uniforms, food, fuel, electronics. The “meat grinder” of the battlefield keeps the factories alive. It is a sick economy, yes — “drinking poison to quench thirst” (饮鸩止渴）— but like an addiction, it cannot be stopped.

theconversation.com/holy-wars-how-…
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The Second Dividend: Politics

The battlefield looks disastrous, but for Putin the political rewards are immense. His power is greater than before 2022. The state now controls its citizens through universal biometric ID, surveillance, and GPS monitor as justified by anti-espionage measure. The war has given Putin a level of control unseen since Soviet times.

At the same time, his image has been sanctified. Red Square now flies banners reading: “For the Nation, For Sovereignty, For Putin.” Even failures at the front have not dented his authority — they have reinforced it. Ministers fall, the army bleeds, but Putin remains the one indispensable figure.

“Marked Man” Worship and the Consolidation of Power

At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, many outside Russia predicted that Putin would fail, that a botched war would eventually topple him. We don't understand Russians. We tend to assume they admire strongmen, conquerors, or “winners.” In fact, they don’t. Russians admire the “marked man” — those who dare, who gamble their lives, who face danger head-on. It’s like Russian roulette: even if you blow your own head off, people say “Awesome.” “Cool”. That's a tough man.

Underlying the political and military culture is a deep-seated admiration for the “gambler”, fused with Russia’s traditional vodka culture. The Russian ideal is not merely a strongman or conqueror; it is a man who risks everything, who faces danger head-on, and whose courage is intoxicating — literally and metaphorically. Vodka embodies that recklessness, that thrill-seeking spirit, and Russians project it onto the leaders they admire. This “gambler-vodka” archetype reflects the average Russian man, the one who embraces risk, tolerates chaos, and celebrates audacity. It is this cultural ethos that makes them rally behind Putin’s audacious military gamble in Ukraine, even when the war is protracted and bloody.

This “gambler worship” is coded into Russian political culture. Sending troops to Ukraine was like Putin himself pulling the trigger. Whether it kills him or others doesn’t matter — what matters is the courage to act. Even though the lightning war turned into a slow, bloody meat-grinder. Russians still rally behind him, waving flags in Red Square: “For the Nation, For Sovereignty, For Putin.”

This is precisely why Russophobia is not unfounded. The combination of the gambler-vodka culture, a low threshold for violence, and leaders like Putin casually invoking nuclear threats creates a volatile and unpredictable political environment. With such a mindset embedded in both the population and the leadership, no one can be certain how far Russia might go, or how rapidly escalation could occur. The very traits that fuel domestic loyalty — risk-taking, audacity, and a glorification of sacrifice — make Russia unpredictable.

From their perspective, Russia’s failure to quickly defeat Ukraine does not signal weakness; it proves the real opponent is not Ukraine but the United States and the Nato. Three years of warfare have not only preserved Putin’s base but expanded it, consolidating his authority.

No wonder many Russians openly despise China. They hold China in deep contempt — the soft-spoken, cautious power that refuses to fire a single shot. From their perspective, China is a “coward,” unwilling to join the Russian grand sacrificial struggle against the West. Meanwhile, China looks on in disbelief at Russia’s drawn-out, bloody conflict. For China, this is a low-level, second-tier war — almost obsolete, a relic of a bygone era. But on the Russian side, the war is glorified precisely because of its brutality, its staggering attrition, its sacrificial nature. It fits seamlessly into Russia’s historical narrative of grand, heroic wars.

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Nuclear as Divine Judgment: Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the New Sodom and Gomorrah

God’s Reckoning for Imperial Japan’s Atrocities Beyond the Reach of Human Punishment

If asked who embodies greater evil — the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah or Imperial Japan during the Second World War — the answer is unequivocal: Imperial Japan’s cruelty far surpasses even those ancient symbols of depravity. The atrocities committed by the Japanese military were not mere acts of violence but systematic campaigns of unimaginable brutality and extreme perversity. Enforced incestuous sexual acts between family members, massacres, torture, biological experiments reveal a level of perversity that eclipses the legendary sins of Sodom. Unlike myth or allegory, Imperial Japan’s horrors are documented historical facts — a dark testament to human capacity for cruelty that no poetic imagination or cinematic depiction, no matter how harrowing, can fully capture.

There were once two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, glittering on the plain by the Jordan. Their streets were paved with trade, their halls filled with wine, their laws written not to protect the weak but to sanctify the strong in their cruelty. In these cities, compassion was outlawed. To give bread to a stranger, to pour water for a thirsty traveler, was not an act of mercy but a crime punishable by death. A man who fed a beggar might be stripped naked, flogged until his skin split, then thrown into a pit to die without light.

There is the story of a wealthy merchant who, tricked into offering food to a passing foreigner, was seized by the city elders. His house was emptied, his silver counted out to his accusers, and his family cast into the street. In Sodom, to help was treason; to harm was virtue.

The cities’ pleasures were not the pleasures of the body, but its desecrations. Men lay with men in the open square, jeering at those who passed. Sodom practiced advanced LGBTQ. Women abandoned their infants to take lovers of both sexes in the same night. Fathers forced themselves upon daughters; mothers upon sons. Animals were not spared — goats, dogs, even beasts of burden were dragged into the frenzy. Children were dressed in garlands and presented to guests as toys, violated until they could no longer cry. There were contests to see who could break the spirit of the innocent the fastest, who could invent a new obscenity to outdo the last. No law restrained it; the law encouraged it.

Public feasts became theatres of degradation: a virgin was paraded through the marketplace, stripped bare, and given over to the crowd; her cries were drowned out by music and drunken laughter. Corpses were kept for further use, the boundaries between life and death blurred until both were meaningless. It was not enough to sin — one had to defile, to desecrate, to make the act itself an altar to cruelty.

Millennia later, the world would see the same spirit take flesh in different uniforms. In the winter of 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army entered Nanjing. What followed was not war but a season of calculated sadism. Soldiers dragged women from their homes, raped them in alleys and doorways, sometimes in front of their families before killing them. Pregnant women were split open with bayonets, their unborn children tossed aside like refuse. Infants were flung into the air and caught on the tips of swords, their bodies displayed as trophies.

Real photos of Japanese atrocities during WWII in China: Men were bound and used for live-bayonet practice. Prisoners were set on fire, doused in oil for amusement, or marched into pits where they were buried alive. At Unit 731 in the frozen reaches of Manchuria, doctors without conscience sliced open living prisoners to study their organs, froze limbs until they blackened and rotted, injected them with plague, cholera, and syphilis to watch them die. Women were forced into “comfort stations,” where dozens of soldiers would use them each day until their bodies failed. These were not aberrations; they were policies.

In both Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the territories under the Rising Sun, the natural order was turned upside down. What should have been sacred was mocked; what should have been protected was destroyed; cruelty was not only permitted but glorified.

And then, the fire came. For Sodom and Gomorrah, it was in the days of Abraham — a storm of brimstone and flame that erased them from the earth, leaving nothing but a wasteland. Some say it was divine wrath; others, the fire of a cosmic strike. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it came in August 1945 — God's wrath expressed through two nuclear bombs — a white light hotter than the sun, a wind that tore bodies apart and left shadows burned into the ground. In moments, the cities were gone; in days, the survivors began to die of the invisible poison left behind.

This is no celebration of destruction. In both cases, the fire consumed guilty and innocent alike. But history whispers the same refrain: when a people make cruelty their law and perversity their creed, when they delight in the breaking of the helpless, their end is not a matter of if, but of when — and the end, when it comes, is total.

The Depths of Depravity: The Unfolding Horror in Nanjing

After the fall of Nanjing, the Imperial Japanese Army unleashed a reign of terror that defied comprehension. This was no ordinary violence; it was a systematic destruction of humanity itself.

Chinese battalion commander Guo Qi, trapped in the city for three months, witnessed Japanese soldiers forcibly making sons rape their own mothers. Those who refused were executed on the spot. A German diplomat later corroborated one such atrocity: a man who refused to violate his mother was hacked to death in front of her eyes, driving her to suicide.

Entire families faced unspeakable humiliation. One family crossing a river was stopped by Japanese soldiers who raped the young women aboard their boat. Then the soldiers forced the eldest male to do the same — but the family chose to drown themselves over compliance.

Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking documents how soldiers, laughing like children torturing frogs or drowning kittens, formed circles to watch and jeer as mothers and sons were forced into unspeakable acts.

Their jovial chit chat went as follows:

"This guy’s no good — he’s shaking, sweating! How’s he supposed to do it like this?"
"The woman’s already lying down — just get on with it!"
"Come on, this is his own mother! This is too much!"

Takeda Taijun, a former soldier, wrote in his memoirs how, one morning, after his shift, he and comrades brought a middle-aged woman and a boy of about fourteen to a village. After gang-raping the woman, they forced the boy to rape her in front of them.

"From the way she screamed, it was clear they were mother and son," Takeda recalled. "I couldn’t understand her words, but she could be shouting, ‘No! Not this! Only beasts do this!’"

Private Matsu, one of the soldiers, took cruel delight in forcing the boy upon the woman despite her screams.

Such acts of extreme perversity were not isolated incidents but systematic and deliberate. Wherever the Japanese forces went, these horrors preceded every massacre. It was a calculated doctrine aimed at destroying the Chinese people and unmaking their very humanity—especially devastating given the profound importance that Chinese culture places on 伦理 (ethical and familial order and morality).

Real video

From Lifeline to Target: The Quiet Rift in the Russia–China Partnership

While Russia and Ukraine are trading missiles and drones, another war—silent, smokeless—has been unleashed on “Made in China.” This time, the front is not the battlefield but the marketplace, and Moscow’s target is China’s heavy truck makers. Dongfeng, Foton, FAW Jiefang, Sinotruk, Sitrak—names that once dominated Russian roads—are now categorically banned in one Russian sweeping decree. The official verdict? “Brake system failures,” “excessive noise,”.

Yet before this purge, Chinese heavy trucks virtually had no competitors on the Russian market —they had no competitors. Sinotruk’s Shandeka had seized the crown as Russia’s best-selling truck, rolling out at over 700,000 rubles (USD 80,000) apiece, with queues of buyers ready to pay in hard cash. And now—overnight—the same trucks are declared unfit? Were those tens of thousands of Russian customers fools, or has the story changed for reasons unspoken?

The farce deepens. Not only are future sales banned, but trucks already sold are recalled, with no clarity on refunds or replacements. Chinese manufacturers are given no path to appeal—Moscow simply says “not good enough,” and the gavel falls.

The truth is, this didn’t begin with a single ban. The ground had been prepared. In October 2024, Russia suddenly raised its vehicle scrapping tax to a punishing 85%. Which means if you bought a truck for $30,000, you’d owe $25,500 just to dispose of it before its legal lifespan ended—a punitive tax, a warning in substance.

Then came 2025 and another twist of the knife: a “price-gap surcharge.” If a vehicle sells abroad for $20,000 but in Russia for $30,000, the buyer must pay another $50,000—half the difference—straight to the state. A barricade built to suffocate Chinese rivals.

And still, it wasn’t enough. By September 30, 2024, all Chinese vehicles had to pass Russian-run testing—twice the cost, up to a year in delays—and were forced to install GLONASS navigation whose performance is much inferior to China’s Beidou. Worse, any attempt to route trucks through Kazakhstan would end with confiscation and destruction, the loss borne entirely by the exporter.

Russia strikes hard, harder than Washington or Brussels ever dared against Chinese manufacturing.

But the question remains—does Moscow truly have the confidence to shut China out?

When the war broke out in Ukraine and the West turned its back, the western car giants fled in a single file: Toyota, Volkswagen, Renault, Ford—not one stayed. In that vacuum, it was Chinese automakers who drove in against the headwind, who kept Russia’s roads moving, who restored a semblance of life to a market on the brink of collapse.

Yet somewhere between gratitude and dependency, something curdled. Chinese companies didn’t just supply; they dominated—smartphones, electronics, automobiles. What was once seen as rescue began to feel, in the Russian telling, like exploitation. The tone shifted: China is not helping us; China is profiting from us. And so, even in its moment of greatest vulnerability, Moscow has begun driving Chinese firms out—starting with the most visible symbol of their market power: the heavy truck.

The subtext is hard to miss. The moment Western sanctions loosen, Chinese suppliers will be the first shown the door. That is the quiet truth beneath the grand rhetoric of “strategic partnership”—a truth built on mistrust and a strange Russian instinct to sever the very rope holding them above the abyss. Unlike the trade with the US and the EU, the China-Russian trade is no one-way street. By mid-2025, China was taking nearly one-third of Russia’s total exports and buying almost half its crude oil—the lifeblood of Moscow’s revenues. The trade flows are not lopsided: in the first half of the year, Russia sold China around $59 billion in goods and bought back $47 billion, a modest Russian surplus but no imbalance to lament. This is mutual dependence, deep and symmetrical.

Perhaps the Kremlin believes it is defending the last strongholds of domestic industry. Russian names like KAMAZ and Lada have been battered; Chinese trucks claimed over 60% of the market, leaving Russian factories idle and workers on the street. Protectionism became the rallying cry, the government’s answer to a competition it could not win.

Yet the irony runs deep: Lada was powered by French Renault’s technology of 1997, and with Renault gone, it is a hollow shell. KAMAZ itself relies heavily on Chinese components. Ban Chinese trucks—and all Chinese manufacturing—and you won’t just block foreign competition; you’ll be striking at the heart of Russia’s own brands. If China turns off the supply of parts, those brands will collapse.

Let the irony sink in: the country that kept the Russian car industry alive is China, 100%.

It would be very easy for China to retaliate.

It's China, in recent years, which has kept the Russian economy breathing at all.

One could suspect an even bolder motive—that Moscow is clearing the market for Western brands ahead of some anticipated thaw with Washington.

So we have two scales in motion: one weighing war and peace, the other balancing trust and trade. Both are swaying, and both could tip the wrong way.

There may be reasons beyond economics. Russia is impatient to end the war in Ukraine on its own terms, but Ukraine’s strength—fed by Western aid—remains stubborn. Perhaps Moscow expected Beijing to lean in harder, to tip the balance more openly. China, however, has kept its footing on the narrow ridge of neutrality. It does not wish Russia to fail, but neither will it be drawn into commitments it deems excessive. It will not, for example, pay a 30% premium for Russian gas when cheaper supplies are available elsewhere.

China has, after all, called this what it is—a war of invasion—and does not approve.

One decisive reason China cannot accept Russian territorial expansion is history. In the 19th century, weakened by wars with Western powers, Qing China was forced into a series of unequal agreements with Tsarist Russia — notably the Treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) — that transferred large swathes of territory in the Amur–Ussuri region to Russia. In 1900, Russian troops and local authorities carried out brutal expulsions and mass killings of Qing subjects in the Amur region (Blagoveshchensk and the “Sixty-Four Villages”), leaving lasting scars. In the 20th century the Soviet Union pushed for Mongolia’s separate status, and in 1945 a Soviet-backed referendum confirmed Mongolian independence from China. Those episodes — land lost under coercion, mass violence against Chinese residents, and the effective removal of frontier regions from Chinese control — are why Beijing cannot view further Russian annexation as anything but a strategic red line.

If Russia justifies its invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that Ukraine was part of Russia for centuries, then by that same logic, Russia’s annexation of vast Chinese territories is invalid — for those lands had been part of China for centuries before Russia seized them. And if Moscow claims it can use force to “take back” Ukraine, then Beijing could claim the same right to recover its lost territories from Russia.

Russia’s nature is to act on its moods—swiftly, sharply, without the patient weighing of consequences. It is not wedded to market logic, nor skilled in market thinking; its policies turn as quickly as the wind.

US Tech is seriously compromised with backdoors

The Fool’s Dilemma: NVIDIA, the H20 Chip, and a Backdoor Too Far

So NVIDIA is called in to explain to the Chinese government - and prove - that there’s no backdoor in the H20 chips it’s preparing to dump on the Chinese market.

Put yourself in NVIDIA’s shoes.

If it admits there’s a backdoor, it’s finished. The company would face criminal espionage charges under China’s Cyber Security Law.

If it denies the accusation, China already holds irrefutable evidence.

If NVIDIA promises it will not embed backdoors, it violates U.S. compliance requirements and laws.

No matter which direction it takes, it cannot sell these chips in China.

But here’s the deeper truth: China likely no longer needs NVIDIA’s crippled chips. The H20 offers only 20% of the H100’s computing capacity—the version sold to U.S. AI firms. China has developed its own alternatives. Safer ones.

No Chinese company will dare purchase from NVIDIA now. The reputational risk, the threat of spyware, the national security implications—these outweigh any potential benefit.

That’s the fool’s dilemma. And that’s exactly where NVIDIA stands. II/

The Background

In late 2023, under Washington’s pressure, NVIDIA released the H20 - a downgraded version of its high-end AI chip, the H100. It was tailored for the Chinese market to comply with U.S. sanctions.

Then came April 2025. Trump banned it.

But by mid-July 2025, he reversed course. (Trump's message is clear. “Don't trust us. We flip flop”)

On July 31, 2025, Chinese authorities announced the discovery of major security vulnerabilities in the H20. That very day, China summoned NVIDIA for a meeting, demanding explanations—and documentation—on three specific points:

Malicious pre-embedding

Remote control activation

Supply chain poisoning

Does China have evidence? Yes - overwhelmingly so.

Back in May 2025, several U.S. lawmakers publicly called for advanced chips exported to China to include controllable mechanisms. Their goal: to enable technical shutdowns during moments of geopolitical friction.

These legislators proposed the U.S. Chip Security Act, which mandates the Commerce Department to force American chipmakers to embed special modules into controlled chips. These modules must:

Track the chip's location

Identify users

Enable remote shutdown

The idea was clear: deny computing power to "problematic" regions whenever Washington chooses.

According to Western reports, even before the bill was enacted, NVIDIA had already begun integrating these features - preemptively - into its chips.

The Discovery

The U.S. Congress published the bill’s content. Western media confirmed NVIDIA’s compliance.

That was the signal. Within a week of H20’s launch, Chinese cybersecurity labs had fully disassembled the chip.

The results were devastating.

Using lithographic layer-by-layer scanning and full-spectrum electromagnetic testing, analysts discovered an unknown RF communication module embedded in the chip. Its design bore a striking resemblance to FLUXBABBIT, a hardware implant from the NSA’s infamous ANT catalogue - tools used to surveil foreign tech systems.

This module could be remotely activated via specific electromagnetic frequencies. It could exfiltrate data, rewrite firmware, or seize control of the chip altogether.

Worse still, periodic narrowband signals were detected—faint, rhythmic, and structured. Once decoded, they revealed:

Device location

Computing power usage

Data center topology

Cross-referenced with the U.S. Chip Security Act, it was a perfect match.

These signals were traced through global relay networks and eventually pinpointed to a server in Singapore. From there, the data was made accessible—in real time—to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Let that sink in.

A high-performance AI chip, sold to Chinese firms, was silently reporting its activity and coordinates to a foreign government. This is not just speculation. It is documented.

Trump even bragged about it—almost daring China to find it.

Reverse Engineering the Obvious

China didn’t need months. Just days. When you start with the answer and reverse-engineer from there, the truth becomes clear.

There are consequences.

NVIDIA could be:

Fined based on its global revenue

Forced to undergo independent audits

Banned entirely from the Chinese market

And if found complicit in enabling foreign espionage, NVIDIA executives—including Jensen Huang—could face criminal charges.

🧵

Why Russia Can’t Stop the War—Even If It Wanted To (Part I)

I/1

The brutality of the Ukraine war is not hidden—it’s broadcast to the world daily in countless frontline videos. In one, a Russian soldier is struck by a drone, writhes on the ground, and then turns his rifle on himself. In another, a man collapses mid-advance; his comrade doesn’t hesitate—he raises his weapon and delivers a final shot. Sometimes, an armored vehicle speeds to the front, unloads its human cargo, then reverses and disappears. The soldiers left behind scatter under drone fire, encircled by artillery, like prey abandoned in open ground.

The war has morphed into a meat grinder of history. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russian casualties have now exceeded one million.

Approximately 11.4 soldiers—Russian and Ukrainian—have been killed for every square kilometer of Ukrainian territory currently under Russian control. Measured in blood per square kilometer, the Ukraine war is the deadliest territorial war of the 21st century—and one of the most expensive in human life since World War I.

It is a war of drones and trenches, of staggering attrition and static front lines. The land gained is real, but the cost—11 men dead for every square kilometer—recalls the meat grinders of Verdun and the Some of WWI far more than the sweeping tank advances of 20th century blitzkrieg.

The question now is no longer why Moscow entered the war. The real question is: why can’t it leave?

Back in February, the Trump administration floated a proposal. Recognize Crimea as Russian. Prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO. Lift all sanctions imposed since 2014. By April, the offer expanded: a ceasefire along the current line of contact, essentially conceding Russia's grip on four Eastern Ukrainian regions. A pragmatic power would have seized such an offer. But Russia didn’t.

This isn’t about reason anymore. This is gambler’s logic. A war, once started, is no longer a question of whether to stop—but when it becomes too late to stop without losing everything.

Had these terms been available in early 2022, Putin would have taken them. At that time, they would have seemed like a strategic coup. But the war has changed shape. What was once a “special operation” is now a national commitment. Russia today controls around 114,000 square kilometers of Ukraine. But according to the Kiel Institute, the price of war has climbed to $873 billion—while the total annual GDP of these occupied regions amounts to just $28 billion. Even by the cold logic of profit and loss, Russia would need to control these areas for 31 years just to break even.

And that’s just the money. Over a million casualties later, the war has rewritten Russia’s political calculus. To retreat now would be to betray the blood already spilled. It would provoke fury from nationalist factions and from within the ranks of the military. On June 20, Putin gave a revealing speech in St. Petersburg: “The Russian and Ukrainian peoples are one and the same. In this sense, all of Ukraine should belong to Russia.”

That was no mere rhetoric. It was the clearest signal yet that Russia's war aims have shifted—from securing the Donbas to absorbing the whole of Ukraine.

History repeats itself. In the early 1700s, Peter the Great launched the Great Northern War seeking only access to the Baltic Sea. But after suffering early defeats and investing more deeply, he didn’t stop at one port—he broke Swedish dominance in all of Eastern Europe. When sunk costs accumulate, so do ambitions. I/2

There’s another reason Moscow won’t back down. This war has shattered Russia’s claim to be the world’s second military power. In 2022, its General Staff expected Kyiv to fall in three days. That war is now in its third year—and has become the most brutal attritional conflict of the 21st century.

Elsewhere, the world has moved on. In May 2025, a brief border clash between India and Pakistan ended in 72 hours with Pakistani victory—powered by Chinese system warfare. That same month, U.S. B-2 bombers flew 20,000 kilometers to hit Iranian nuclear bunkers with pinpoint precision. Both events reminded the world what modern warfare looks like. Meanwhile, Russia leans on Soviet-era tanks and North Korean artillery, waging a war that resembles 1943 more than 2025. The result? Moscow’s military brand is in tatters—even among its own allies.

This is why the Kremlin needs victory—not in symbolic terms, but in real, territorial gains. Without them, Russia’s influence across the Middle East, Africa, and the Caucasus could collapse. That partially explains the latest escalation: three massive aerial strikes on Ukraine in July 2025, the largest since the war began.

For Russia, the war has become inescapable. But history teaches that long wars rarely end well. The longer the conflict, the higher the price, and the greater the political impossibility of ending it. Ceasefire becomes synonymous with defeat. The Soviet disaster in Afghanistan looms large: a war planned to last seven days, meant to stabilize a friendly regime, dragged on for a decade—and accelerated the collapse of the USSR.

Today’s war is walking a similar path. Each new month brings fresh losses. And to justify them, the Kremlin must raise the stakes. This is the inertia of war. It does not stop when logic says stop. It stops only when something breaks.

As Kissinger once warned, “In war, the most dangerous moment is not when the fighting starts, but when neither side can win, and neither side can afford to quit.” That moment, it seems, is now.

🧵Operation Red Wedding: Inside Israel’s AI-Assisted Strike on Tehran

The nature of war has fundamentally changed — and Iran would do well to understand it and adapt

In mid-June 2025, a cataclysmic operation shook the heart of Iran's defense establishment. Code-named "Operation Red Wedding," the Israeli strike targeted a hardened underground command bunker in Tehran, killing approximately 30 senior Iranian generals in a single, surgical blow. The name, drawn from the infamous massacre scene in Game of Thrones, was not chosen lightly—it captured the betrayal, the timing, and the brutality of the assault.

Carried out on June 13, the operation was part of a larger campaign—Operation Rising Lion—aimed at systematically dismantling Iran’s strategic deterrence capabilities. Just two days later, a follow-up strike on June 15 targeted key logistics hubs, delivering an operational and psychological shock to Tehran’s command structure.

But the power of "Red Wedding" lay not just in its destruction, but in its orchestration. The operation was the product of a years-long intelligence campaign involving Mossad, Unit 8200, and Unit 9900. Mossad deployed modular espionage—each agent a cog in a machine they couldn’t see. One gathered building schematics (to understand the structure of the target facility—its layout, weak points, and escape routes). Another planted a signal beacon (a hidden transmitter that would guide the incoming strike to the exact underground location, ensuring precision). A third slipped in false timetables (to mislead Iranian defenses about who would be present and when, so the strike would hit key commanders when they were most exposed). No single individual understood the entire design, but the whole moved as one. This is Mossad’s doctrine: to build a symphony from disconnected notes.

When the strike came, it was apocalyptic. Over 200 Israeli aircraft, including stealth F-35Is and electronic warfare platforms, sliced through Iranian airspace under a veil of jamming clouds. In minutes, hundreds of smart munitions collapsed multiple layers of reinforced concrete. Satellite feeds and encrypted Mossad field reports streamed in real time. It was as if the entire strike was choreographed by an invisible master—because it was.

Behind that hand was not just human cunning—but artificial intelligence.

The Invisible Engine: Israel’s AI-Assisted Kill Chain

At the heart of Operation Red Wedding was a closed-loop intelligence engine powered by human intuition and algorithmic precision. Three entities—Mossad, Unit 8200, and Unit 9900—formed the triad of destruction. Each brought a unique discipline: human intelligence, signal capture, and visual verification. Together, they formed a cycle: intercept → identify → verify → strike → assess. II/

Unit 8200—Israel’s legendary SIGINT division—listens to the world. It harvests the electromagnetic ether, intercepts WhatsApp chats, decrypts Farsi chatter, and implants malware into hostile networks. The unit manages one of the world's largest listening posts, sweeping across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. It can schedule reconnaissance passes by Ofek-class spy satellites (Israel’s space-based surveillance platforms capable of capturing high-resolution imagery and intercepting signals from orbit) or quietly eavesdrop on unsecured smartphones. In other words, Unit 8200 doesn’t just hack—it commands orbital eyes, directing satellites to observe specific locations at specific times to complement its digital infiltration.

Then comes Unit 9900—the eye in the sky, and arguably the most visually literate division of Israeli intelligence. Specializing in geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), they process drone and satellite imagery with surgical precision. This isn’t just about reading maps—it’s about interpreting the invisible details that betray secrets.

A blurred shadow next to a bunker vent might signal recent movement. A changed tire track near a launch silo might suggest fuel resupply. The orientation of parked vehicles can reveal an imminent deployment. Unit 9900’s analysts are trained to notice what others overlook.

They map terrain down to the : every ridge, every heat vent, even centimeterry hidden trail. License plates from speeding cars are read mid-frame from 40,000 feet. Convoy compositions are broken down by axle count, fuel tanker type, and even canopy shape—so they can tell if a vehicle is carrying food, rockets, or human cargo.

They go further. Analysts cross-reference thermal signatures to detect body heat in underground tunnels, observe vehicle movement patterns to estimate sleep cycles of enemy units, and analyze weather conditions—cloud cover, wind drift, soil moisture—to determine not only where a target is, but when it’s most vulnerable. For instance, if a missile battery is usually camouflaged but must be uncovered to cool down under certain heat conditions, Unit 9900 knows when that moment will occur.

They even assess troop morale through satellite footage: are soldiers walking upright with discipline, or slouched with fatigue? Are training formations tight or sloppy? These visual micro-indicators are catalogued, timestamped, and overlaid on long-term behavioral models to predict operational shifts. If all this had to be done by human analysts alone, the workload would be astronomical. But now, much of this analytical burden has shifted to AI—giving Unit 9900 an almost unlimited capacity to process, compare, and detect patterns across vast datasets in real time.

In essence, Unit 9900 sees what no one else sees—not just with satellites, but with trained human eyes augmented by AI. If Unit 8200 hears the world and Mossad recruits the actors, Unit 9900 watches the entire stage.

Legacy Mossad

Legacy Mossad, meanwhile, orchestrates the human dimension. It runs an AI-powered system called HADS—Human Asset Development System—capable of managing the entire lifecycle of spycraft: from recruiting a janitor near a missile base (someone with physical access to sensitive areas but who draws no attention) to activating encrypted communication channels deep inside hostile territory.

In the past, Mossad case officers had to do this manually—combing through dossiers, observing behavior, assessing risk, and nurturing assets slowly, one by one. It was a slow and resource-heavy process. But now, HADS does this at machine scale. It uses advanced algorithms to sift through millions of digital profiles, analyzing people’s political views, grudges, family trauma, career frustrations, or ideological leanings—anything that could signal a motive to betray, collaborate, or sabotage.

🧵 Israel strikes its rebellious puppet in Syria - dark days ahead

Jolani’s Delusion: The Man Who Sold Syria to Israel for Nothing

July 9th. The US and 19 allies are conducting a live military drill near Australia with a view of a coordinated attack against China our — but forget that for now. Something bigger exploded this morning (July 16th 2025).

Israel launched a decapitation strike against Syria’s de facto ruler, Jolani.
Yes — that Jolani, the man who had bent over backwards to please Israel, the one who handed over the Golan Heights with a smile, promising “permanent peace.”
And yet? They still came for him.

Let’s rewind.

When Assad’s regime collapsed back in December 2024, the whole of Syria fell into chaos. Jolani, a former terrorist with deep roots in al-Qaeda and Issis, seized Damascus within a week. But taking the capital didn’t mean owning the country. Syria became a jungle of warlords.

In the southwest, Israel moved fast. Armored brigades swept in and annexed the eastern Golan Heights, calling it a “buffer zone” — as if the whole world hadn’t seen this playbook before.

To understand why Israel will never let go of the Golan Heights, you have to understand what the Golan is. It is not just a piece of land. It is a perch, a watchtower, a faucet, a promise. From those heights, you can see half of Syria. Before 1967, Syrian artillery rained down on Israeli farms from that high ground. After 1967, Israeli tanks dug in and never left. And why would they? The Golan is water. It feeds the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the underground aquifers that keep Israel alive. Some say nearly half of Israel’s fresh water still trickles down from those slopes. In a region where rain is rare and rivers dry, that makes the Golan as precious as oil.

But there’s something deeper still. The Golan is theology. The Golan is destiny. For the religious wing of Likud, for those who still read maps with the Book of Genesis in one hand, the Golan is part of the inheritance God gave Abraham — “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” This land was promised. And what is promised cannot be returned. Not to Assad. Not to Jolani. Not to anyone.

So now that Syria lies broken, now that Jolani begs and grovels, now that the widow has no protector — Israel sees its chance. And it will not look away.

By January 205, Jolani tried to claw some legitimacy back. He had personal reasons — he was born in the Golan Heights — but also national ones. A president who gives up sovereign territory and says nothing? That’s not a leader.

So he went to the UN.

Israel scoffed.

He proposed a “land-for-legitimacy” deal — asking to get back a third of the Golan Heights, lease another third, and in return recognize Israeli sovereignty over the rest. A humiliating offer for Syria — and Israel still slapped him across the face.

“How dare you propose such a deal? You? You’re nothing. All of Golan Heights is ours. Try take it back if you can. To hell with UN and international law”

The same man who had once survived the Abu Ghraib black prison walked out of that hell with a bruised face — and a boiling mind. But he is eerily tame in front of the Israelis. Not characteristic of a brutal terrorist.

By March, Jolani pivoted. If Israel wouldn’t listen, maybe Turkey would.

Jolani made his pitch with eloquent urgency — the kind of urgency a man uses when he knows the fire is already at his doorstep. “Syria,” he told the Turks, “isn’t just a country. It’s a buffer. Between you and Israel. And once we’re gone, the buffer is gone. Then it’s just you and them, staring across a line drawn in sand.” He leaned in. “You think Israel won’t come for you? Maybe not today. But one day, they will. And your pipelines, your ports, your Black Sea dreams — all of it will be within range.” II/

He paused, knowing how absurd it sounded. After all, Israel attacking a NATO country? That triggers Article 5 — the mutual defense clause. The sacred vow. An attack on one is an attack on all. It would mean France, Germany, even the United States would have to come to Ankara’s defense — against Tel Aviv. Unthinkable. And yet… the clause says what it says. The ink is still there.

And Jolani knew how Europe viewed Turkey: not quite friend, not quite enemy. The West brought Turkey into NATO not out of love, but out of fear. To have a lever on the Middle East. To keep Ankara leashed, not embraced. But leashed or not, Turkey was still in the pact. And now, Jolani whispered, Israel was becoming your problem too.

And what of ideology? The same religious Likud that cites Genesis 15:18 to claim the Golan as a birthright — “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates” — may yet find a new cloth in scripture. If the Promised Land includes the Heights for their water, why not the harbors and pipelines of Anatolia? Why not the mountains and minerals of Turkey?

Syria was only the beginning. Turkey is more lucrative, more resourceful, more strategic. Greater Israel may yet grow greater still.

“Help me,” he said. “Fortify this buffer. Because if I fall, your border becomes the front line.”

And Turkey did.

What followed wasn’t yet a formal alliance, but something close — secret negotiations on a joint defense pact. Turkish military teams inspected Syria’s Tiyas and Palmyra airbases, eyeing them for future deployment. There was talk of allowing Turkish aircraft to operate over Syrian skies, and even whispered proposals to bring in Russian-made S‑400 missile systems — pointed, unmistakably, toward Israel. No final agreement was signed. But the message was clear: Jolani was handing over his skies to Erdoğan, inviting the Turkish wolf into the ruins of Syria.

As I said before, Syria has been reduced to a helpless Indian widow — abandoned, dishonored, and left to fend for herself. Anyone can abuse her, bully her, stone her. So bringing in one more predator changes nothing.

Jolani had nothing to lose because he had nothing — no planes, no radar — so he handed his skies to Erdoğan.

Call it what it is: “Inviting the tiger to devour the wolf.”

But that wasn’t enough. Jolani also funneled support to Hamas, allowing weapons to move through southern Syria, while Turkey funded them via encrypted transfers.

In April, Israel found out.

As retaliation, the T-4 airbase was hit. Runways destroyed. Bunkers leveled.

Israel deployed Iron Dome and Jericho missiles across the Golan.

Tensions soared.

But facing Turkey — a NATO state — Israel had to tread carefully.

Then came June 12.
Five Hamas operatives were caught with equipments to produce rockets.

🧵
Why China Does Not Want War With the United States—Even If It Has Military Supremacy

It is becoming increasingly clear that China now holds a decisive military edge in many areas over the United States. It has built a war machine optimized for network-centric warfare, outpacing the U.S. in electronic jamming, long-range missile precision, radar integration, and regional air dominance. It can deny access, blind satellites, and overwhelm fleets.

But military supremacy doesn’t mean recklessness. China has the ability to win battles. But it has no interest in starting a war—because it understands the cost of victory might be national suicide.

Let us begin with a basic truth. China is not self-sufficient when it comes to economic demand. Its internal market is still maturing.

Who feeds the Chinese people economically? The answer is: the world—especially the rich, Western world.

China’s total foreign trade in 2024 hit 43.85 trillion yuan (~US$6 trillion), with exports accounting for 25.45 trillion yuan (~US$3.47 trillion). This figure is often downplayed by critics who claim “exports only represent around 18–30% of China’s GDP.” But such figures miss the structural importance of exports: they power the coastal provinces, which in turn power the entire nation.

The bulk of China’s industrial and export muscle is concentrated in six coastal provinces:

1. Guangdong (~US$888 billion exports)
2. Zhejiang (~US$532 billion)
3. Jiangsu (~US$518 billion)
4. Shandong (~US$272 billion)
5. Shanghai (~US$255 billion)
6. Fujian (~US$167 billion)

Together, these provinces account for the majority of China's exports. They are also home to China’s largest ports—Shenzhen, Shanghai, Ningbo, Qingdao—which function as lifelines for both imports and exports.

Once war breaks out, these ports will shut down—either by enemy blockade, missile strikes, or insurance collapse. That means factories stop, logistics freeze, and tens of millions are thrown into unemployment.

Some believe China can pivot to trade with the Global South—BRICS, Belt and Road nations, Africa, Latin America. It’s a comforting illusion.

Here’s the problem: China mainly imports resources from the Global South—oil, gas, lithium, bauxite, copper, iron ore—not finished goods. It uses these to manufacture high-end products.
But who consumes these products? The West.

In 2024:

Exports to the United States totaled 3.73 trillion yuan (approx. 514 billion USD)
Exports to the European Union: 3.68 trillion yuan (approx. 508 billion USD)
Exports to Japan and South Korea: over 1.5 trillion yuan combined (approx. 207 billion USD)

- ASEAN nations were the top partner bloc, but much of this was processing trade with end-markets in the West

This adds up to nearly half of China's total exports going to Western or high-income markets.

These are the only markets with the income level and consumer appetite to absorb the full output of Chinese industry.

Remove them from the equation—and the entire chain collapses.
Here’s how a war, or even a serious blockade, would detonate the economy:

1. Western demand disappears

2. China stops exporting to Europe, the U.S., Japan, South Korea.

3. China no longer needs to import energy, iron ore, or copper from BRICS and the Global South

4. Global South trade drastically drops—because there’s no downstream use

5. Coastal factories go silent

6. Wealth stops flowing inland

7. Domestic consumption drops

8. Local governments collapse under fiscal pressure

9. Unemployment skyrockets

10. Social unrest erupts

That’s the chain reaction. It would a few months, not years.

Despite all efforts to de-dollarize, to promote RMB trade, to build an alternative system—this is still a Western-centric global economy.

Even in 2024, over 59% of Chinese exports were mechanical and electrical products—designed for Western consumers, not subsistence economies.

👇 II/

A war with the United States means the immediate blockade of China, financial decoupling, shipping paralysis, and global panic. And not just for China.
If China’s factories go dark, the global supply chain collapses with them:
- No iPhones No smartphones
- No electric vehicles
- No solar panels
- No semiconductors
- No rare earth magnets for Western industries
- Inflation spirals in the West
- BRICS economies lose their largest industrial client

This is not just China’s economic collapse. It’s a global economic meltdown—a modern Lehman Brothers moment, multiplied by 100.

China understands clearly: starting a war with the United States is national suicide. But the same truth applies in reverse—only more so. For the United States, launching a war with China would be a deeper, faster death, economically and strategically. Yet Washington’s political class is far more reckless, more prone to delusions of dominance. So every argument I make here about restraint, calculation, and national survival applies equally—if not more urgently—to the United States.

Please don’t give me that tired line about decoupling from China and collapsing its economy. The West has tried—again and again—to kick China out of the global supply chain, to shift manufacturing to India, Vietnam, Mexico, wherever. It's been over a decade, and it still doesn't work. There is no alternative to China’s manufacturing base. Once production moves to China, it’s like a black hole—it never comes out. That’s the brutal truth. Nearly all of China’s manufacturing, like its rare earth supply, is irreplaceable. And if you try to replicate it elsewhere, be ready to pay 30% to 10 times more. Tariffs didn’t stop the West from importing Chinese goods. Because if the West doesn’t import from China, inflation will explode—and their own economies will crumble.

China is patient, sees far and wide when it comes to strategy. It knows it can dominate regionally. It knows it can win militarily. But it also knows that war, at this moment, would be suicidal—not just for itself, but for the world economy.

So China continues to build strength, reshape alliances, and rewrite trade architecture.

But it will avoid war—not out of fear, but out of understanding.
Because in this system, the first nation to pull the trigger also pulls the plug.

🧵on China's export control of Rare Earth

Will there be a World War III?

Rest assured—there won’t be one. Not because of diplomacy, and certainly not because of US/Western restraint, but thanks to the ultimate deterrent, more powerful than any nuclear weapon: China’s stranglehold on rare earths and other critical minerals, all effectively controlled under what the world now simply calls “rare earth.”

I have argued that China has already achieved military supremacy over the United States. Many readers were skeptical. So today, I approach this claim from a different angle: rare earths. Specifically, how China’s control over rare earth exports allows it to dictate the pace and ceiling of U.S. weapons development.

In modern warfare, radar is the key. The side that sees first, strikes first. The one that detects first, locks the target first. And once that lock is achieved, the enemy is pulled into a no-escape zone. Rare earths—refined to near-perfect purity—determine how powerful, how far-seeing, and how jam-resistant those radars are. Which means, simply, China has the superior weapons.
Some ask, can the U.S. replicate China’s network-centric warfighting doctrine? The answer is no. Because without the materials—and the mastery behind them—doctrine is just theory.

Military purity High grade Rare Earth : Achilles' heel of the US military industrial complex

It’s July 13, 2025. The time: 3:56 PM. The place: London. And the silence at the negotiation table is thick enough to bend steel. American officials are still talking—still pleading—for China to ease its grip on rare earth exports. But in truth, they already know the answer. Because Beijing is not negotiating; it is calibrating.

Rare earths are no longer just about supply and demand. They are about velocity, purity, supremacy. In the defense world, purity is king. And here, China reigns.

There’s a difference between rare earths and military-grade rare earths. A difference of six zeros. Commercial uses may tolerate 99.99% purity—4N in technical parlance. But advanced radar systems, missile guidance units, directed energy weapons—they demand 6N, 7N, even 8N purity: 99.999999%. At that level, one particle out of a hundred million can change the performance of a phased-array radar. The reach of a sensor. The jam-resistance of an aircraft. The visibility of an F-35.

And that’s where China’s mastery begins. Their engineers—trained through decades of closed-loop industrial knowledge—have cracked the 9.999999 benchmark with consistency. In contrast, the best the U.S., Australia, and Malaysia have achieved is 9.999 purity—5N—and even that, only with engineers poached from Chinese firms. In other words: without China, the West can barely replicate >6N standards. 👇 II/

Mountain Pass cannot refine. Australia cannot separate. Malaysia can process, but only at levels suited for iPhones—not F35s.

This is the true meaning of strategic vulnerability.

Take the F-35. Each unit—every jet—consumes around 420 kilograms of rare earth materials, primarily neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, and dysprosium. The magnets in the radar, the powertrain, the guidance system—all depend on high-purity inputs. Without them, production slows. With lower grades, performance drops. There’s no bypass.

And as for next-generation fighters—the U.S. can forget them. The F-47, the NGAD—they aren’t even off the PPT stage. Without ultra-pure rare earths, they can’t be built. Meanwhile, China’s sixth-generation fighters—the J-36 and J-50—are already flying. Quietly. With mass production assured by China’s own supply of high-grade magnetic materials.

That’s why China’s export controls are not just leverage. They are a quiet nuclear bomb—a non-kinetic weapon that can decide the generation gap in warfare. By modulating exports, China can delay U.S. weapons by five years, a decade, or more. Especially in radar technology, where materials determine how far you can see, how precisely you can lock on, and how well you can survive jamming.

Consider this: radar performance is a function of both software and substrate. If you use substandard rare earths—if your yttrium or gadolinium is 5N instead of 8N—your radar becomes fuzzy, slow, vulnerable. Your electronic warfare suite misreads the sky. Your missile lock fails. And you lose the first shot in combat.

All because of atoms.

The U.S. knows this. That’s why the Pentagon is pouring billions into “mine-to-magnet” programs. But ambition doesn’t equal capability. MP Materials received over $439 million for Mountain Pass and its joint venture with Australia’s Lynas in Texas. But full-spectrum refining remains years away. The January 2025 announcement of a 99.1% dysprosium oxide sample—by USA Rare Earths—was hailed as a breakthrough. But it remains a lab achievement, not a production standard. Scaling it up means duplicating Chinese expertise built over thirty years. That’s not something you hire for. That’s something you grow.

Worse, the U.S. supply chain is caught in a vicious loop.

Whenever China tightens its export controls, prices spike—and American rare earth firms breathe again. There is a window to operate, to profit, to expand. But then, as if on cue, China loosens controls. Prices crash. And the fragile U.S. supply chain collapses again. Investors flee. Mines go idle. Engineers are laid off. The survivors sell at a loss—many of them, ironically, to Chinese buyers.

And here lies the trap.

Whenever rare earth prices dip, Western buyers—especially in defense and automotive—stockpile like survivalists. They buy tons. They hoard, gambling on China’s next move. But this glut destroys demand for U.S. producers. And when China tightens again, it’s too late—the industrial infrastructure has already withered. A fledgling system, broken by price shocks and indecision.

The market itself is small—just $3.4 billion globally. China holds 70% of that value, 69% of production, and 90% of refining. But it is not the volume that matters. It is the precision. China dominates not because it mines more, but because it controls every layer: the metallurgy, the solvent systems, the purity benchmarks, and the geopolitical timing.

🧵

Can China’s J-10CE shoot down the French Rafale and US F-35?

The answer is a resounding Yes. And with disturbing ease.

Word has it that Tehran may have acquired 36 units of China's fighter jets J10CE . It may be a rumor — but if true, the implications are immense. With J-10CEs integrated into a real-time data-sharing system, F-35s could no longer roam freely.

But one thing is certain: aircraft alone are not enough.

What Iran needs — and what Pakistan already has — is the full package: early warning aircraft, satellite positioning with BeiDou, long-range PL-15 missiles, GY-27 tracking radar, electronic warfare pods, and data fusion capabilities. In short: not a jet, but a system.

Because that’s how China fights.

China's J10CE can shoot down very easily France's Rafale and the US F35s.

It seems absurd at first glance — that a fighter not even ranked in China’s top five could defeat the crown jewel of the West’s airpower portfolio. But this is not the age of Top Gun anymore. This is the age of systems, where victory belongs not to the pilot with the sharpest reflexes, but to the nation that sees first, decides fastest, and fires before the enemy even knows it’s in danger.

Once you understand this new paradigm, the question itself starts to change. It’s not whether the J-10CE, in isolation, can bring down an F-35 or a Rafale. It’s whether the F-35 and Rafale can survive a sky watched by a thousand Chinese eyes — satellites, radars, datalinks, and AI — all converging on a single target, feeding information into an invisible machine. And the answer is: they cannot.

After my last post — yes, the one where I declared China has already won the military contest against the United States — many readers pushed back in disbelief. I understand. It takes time for the brain to realign, to rewire its sense of strategic gravity. That’s why I let that article ferment before picking it up again. Truth doesn’t always strike like lightning. Sometimes, it seeps in. And once it takes root, it changes everything.

⬇️ II/

In the recent 12 day Indo-Pakistan combat, J10CE downed several Rafales like a child's game.

Pakistan could have destroyed the whole fleet of Rafales, 20 in all in the same way if not for the restraint not to escalate the war

Today, I want to walk you through this shocking shift — the day China’s ‘midweight’ J-10CE embarrassed France’s pride, the Rafale, in a direct air confrontation. It wasn’t a dogfight. It wasn’t even a fair fight. Rafale never even had the opportunity to engage. Not for a second.

Shocking detail was that Rafale never saw it coming. French-built fighter took off from a forward airbase, unaware that it had already been locked by an inescapable kill chain:

Tagged by an over-the-horizon radar node (System A).

The data was instantly relayed to a high-altitude AWACS platform (System B)

— which began real-time tracking, fusing inputs from multiple radar bands and satellites. Without ever turning on its radar, a J-10CE (System C) was silently launched.

Both the fighter and its PL-15 missile maintained full radio silence, remaining completely undetected. Once the PL-15 missile was launched, the J10CE pilot went home. The missile flew without its radar turned on while receiving mid-course guidance through a secure datalink from China’s AWACS.

The Rafale’s own radar — advanced as it may be — picked up nothing. The most humiliating truth is that none of the Rafale’s €280 million-worth of advanced systems functioned when it mattered. A brand-new jet, never even in combat service, was shot down within 20 minutes.

Imagine the humiliation. France was stunned. The entire Rafale supply chain, employing over 10,000 people, was shaken to its core. In this war, France has become the biggest inadvertent victim.

The J-10CE was outside visual range, and the missile, already launched from 300 kilometers away, locking its target and gliding in without Rafale being aware of it.

By the time the Rafale registered that it was under attack, it was too late. Post-crash inspection of the wreckage showed that the missile pods had not even been opened — the pilot never got a shot off.

That is the essence of China’s new war doctrine: blind the enemy, strike before he knows he’s in danger—an inescapable prey and vanish.

It was a demonstration. A quiet unveiling of a new order in aerial warfare. Where the Rafale still dazzles on paper — better sensors, better agility, better marketing — it was still outmatched. Not because the J-10CE was stronger. But because it was not alone. It was part of something far larger: a warfighting organism made of data and silence.

It’s tempting to view modern combat as a contest of thrust-to-weight ratios and radar cross-sections. But that era is gone. You can pilot the most expensive stealth aircraft on Earth and still fall victim to a two-decade-old jet — if your enemy controls the nervous system of the sky.

The J-10CE isn’t about muscle. It’s about mind.
That was the quiet horror that unfolded in May, when China’s J-10CE — a sleek but unassuming platform — brought down a Rafale in full view of the world. The reaction? Shock. Denial. Has China really surpassed France? Has the J-10CE outflown the Rafale?

The answer is: it doesn’t matter. Because the comparison itself is outdated. The Rafale is still a formidable machine. But this isn’t about comparing fighters. It’s about comparing doctrines. China doesn’t build lone warriors. It builds nervous systems — where jets are no longer solo hunters, but synchronized sensors in a warfighting web.

Each J-10CE is a node in that neural lattice — supported by high-altitude AWACS, tethered to radar stations, guided by the BeiDou constellation, armed with PL-15s that think before they strike.

🧵THREAD

Understand Syria - Its Yesterday and Today - The Fall of Assad, the Rise of Jolani — and the Theocratic Nightmare Awaiting Syria.
The fall of the Assad dynasty did not bring peace. It brought something more sinister. In Assad’s place emerged a new strongman:Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a Sunni Muslim originally from the Golan Heights —once branded as a terrorist, now miraculously rebranded as the international community’s “new hope” for Syria. Openly pro-American and quietly aligned with Israeli interests, Jolani wasted no time consolidating power. His militias have been accused of brutal crackdowns, particularly on Christian communities in the western provinces—churches torched, families disappeared, entire neighborhoods left in rubble. Under his watch, Syria began negotiating away pieces of its sovereignty, offering up parts of the Golan Heights in a desperate bid to see sanctions lifted. Meanwhile, the people of Syria descended into deeper misery. Bashar had once been ridiculed for the poor quality of subsidized bread—flimsy, sour, almost inedible—but now, there is no bread at all. Antibiotics on the black market can fetch thousands of dollars. Hospitals have no gauze, no painkillers, no blood bags. Children die of fevers. Cancer patients die in silence. And as warlords feud and factions fracture, Syria slides toward another dark horizon—one that looks alarmingly like Afghanistan. Theocratic forces are rising, enforcing dress codes and prayer laws, promising divine justice with the barrel of a gun. The Assad's secular society may be dead, but the nightmare is not over. It is mutating.

The man now sitting atop the ruins of Syria calls himself Jolani. Once an ISIS commander, once a fugitive, once a ghost, he now wears a suit and speaks the language of governance. But in March this year, his fighters—HTS, the rebranded sons of jihad—unleashed a massacre. Alawite ex-officers and soldiers, men who had once worn Assad’s uniform, were rounded up and slaughtered. Their families fared no better: wives and daughters were dragged away, some raped, many sold across borders like livestock. Kurdish women vanished in parallel raids, their towns left in silence. This was not just war. It was revenge—personal and sectarian. Jolani, heir to a family once crushed by Assad’s order, now ruled by fire and shame.
What has happened to Syria?

The Fall of the House of Assad: How a Tiny Sect Ruled Syria for 54 Years—and Lost It in Just Three Days II/
It took half a century to build the Assad dynasty.
It took less than seventy-two hours to watch it collapse.

On December 8, 2024, the Assad regime—once one of the most entrenched autocracies in the Middle East—fell. It didn’t fall slowly. It didn’t unravel over months of protest or siege. It vanished in the space of three days, like a rotting tree that finally gave way.

So swift was the collapse that many analysts were still combing through information to predict how the crisis would end when the dynasty was already gone.

But the real mystery isn’t the speed. It’s the longevity.
How did a tiny Shiite offshoot—the Alawite sect—rule over a Sunni majority country like Syria for 54 years?

And how could that same structure collapse in the time it takes to plan a funeral?

The answer is buried in the heart of Syria’s sectarian history.
And that history begins, strangely enough, with a cult which resembles very much Christianity.

---

A Heresy Wrapped in a Uniform

The Alawites are not your average Muslims. In fact, some Muslims don’t consider them Muslims at all.
They’re a peculiar sect of Shiite Islam—only about 12% of the Syrian population—who believe in doctrines that would make a Wahhabi cleric's blood boil. They celebrate Christmas and Easter. They believe the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Ali, was not just a man, but partly divine. Their trinity? Ali, God, and the faithful—echoes of the Christian Holy Trinity.

They even absorbed ideas from Buddhism (like reincarnation), Hinduism (avatars), Sufi mysticism, and bits of shamanism. If Islam had a psychedelic cousin with a hidden temple up in the mountains, the Alawites would be it.

For centuries, they lived in the shadows—persecuted, hunted, often massacred. Especially under the Ottoman Empire, where Sunni sultans saw them as heretics allied with rival Shiite Persia. One Ottoman emperor, Selim I, declared them enemies of God and launched mass killings that went on for hundreds of years.

And yet, they survived.
How? By retreating. By marrying within their own. By hiding their beliefs from outsiders. And, crucially, by sending their sons into the military after the French colonial rulers arrived. Over time, Alawite boys climbed the ranks.

When French colonial rulers arrived in the 20th century, they spotted an opportunity. The Alawites—poor, mountain-dwelling, marginalized—had no love for the old Ottoman elite. They were a minority. They had no political base. And best of all, their theology seemed closer to Christianity than Sunni Islam.

Perfect stock for a colonial army.

The French armed them, trained them, and gave them a seat at the table. When Syria gained independence in 1946, the Alawites didn’t give that seat back.

---

Covid-19 was a bioweapon

Former US State Secretary Michael Pompeo Admitted that Covid 19 was a US DOD bioweapon in a confidential speech to West Point Academy on June 13, 2020

Below is the second part of a confidential speech delivered by Michael Pompeo at West Point Military Academy on June 13, 2020. In this excerpt, Pompeo explicitly acknowledged that COVID-19 was designed as a bioweapon. The tone, language, and delivery are all consistent with his usual persona—direct, unapologetic, and steeped in intelligence community bravado. It sounds exactly like something Pompeo would say, especially given his past public remarks: “We lied, we cheated, we stole… we had entire training courses.” West Point, after all, trains the future officers of the U.S. military—those who must coordinate seamlessly with the intelligence and political apparatus. If any institution deserves to be briefed on the hidden operations of Pentagon, it is West Point. After all they can't communicate by telepathy. The U.S. has reached a stage where its actions are openly malevolent, yet cloaked behind a propaganda machine that dismisses any non-mainstream account as delusional or conspiratorial. Read the speech, and judge for yourself.

🧵
Transcription:

Part II: Internal Speech

Hello officers:

Congratulations again! Now, all the speech will be shrouded in secrecy. "Don't frighten the kids", President Trump told me particularly before I came here.
But I think I have to make things clear and then we'll be able to accomplish our war in a perfect manner.

As a matter of fact, human history has been entwined with wars of multiple types.
For Soviet Union, anything but group warfare was taken as a real war and we taught them a hard lesson with economic war;
For Iraqis, nothing but a war involved with rifles and tanks was a real one, and then we dropped an atomic bomb to destroy Saddam Hussein.
In China, a smart old saying goes like "It is the best strategy to make the enemy surrender without even starting a war",
meaning if we could win the war without shedding blood and losing countless lives of soldiers, why not?

Hence, I convinced President Trump earlier to avoid a military intervention which could bring about great loss even if Chinese government attacks Taiwan.
Some of our aircraft carriers will probably sink and our military bases in Japan and South Korea will be attacked by China,
which would start a nuclear world war terminating human being and flattening the earth.
Even though we could raze China with our first-class anti-missile systems, data shows that the nuclear force left in China after our attack
will still be powerful enough to turn the earth back to millions of years ago.

This means that wars like WWI and WWII will never happen again on this planet,
and we have to choose to take a smart way to destroy our potential enemies including China, Russia, Iran and others, and ensure none of our people will be hurt.

Officers, you now may have an idea of the secret weapon mentioned by President Trump which is never a bomblet but the current coronavirus popular all over the world!
Some of the theories widespread on the Internet are actually true.
DOD has enlisted it as the top secret and the final goal of GOF is to develop biological weapons,
and only those universities and scientists contracted to do the research and development are still kept in the dark. Pompeo speech continued:

You have to know that the research and development of this biological weapon is much harder than developing an aircraft carrier or making a fighter 35.
It has to work in an environment full of variables and the virus which could attack based on the DNA of different races has to be able to spread widely.
Our ideal attack is a quick death like that caused by Ebola or whose symptoms could pass to the next generation like those caused by AIDS.
We preferred quick death since it seems rather practical, however, virologists offer a distinctive opinion.

...that quick death will counteract the virus transmission.
And DOD made some compromises so as to enhance the transmission of virus and increase the total death toll by lowering the quick death rate.

Then DOD broke down the job in order to legitimate all the parts under the federal law.
More than a few companies and research institutes shared the job and different income:
some are responsible for the natural virus sample collection, some for R&D of research equipment, some for modifying genes,
some for studies on differences of races, some for tests in sentinel labs, some for pharmaceutical R&D, some for handling negative news,
which means the total job is still confidential. Even if someone could make connections, they will be just taken as lunatic without revealing our real plan.

In fact, SARS virus in 20th century was a biological weapon and so was the SARS-II popular these days.
Some dumb scientists didn’t know the virus transmission routes of the virus samples in their hands in the first place,
and unprofessional protection measures caused the leak of the virus.
Government Accountability Office has warned about the problem back in 2014 but no sound procedure has been taken to put a limit on scientists’ behavior.
Do you have any idea how serious the issue was? CIA hold more than 50 labs including viruses, bacteria and radiant have been detected since 2010.

Though the leak of coronavirus was accidental, the result was doing our country a favor.
When coronavirus was studied, it has preset its target including Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Italian whose ACE2 protein in lung is quite high and who therefore easily get infected.
The ACE2 protein of Caucasian and African American is relatively low, leaving them rather safe in front of coronavirus.
As for Italian American like me, we could immunize from SARS-II by getting a vaccination.

Poster recruiting ethnic Chinese as lab mice — in the U.S.

What exactly is the U.S. doing? Researching population-specific vulnerabilities for a second COVID-style bioweapon?

Where’s the oversight? Where’s the outrage?

They're offering $24,650 — an abnormally high sum for clinical trials.

The deal includes:

Five days, four nights in a hospital.
Fifteen clinical procedures.
Nearly $5,000 per day to use your body.

That doesn’t smell like science.
It smells like something else. US/Israel have become so evil that such incidents go unnoticed. The evil has become banal.

Understand Israel's madness - Worse than Jihad

Israel is not a secular democracy. It's a theocracy. Its wars are holy wars—more fanatic than Jihad.

The Three Faces of Likud: A History of Power, Blood, and Religious Fanaticism

It didn’t begin on October 7, 2023. For Palestinians, it was October 7 every day. Every day before that date, before the headlines and outrage against Hamas terrorism, there were Palestinian villages burned, Palestinian children shot at checkpoints, Palestinian homes demolished at dawn, and Palestinian olive groves turned to ash. The violence was constant, routine—just not televised. And if we're speaking of religious fanaticism, there's no ideology today more systematically violent than that of Likud and its settler wing. This is not some half-baked slogans—it's a sophisticated creed of 2000 years. A doctrine that sanctifies the land grab and sacralizes blood. It doesn't just permit killing; it demands it, cloaked in divine entitlement and historical grievance.

Netanyahu is not a dictator—he is a mirror of the Israeli public will. A mirror held up to a large and growing section of Israeli society, particularly the settlers, who are not civilians in any meaningful sense. They are armed, trained, and often more militant than the state itself. The state restrains; they accelerate. Israeli settlers will kill anyone preventing them from land grabs and murdering Palestinians, pointing their guns at the IDF if need be. That's how violent the Israeli civilians are. They are the grassroots enforcers of a fanatic religious ideology against which Islamic fanaticism pales in comparison.

Likud isn't just a party. It's an ideology. It's a mirror—splintered, flashing three different faces:

1. The Likud of Power: Gripped tightly by Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who has come to define Israeli politics.
2. The Folk Likud: Embodied by settler leaders like Daniela Weiss, born of zeal and steel, carving out Israel's destiny on Palestinian land.
3. The Ideological Religious Likud: A fever dream of a Greater Israel, more myth than map, yet still shaping the nation's spine—adhered to by the majority of the Israeli population. I/ The Likud of Power - A Party of the Bible and the Bullet

The story begins in 1948—the same year Israel declared its independence and fought its first war against Arab armies. That year, Menachem Begin, a former Irgun commander once labeled a terrorist by the British Mandate, founded the Freedom Movement. Begin and his followers had a different vision from Israel's socialist founders. They were driven by a belief in a biblical Israel—one that stretched beyond the 1949 armistice lines, all the way into the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

This vision was biblical and ruthless. In their eyes, God had already drawn the borders. All that remained was to fulfill the prophecy.

In 1973, Begin's party merged with several other right-wing factions, forming the Likud alliance. Four years later, in 1977, the unthinkable happened. After nearly three decades of uninterrupted rule by the left-wing Labor Party, Likud won the national election. Israelis called it "the upheaval." It marked the rise of a new class, a new language, a new ideology, a new idea of what Israel should be. Begin became Prime Minister, and with him came a new tone: nationalist, religious, unapologetically hawkish and fanatic.

Begin's Strange Peace

Despite his fiery origins, Begin did something no one expected. In 1978, he sat down with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and U.S. President Jimmy Carter to negotiate what would become the Camp David Accords. This was a landmark peace deal—the first between Israel and an Arab country. It ended three decades of war with Egypt, returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian hands, and laid the groundwork for further Arab-Israeli peace efforts.

But peace came with a paradox. While Begin handed back the Sinai, he ramped up settlement activity in the West Bank, doubling down on the idea that those lands were non-negotiable. The contradiction was glaring: Israel could give land back to Egypt, but never to the Palestinians living under occupation.

The Lebanon War and the Shattered Image

In 1982, as Israel invaded Lebanon under the pretext of driving out the PLO, Ariel Sharon—then Defense Minister—oversaw the siege of Beirut. Israel allied itself with the Christian Phalangist militia, a Lebanese Maronite group bitterly opposed to the Palestinians. After the assassination of Lebanon's president-elect Bachir Gemayel, Sharon allowed the Phalangist fighters to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut. What followed was a bloodbath. Over the course of three days, the militias slaughtered between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. Israeli forces surrounded the camps, fired flares to illuminate the night, and sealed the exits to prevent Palestinians from escape — they aided the massacre and did nothing to stop the killings.

An Israeli commission later found Sharon personally responsible for failing to prevent the massacre, forcing him to resign as Defense Minister. But he never expressed remorse, and his political career not only survived—it thrived. Sharon was hailed by Israelis as a national hero. His brutality won the hearts of the Israeli population. For many, Sabra and Shatila became the moment when Israeli policy crossed from occupation into open and active ethnic cleansing.

The Hardening: Shamir to Sharon

In 1986, Yitzhak Shamir took over. A former underground fighter like Begin, Shamir had no illusions about peace. Under his rule, Likud rejected any negotiation with the Palestinians. Talks were considered naïve, even dangerous.

Israel: A Nation on Edge, A Strategy Without Exit

Israel in a Nutshell Leading up to June 12

It’s hard to believe that a country as small as Israel has been able to stir the Middle East upside down for over seventy years—fighting from Lebanon all the way to Iran, then swinging back to bomb any surrounding country right and left at will without any resistance. You might think Israel is crazy, yet its strikes are always sharp and calculated, its operations cold and clean—like those of a virtuoso killer. Israel is the most formidable killer of the Middle East.

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The Begin Doctrine: always no-warning, always first-strike

Someone once said: Israel is like that neighbour who drops down through your ceiling at midnight, blows up your rice cooker, and the next morning says, “Sorry, I thought you were hiding a bomb.” The joke is crude, but the metaphor lands.

Because its neighbours—Syria, Lebanon, Iran, even Egypt and Jordan—haven't always been pushovers. These are nations with standing armies and weapons to spare. And yet, time and again, in this powder keg of a region, they end up flat on their backs, blinking at the sky. Why? Simple. Israel doesn’t rely on landmass or manpower. It survives by striking hard and speaking little. That’s its edge.

To understand Israel’s strength, you need to understand where it comes from. This country wasn’t so much founded as it was fought into existence. In 1948, the moment it declared independence, five neighbouring countries rushed in to crush it. The result? A newborn nation in its crib punched five grown men in the face—and carved out even more land than the UN had given it.

That first war shaped its worldview: only fists can guard a homeland. Since then, Israel has lived by one rule—if you look at me the wrong way, I’ll hit first. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t warn. When Israel hits, first your airstrike goes, then your nuclear site, then your commanders. If you complain, next comes your capital, reduced to rubbles.

But this ruthlessness isn’t arbitrary —it’s doctrine. Israel’s entire military strategy is built on two pillars: pre-emption and absolute regional military dominance. That means it never waits for you to be ready. While you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, still fumbling with the toothpaste cap, its missiles are already on the way.

This isn’t hyperbole—it’s history. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel’s opening airstrike wiped out 90% of Egypt’s air force before they even got off the ground. Arab capitals were left speechless.
🧵 Unapologetic Terrorism as Founding Principle of the Country

And it doesn’t stop at regular warfare. Israel favours terrorist decapitation strikes. In 1988, Mossad agents crossed the sea into Tunisia and assassinated Abu Jihad, the number two in the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), in front of his family. Inflatable boats slipped ashore under moonlight. A few precise shots, and they were gone.

Is this how a country fights wars? Apparently, yes. Because while Israel operates as a state, it has mastered the tactics of a non-state terrorist group.

In fact, its roots run deep in that tradition. Before independence, the Jewish underground—Haganah, Irgun, Lehi—were experts in bombings and assassinations. After 1948, these same men, ruthless terrorists, became the generals, ministers, and architects of the new nation. Israel may be the only modern state founded on terrorist insurgent tactics—and rather than abandon them, it refined them into official state doctrine.

This instinct to strike first is in the country’s DNA. Before 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups operated as true terrorist organizations:

Haganah, founded in 1920, began as a defense union but soon adopted violent tactics alongside extremist offshoots.

In 1931, Irgun (Etzel) split, led by Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and later Menachem Begin. They claimed bombings and assassinations were legitimate tools—targeting Arabs, British, even Jewish moderates.

In 1940, Lehi (the Stern Gang) broke away from Irgun. Under leader Avraham Stern, they even flirted with forming alliances with Nazi Germany—seeing terror as divine mandate.

These groups staged some of the most notorious acts of Zionist terror:

The King David Hotel bombing (1946), killing 91 people

The Deir Yassin massacre (1948), where Irgun and Lehi killed over 100 villagers

The assassination of British officials like Lord Moyne

The murder of UN mediator Bernadotte

Numerous bombings in Haifa, Jerusalem, and across Palestine

These weren’t fringe radicals disgraced and condemned worldwide like Osama Bin Laden—they were future prime ministers and state-builders: Menachem Begin (Irgun → Herut → Likud → PM), Yitzhak Shamir (Lehi → PM). Even David Ben-Gurion, from Haganah, oversaw coordinated terror campaigns that would lead to Palestinian displacement. Terror—not principles or ideals—built this nation.

The Knife Within: How Iran’s Secular Elite Enabled the June 12 Strike

Below is a rewrite of a video by 阿冉 on Bilibili/YouTube. I strongly advise Chinese to follow him for indepth knowledge of Iran.

In a single night, Israel executed a brutal decapitation strike on Iran’s nuclear elite. Through billowing smoke, the military suffered one blow after another: Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami; Chief of General Staff, Mohammad Bagheri; Deputy Chief, Ali Rashid — all obliterated. Even top nuclear scientists like Dr. Abbas and Dr. Tranchi were taken out in pinpoint assassinations. Iran’s nuclear command was wiped clean. The Mossad's precision was astonishing. Has Iran been so thoroughly infiltrated that it’s become a sieve? Otherwise, how could Israel have obtained such top-secret intelligence?

Has Iran really been riddled with American and Israeli spies? The answer is "Yes". Without a doubt. In fact, "infiltrated like a sieve" doesn't even begin to describe it. Half of Iran might as well be American or Israeli agents.

The Supreme Leader Khamenei’s granddaughter studies in the U.S. Iran’s top officials use iPhones. Their government emails run on Gmail. If Qassem Soleimani wasn’t assassinated, or Hussein wasn't targeted — that would’ve been the real surprise.

But here’s the twist: it wasn’t the Mossad or the CIA that turned Iran into a sieve. It was Iran itself. To be specific — Iran’s secular elite.

What outsiders see as foreign infiltration is, in fact, internal warfare. And the one who planted the seeds of this civil war? None other than the father of the Islamic Republic himself: Ruhollah Khomeini.

Video is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His family controls a business empire of USD 95 billion. Khomeini. 1979: The Fracture of Revolution

When the 1979 Islamic Revolution broke out, Khomeini, exiled in France, returned to Tehran in triumph.

But with Khomeini’s rise, Iran was torn in two:
On one side, the clerical theocracy, led by Khomeini.
On the other, the secular elite, represented by the leftist Tudeh Party.

During the revolution, the clergy and the leftists were allies. But once victory was secured, Khomeini launched a brutal purge.
The Tudeh Party was decimated, and Khomeini stood alone at the top.

But in doing so, he made a fatal mistake:
By destroying the left, he left behind only right-wing secularists, many of them pro-American.
Worse still, the ferocity of his purge planted a seed of distrust:
“You can’t trust these clerics. Side with them, and you’re next to be eliminated”.

Thus, the secular camp swung hard to the right.

Even with his iron grip, Khomeini lacked one thing — guns.

Revolutions are not built on divine slogans. Power grows from the barrel of a gun (Mao Zedong).

And Iran’s military at the time? Loyal only to the Shah.

Khomeini could command God, but not the army.

Then, in September 1980, Saddam Hussein gave him the perfect excuse:
The Iran-Iraq War.

Under Iraqi fire, Iran’s military rallied behind the clerics.

Khomeini purged the Shah’s officers and built a new force: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Shah army's upper leadership was decimated. It was stripped of political power.

The old army was wiped out, and the new one answered only to him.

But the war was catastrophic — over a million dead.
In 1982, Khomeini launched a suicidal “Islamic kamikaze” offensive.

13-year-old boys were handed plastic “keys to paradise” and sent to blow themselves up against Iraqi lines.

Twenty-one thousand children became human bombs.
This was holy war in its most fanatical form.

The video is of Khomeini.

Understanding Iran uphill June 12th

The Coup That Failed but Awaits: Mossad’s Strike, the Secular Elite, and Iran’s Stubborn Persian Pride

Iran has long been a paradox — a revolutionary theocracy armored in ideology, yet hollowed out from within by a secular elite. Beneath the surface, pro-Western factions have quietly prepared for a post-Khamenei future, betting that the Supreme Leader’s death would be their moment to seize power.

But Iran is not a country that bends easily. Its identity — forged in Aryan pride, Shia defiance, and imperial memory — has made it difficult for even its closest partners, like China or Russia, to interfere. The pride that once protected it from colonization now risks blinding it at its most fragile moment.

The Persian way of asking for help is peculiar. It goes something like this, “We are the frontline. We're holding the line for you. If we fall, the threat will come straight to your doorstep.”

Sounds like a threat. China doesn't know what to make of it.

Let's sort out the Gordon knot of the Iran society and you will see why it's a place where angel fear to tread.

The first chapter of this Iranian regime was written in November 1979. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and were held for 444 days before released. As the crowd of students prepared to storm the gates, someone asked Khomeini, “Can we go in? Will America retaliate?” His answer came without hesitation: “America? They won’t dare.”

At that time, Iran had no strong army, no nuclear arsenal, no powerful allies. Just revolutionary momentum. The U.S. tried to respond with Operation Eagle Claw (Not a pun 😃) in 1980. It failed: helicopters crashed, soldiers died, no hostages were rescued. Iran, against all odds, became the David that had humiliated Goliath.

They have done it again this time. 🧵 But forty-five years later, for years leading up to June 12, that revolutionary legacy is unraveling. The revolution’s fervor is fading. A secular, bureaucratic elite — Western-educated, anti-clerical — waits in the wings. The Mossad strike in June 2025 was designed to shatter the balance and cause a coup from within. It failed. But the plan is only dormant, not dead. It bides its time — waiting for Khamenei’s funeral.

Under President Pezeshkian, internet censorship was lifted. Nuclear talks resumed. During the Syria crisis, Iran didn’t intervene for Syria — it backed out. The tiger turned into a cat.

It thought it was a chess master, but Syria changed the board.

Do you know why Israel dared to strike on June 12? Because it thought the response from Iran would be the habitual theatrical symbolic retaliation of no consequence like in the past. But Israel miscalculated. Iran's aggressive response was totally unexpected.

But before June 12, Iran was becoming weaker and weaker.
What caused this shift? Not the people — the problem lies with the elite.

The old aristocracy carries a sickness, rooted in three pathologies: the legacy of Aryan racial superiority, the trauma of colonization, and a spiritual loyalty to Western capitalism. These forces have undermined Iran’s revolutionary spine.

For centuries, Iran was ruled by outsiders—
Arabs, Azerbaijanis, Turkmen.
Each new ruler, a reminder of loss of the glory of the Persian empire.

Iran's Aryan myth runs deep. In 1926, Reza Shah declared, “A pure-blooded Aryan is now king.” Nazi Germany officially classified Iranians as “pure Aryans” in 1936. Even today, traces of this thinking remain in the elite class — disdain for Arabs, suspicion of Turks, contempt for East Asians, even as China defies sanctions to be the sole buyer of Iranian oil. Mocking Chinese or Koreans? They call it humor. But inside that joke lies racial arrogance.

That's why Iran has repeatedly declined to buy Chinese arms and integrated package of aerial defense, saying "We want to be independent. We don't need your help. We can produce on our own”. The Chinese and their products are perceived not to be on par with the Persian Aryans.

This Persian pride comes from their empire memories embodied in their ancient scripture Shahnameh.

The ideological backbone of Iran’s modern theocracy doesn’t rest solely on Islam. It also draws from a much older, deeply ingrained civilizational myth: the Shahnameh — the thousand-year-old Persian epic by Ferdowsi. Though not a religious text, the Shahnameh functions as Iran’s cultural scripture — a Persian Talmud of sorts — recounting the rise and fall of noble kings, heroic resistance against foreign invaders, and a constant struggle to uphold justice. When leaders like Khamenei say “Neither East nor West,” they aren’t speaking only as Shia clerics; they are channeling a Persian worldview that predates Islam — one that sees Iran as an eternal civilization, too proud to submit to Rome, too dignified to follow Moscow, (or God forbid the Upstart China) and too ancient to be colonized by Washington.