Lao A: China's Social Media Scheherazade telling One Thousand and One Night Stories of Horror of America to the Chinese Audience

In the flickering digital shadows of the Chinese internet, a new literary phenomenon has taken hold. He is known only as Lao A (牢a), a phantom storyteller who never shows his face, yet possesses a voice that has hypnotized hundreds of millions. To his listeners, he is the new Scheherazade - a modern One Thousand and One Nights narrator. His tales are less entertaining than the ancient magic; they are macabre chronicles of the "American Hell."

​Lao A’s popularity stems from a haunting literary eloquence that strips away the American veneer of respectability and hypocrisy - a mask the country has spent a century perfecting. He reveals an underworld where the predatory American cabals treat the underclass with utter ruthlessness and cynicism.

​Do you know the true source of America’s dominance in biochemistry and pharmaceuticals? It is not talent alone, but the continued, systematic harvest of the American underclass that the machine deems "useless eaters". The United States has an abundant population of "human cattle", deliberately maintained in poverty and ignorance, for experimentation; it is, after all, the world's largest exporter of human plasma and human derived products: bones and tissues.

The US healthcare or rather biochemistry industry is literally a killing machine, and its laboratories - from the military outposts of Fort Detrick to the hallowed halls of Baltimore - are charnel houses where the poor are led to slaughter for a paycheck.

​To understand the weight of these stories, one must look at the institution that stands as the crown jewel of American medicine : John Hopkins university.

​The Immaculate Shadow: Baltimore and the Hill

Baltimore wears a mask of harmlessness - a quiet stage where a fatigued middle class clings to the last vestiges of normal life. Tree-lined streets soften the eye. Red-brick facades are scrubbed clean to catch the morning light. Everything suggests order. Everything suggests safety. Yet beneath this calm, the city runs a low fever.

The docks, once the city’s heartbeat, no longer sustain its families. Seasonal labor now governs life: three months of work, six months of abandonment. Time accumulates without purpose and begins to decay. In these long intervals, men drift toward drugs, gambling, and violence which have become routine. Strip clubs flicker like lesions along the streets, their neon signs pulsing through the night.

And rising above this slow, methodical deterioration - calm, immaculate, and untouched - stands the source of both Baltimore's prosperity and its most sinister horrors..

Johns Hopkins. II/

​To the international student, it is a sanctuary of discipline and data. But to the local African American community, it is something far more ancient, sinister and predatory. They look at the red brick and green copper roofs and see a monster that never sleeps. Unlike the infamous Unit 731, which history was forced to bury, this entity is legal. It is celebrated. It is funded by billions. It doesn't need to hide in a war zone; it hides in plain sight, protected by the "respectable" armor of federal grants and prestigious journals.

The Anatomy of an Afterthought: A Hospital That Birthed a School

​Johns Hopkins did not grow like other universities. It did not begin with the dusty pursuit of philosophy, the rhythm of literature, or the logic of law.

​It began with a hospital studying human bodies.

​A Quaker merchant - celibate, childless, and burdened by a vast fortune - bequeathed his wealth not to the pursuit of abstract knowledge, but to the brick and mortar of a hospital. The hospital was the mother; the university was the child. Here, medicine was never a mere department. It was the central nervous system. Everything else - engineering, public health, international relations - was grafted on later, like auxiliary organs stitched onto a beating heart.

​And that heart has never stopped asking the same, silent question like the unit 731:
How far can the human body be pushed before it finally breaks?

​There is a gravity to this place that defies explanation. Federal money pours into Hopkins in quantities that make the Ivy League, icons like Yale, look like beggars. It receives more federal R&D funding than MIT, more than the giants of California—Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley—and far more than the institutions built in the very shadow of the White House, such as Georgetown and George Washington University.
​Billionaires like Michael Bloomberg offer their billions without hesitation, and university presidents do not simply retire; they vanish into the inner sanctums of the world’s gatekeepers—The Lancet, Nature, The Atlantic, Politico. They become the guardians of "Truth," ensuring no one asks how that truth was harvested.

​Consider the precision of the Great Plague. During the height of COVID-19, two students at Hopkins tracked the world’s infections with an accuracy that felt less like research and more like prophecy. But accuracy of that magnitude is never born from theory alone.

​It comes from data. And data comes from subjects who have no names.

The story below recounted by Lao A has happened again and again in real life and is still ongoing.

Spain's Córdoba Tragedy and the Myth of Western Standards

On the evening of January 18, 2026, in the southern Iberian Peninsula, in the picturesque province of Córdoba, Spain, a catastrophic high-speed rail collision unfolded. Forty lives were extinguished within tens of seconds, reduced to fire, debris, and smoke. Dozens of families were shattered in that single moment at dusk. Eyewitnesses later described the scene as a vision of hell: steel folded into grotesque knots, blood staining the ballast red.

Yet what chills one more than the accident itself is the silence that followed.

One opens the BBC. One scrolls CNN. One checks AFP. Coverage exists, yes—but of what nature? Briefs written with softened language, humanitarian sentiment confined to rescue narratives, responsibility gently dissolved into the word “accident.” No interrogation. No systemic questioning. No technological autopsy.

One is compelled to make a cruel but necessary assumption. Had this collision occurred not in Spain but in China; had the derailed train not carried the Japanese Hitachi brand but China’s CRRC Fuxing—what would the global reaction have looked like? The answer is obvious. The international opinion field would already be ablaze.

Headlines would scream “China’s Technological Collapse.” Deutsche Welle would churn out essays on the price of "China Speed". Social media would drown in mockery of “Made in China.”

This is not conjecture. This is pattern recognition.

Why do forty European deaths merit only a few painless expressions of regret in Western media discourse? Why can a mere delay of minutes on China’s high-speed rail be elevated into proof of systemic failure? What interests lie beneath this asymmetry? Whose entrenched privileges has Chinese high-speed rail disrupted, triggering such reflexive double standards?

Today, those perfumed news drafts are set aside. The text below relies not on sentiment but on data - on hard numbers, engineering logic, and technical comparison - to dissect what is now known as the Córdoba tragedy. The task is simple: to examine what crawls beneath the sanctified surface of “Western standards.”

The clock must be turned back to approximately 6 p.m. local time on January 18. It was meant to be an ordinary weekend evening in southern Spain. Two trains were converging on adjacent tracks. One was operated by a private company, traveling from Málaga to Madrid. The other belonged to Spain’s state-owned operator Renfe, heading from Madrid to Huelva.

In theory, a modern high-speed rail dispatch system functions like a precision instrument. Trains remain strictly segregated. Physical intersection should be impossible.

But catastrophe is born in details.
At that moment, the rear carriages of the privately operated train suddenly derailed - without warning. The word “suddenly” matters. The inertia of the derailed cars turned them into uncontrolled projectiles. They breached the central barrier and crossed directly onto the opposing track. II/

Twenty seconds later - only twenty - the oncoming Renfe train had no opportunity to react. Traveling at roughly 200 km/h, it collided head-on with the derailed carriages. The impact was devastating. Front cars were launched off the track, tumbling from a roadbed five to six meters high. Survivors described the sensation as akin to an earthquake of magnitude eight: luggage transformed into missiles, glass shredded faces, conversations ended mid-sentence as lives vanished instantly.

In the aftermath, Spain’s Transport Minister publicly acknowledged that the incident was “highly abnormal” and largely ruled out operator error. This assessment rests on three facts that make industry insiders uneasy.

First: the track was new. This section had undergone a full renovation and upgrade in May of the previous year. By all standards, it should have been in peak condition.

Second: the train was new. The derailed unit was a Fracturosa 1000 high-speed train manufactured by Japan’s Hitachi—also marketed as the Red Arrow 1000. Produced in 2020, it had been in service for less than four years. More critically, it had passed a comprehensive technical inspection just three days before the accident, with all indicators deemed compliant.

Third: there was no speeding. The section was a straight track with a design speed of 250 km/h. Both trains were operating at approximately 190 km/h. The most convenient scapegoat - overspeeding - was absent.

So where did failure originate?
Preliminary investigations uncovered a conclusion that leaves one speechless: multiple rail fractures were found precisely at the derailment point. More damning still, clear evidence of chronic wear was discovered at the rail joints.

This means the failure was not instantaneous. It had been accumulating over time, silently, like a tumor.

Months earlier, the Spanish Railway Drivers’ Union had issued formal warnings about infrastructure degradation and abnormal vibration along this line.

Those warnings disappeared into bureaucratic silence. Worse still, a track safety warning system touted as “world-class” remained inert during the critical 20 seconds following derailment. It detected nothing. It issued no emergency braking command. It functioned as ornamentation—present, expensive, and useless.

This is the reality behind the image of “rigorous European standards”: newly renovated tracks fractured, recently inspected trains overturned, and safety systems blinded. Yet Western media posed not a single sharp question.

Attention must now turn to the train itself.

In Western narratives, Japanese manufacturing occupies a sacred space—synonymous with craftsmanship and immune to suspicion. The Fracturosa 1000 was marketed as one of Europe’s fastest and most comfortable trains, Hitachi’s flagship entry into the European market.
Yet beneath this halo lie structural weaknesses.

Following the accident, media treatment of Hitachi bordered on indulgence. Beyond a brief statement pledging cooperation, no serious scrutiny of design choices emerged. But technical realities tell a different story.

First, the braking system. This model relies on a relatively traditional pneumatic braking architecture. Its emergency braking response time is approximately 1.2 seconds. At high speed, those 1.2 seconds translate into tens of meters of uncontrolled forward motion. Moreover, the braking system’s thermal dissipation design has long drawn criticism. Under sustained high-speed operation, it is prone to thermal fade—a weakness previously observed in overseas deployments and conveniently ignored due to the absence of catastrophe.

On the Potential Outcome of an Iran War: The West’s Final Strategic Overreach

Or

The Butterfly Effect of War: Why China Wins Other People’s Conflicts
​
​Every major war begins with a structural lie: the illusion that conflict is local, contained, and punishes only its intended target. The war in Ukraine shattered this pretense. It was intended to break Russia, yet it ended up weakening and fracturing Europe, causing the deindustrialization of Germany, and - most significantly - granting China a precious window of time.

​Beijing has used this "strategic opportunity" to neutralize U.S. sanctions on "chokepoint" sectors like semiconductors and advanced lithography. China has moved from being the world’s assembly plant to its premier high-tech laboratory, achieving a level of vertical integration that has effectively neutralized Western market leverage.

As the logic of escalation now drifts toward Iran, Western strategists operate under the outdated assumption that severing energy lifelines can stifle China. In reality, a large-scale conflict in the Middle East will likely accelerate the decline of the Western financial and industrial system while China emerges as the "Strengthened Survivor."

​I. The Iranian "Regime Change" Fallacy

​Israel and Washington recognize a reality they rarely vocalize: they cannot defeat Iran alone. Iran is a continental-scale state with a strategic patience forged by forty years of isolation. Consequently, the objective has evolved toward a regional escalation - a war large enough to internationalize the conflict and lock NATO into a system-draining commitment.

​However, the "regime change" narrative relies on a fatal misunderstanding of the Iranian people. While many Iranians harbor deep resentment toward the Khomeini regime, they harbor even more abhorrence toward foreign intervention. Having witnessed the "democracy" brought to Iraq and Libya, they know that externally incited collapse leads to ruin. Any plan predicated on an internal uprising triggered by foreign bombs will likely spark a wave of religious-Islamic nationalism that hardens resolve against the outsider. Iranians may hate their government, but they hate being "liberated" by the West even more. II. The Fortress of Fluid: China’s Strategic Energy Reserve

​The belief that the West can "choke" China’s energy supply to stall it's AI and industrial development is decades out of date. Beijing has transformed its energy vulnerability into a massive, multi-layered fortress.

​As of early 2026, China has officially amassed between 1.2 and 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil—a historic high. This "Great Wall of Oil" is no longer just a 90-day safety net; it covers over 100 days of net imports. In a crisis where China invokes "demand reduction" - prioritizing its 50% EV fleet and high-speed rail while rationing fuel for military use - analysts estimate China could "hold the fort" for one to four years.

​This resilience is built on three pillars:

​The "Floating Fleet" & Opportunistic Buying: China institutionalized a policy of massive buying whenever global prices dipped below $70. In late 2025, floating storage in Asian waters tripled to a 3-year high, with over 70 million barrels—mostly Iranian and Russian oil—waiting offshore.

​Invisible Underground Caverns: A significant portion of these reserves is stored in massive underground salt caverns and rock galleries, such as the 195-million-barrel facility in Fujian. These sites are immune to satellite monitoring and harder to target than surface tanks.

​The Green Shield: By 2026, green energy accounts for approximately 50% of China's total energy consumption. AI centers run on electricity, not crude. With clean energy generation exceeding 3 trillion kWh, the power for China's high-tech heart is increasingly independent of global oil lanes.

The American Weapon of Mass Destruction: the Invisible Execution Line that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans a year silently

This is a hot topic in China these days.

I summarize the main points below. Americans can tell me if it's true.

In the United States, there is an invisible line. You never see it marked on the ground. No siren sounds when you cross it. No announcement is made. But once you do, your life enters a closed system. A negative loop. A corridor with no exits.

In America, everyone talks about paying bills. It is a national obsession. Its medical bills are legendary. Dynamic pricing without limits. Giving birth can cost hundreds of thousands, even a million dollars. A single tooth extraction can cost more than a month’s rent. No ordinary person can possibly pay these sums—especially those who have already lost their job and, with it, their insurance.

If you cannot pay, the system does not pause. It does not negotiate. It eliminates. Slowly, mechanically. You are not punished in a courtroom. You are ground down by procedures, fees, astronomical compound interest, and deadlines until nothing remains.

This line is a survival threshold. Cross it, and the system stops treating you as a human being and starts treating you as waste that has not yet been processed.

Western media loves to talk about China’s so-called “social credit score,” in dystopian language. A digital leash. A techno-authoritarian nightmare. But this is projection. The real, fully operational social credit system already exists in the United States. It is called your credit score. Your ability to pay your bills.

In America, your credit score is not just your financial data. It is your civil status. Your digital soul. Once it drops below a certain point, you are quietly erased. You cannot rent an apartment. You cannot get a phone plan. You cannot pass a background check. Often, you cannot even open a basic bank account. There is no meaningful appeal. No state-level repair mechanism that works at scale.
In China, debt problems are treated as a social risk to be managed. Housing is stabilized. Utilities stay on. The state intervenes because social collapse is expensive. Fear and despair spread quickly in a society, and the cost is collective. In the United States, default is treated as a moral failure. Punishment is impersonal, automated, and outsourced to algorithms. Once the gears start turning, they are designed to move in one direction only.

The most brutal feature of the American system is not poverty itself. It is the absolute requirement of a fixed address.
No address means no mail. No mail means no bills, no notices, no verification. No verification means no bank account. No bank account means no job. No job means no health insurance. This is not accidental. It is a perfectly engineered chain reaction.

Once you lose housing, time itself turns against you. The average survival time of a homeless person in the United States is about three and a half years. In a country that constantly talks about labor shortages and immigration, this number should haunt every policy debate. People are not “falling through the cracks.” They are being processed out of the system.
Perfectly normal people—fit for work, needing only a few weeks of stability—are treated as waste and left to rot and die on the street.

Healthcare stands guard at this execution line.

In America, if you get sick, there are only two outcomes. Either the disease kills you untreated, or the bill finishes you off by pushing you into homelessness. There is no third path.

Lose your job, you lose your insurance. Get sick afterward, and the bills arrive in amounts no average American could ever repay. The debt is not meant to be paid. It is meant to push you past the line. II/

When people began using AI tools to audit medical bills, to contest inflated charges, simply to survive, the response was immediate. New rules now forbid the use of AI to contest medical bills. Soon AI will have inbuilt algorithms which forbid such interference with the filtering function of the system.

Costs must remain high. The guillotine must stay sharp. Americans must be made to stay in the debt trap all their life. The system makes sure nobody can pay off their debts (compound interest aiding which no average American understands) and walk away with huge savings and a happy retirement. Nobody is able to do what the personal finance gurus like Dave Ramsay or Robert Kiyosaki teach.

This also explains the opioid epidemic. If seeing a doctor means bankruptcy, homelessness, and social death, then swallowing painkillers and continuing to work becomes a rational survival strategy. Addiction is not a cultural failure. It is an adaptation to a system where rest, healing, and care are priced out of reach.

The middle class—once the system’s stabilizer—is being quietly dismantled.

Young people now enter adult life already wounded by debt. Student loans that cannot be discharged. Interest that compounds faster than wages. From day one, they are locked onto the credit treadmill. Miss a step, and you slide backward into the kill zone.
At the same time, low-cost survival has been criminalized. Sleeping in your car. Growing vegetables. Keeping chickens. In short, self-sufficient non system dependent cheap living is illegal or heavily restricted in many states. You are not allowed to survive cheaply. You must consume expensively. You must borrow. You must pay interest. The system does not want resilience. It wants dependency.

The popular fantasy is that this is a competitive system where the best rise to the top. In reality, it is closer to a battle royale with a shrinking map. A few escape upward. Most run in place, living from pay check to pay check, paying bills just fast enough to avoid immediate default.

They are not citizens in a republic.
They are cattle in a credit algorithm.
That is the invisible execution line that awaits evey middle class American.

Bondi Beach and the Netanyahu Pattern

Across 9/11 (2001), London Metro 7/7 (2005), and Charlie Hebdo (2015), Bataclan (2015) and many other high profile terrorist attack, the same identical scenario repeats. The structure is the same. They are all Israeli psyops.

First: foreknowledge, extreme proximity.
Before 9/11, Netanyahu moved in the same New York political–business circles as Larry Silverstein, the owner of the Twin Towers who acquired the Towers shorty before 911, a long-standing pro-Israel donor with direct access to Netanyahu and Israeli government. Netanyahu himself repeatedly claimed, immediately after the attacks, that he had long warned of such an event. On 7/7, Netanyahu was physically in London, cancelling a public appearance shortly before the bombings. With Charlie Hebdo, Netanyahu had close personal ties to Richard Malka, the magazine’s long-time lawyer who defended Charlie Hebdo's long tradition of sadistic blasphemy of the Prophet Mohammed of the utmost bad taste as freedom of expression, who became a central media figure after the attack.

Second: instant attribution.
In all four cases, the identity of the attackers and the ideological framing was established almost immediately. No uncertainty window. No need for competing hypotheses. The enemy was named before the investigation began.

Third: convenient evidence.
Passports found intact (911 and Bataclan: passports conveniently found immediately at the crime scene. No need for prolonged investigation to know “who done it”). Documents appearing on cue. Evidence that survives explosions (911) better than steel or human bodies. The narrative locks early and never unlocks.

Fourth: no serious inquiry into intelligence failure.
How did this happen? Who knew what, and when? The apparent foreknowledge is discarded.

Fifth - and most important: instant political framing.
Each event is immediately folded into a civilizational narrative: terrorism as an existential war, Israel as the frontline, and Jewish life in the diaspora as inherently unsafe. The implied conclusion is always the same: Jews must move to Israel. Without continuous Jewish settlement, the Israeli state hollowes out demographically and politically.

After Charlie Hebdo, Netanyahu openly urged French Jews to leave for Israel - fear converted directly into demographic salvation. This time is no different: accusations of mounting anti-Semitism are paired with calls for Australian Jews to relocate to Israel, a country now facing sustained population outflow.

Same sequence. Same beneficiaries. Same absence of indepth investigation addressing disturbing coincidences and damning evidence of an inside job. Same mainstream campaign to strike down disturbing questions as "conspiracy theories”.

Bondi Beach and the Logic of Spectacle

When a mass killing happens, the first instinct is grief. The second is fear. The third - if you have lived through enough of these cycles - is pattern recognition.

The Bondi Beach tragedy immediately triggered that third response in many people. The mass casualty is real, but the structure of the event felt familiar. Too familiar. Professor Jiang has given his analysis of the Bondi Beach attack in his viral YouTube video.

youtu.be/Ke0nsy70khE?si… II/

Prof Jiang does not claim that nothing happened, or that no one died. The argument is more uncomfortable: that some events are allowed to happen, shaped, framed, or accelerated because they serve a strategic narrative.

This is what “false flag” originally meant - not fake blood, but misattributed causality.

Foreknowledge and the Smell of Timing

One of the first anomalies raised in the video concerns timing. Searches for the alleged perpetrator’s name appeared in Google Trends in Israel, Turkey, and Afghanistan before the attack occurred. On its own, this could be coincidence, data noise, or misinterpretation. But in intelligence analysis, anomalies are not judged in isolation. They are judged in clusters.

When foreknowledge, media preparedness, and narrative readiness all appear together, analysts begin to ask a different question - not “is this fake?” but “who was the master mind behind and why?”

Narrative Control Comes First, Facts Later

Almost immediately, the event was folded into a broader ideological frame.

An Israeli human rights lawyer appeared in mainstream scheduled interview grade high-resolution photographs - bloodied, bandaged, composed - giving television interviews before seeking medical treatment. Again, no single image proves anything. But mass casualty events are usually chaotic, visually messy, and poorly documented in their earliest moments. This one was not.

After decades of successful psychological operations, Israel no longer bothers with subtlety.

Even more striking was the speed with which political conclusions were drawn. Before investigations had meaningfully begun, Australia’s alleged “anti-Semitic culture” and its stance on Palestine were cited as causal factors. This is not how criminal inquiry works. It is how narrative consolidation works.

The goal was not understanding. It was immediate moral framing.

Convenient Security Failures

Bondi Beach was not an obscure location. It was a high-profile public space, associated with a Jewish cultural gathering, in a country with extensive surveillance infrastructure. Yet police response reportedly took over twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, the alleged perpetrator was already known to security services. ISIS flags and explosives were conveniently “discovered” in his car with remarkable speed. The suspect conveniently embodied every required archetype: radicalized islamists, foreign-linked, ideologically fitting the Israeli narrative.

In intelligence history, such scenarios are called too clean. Either security services are catastrophically incompetent - or selective blindness was involved.

The Camera Was Already Rolling

Perhaps the most unsettling feature of the Bondi event was how well it was documented.

High-quality photographs during the attack. An eleven-minute video released by authorities. Extensive real-time coverage. This runs directly against decades of established practice, which limits public exposure to mass shootings to avoid copycat violence. Western governments know this. They teach it. They enforce it. Strangely now they practice and teach the opposite. How to carry out a mass shooting video is released to the public for all to emulate. Maybe they want more of such massacres to occur?

Pang Zhongwang (庞众望): Chinese scientist rising from a family of severe disability and poverty to the frontlines of China's scientific breakthroughs rendering null and void western sanctions.

In China, Tsinghua University is the country’s equivalent of MIT. It is where the most scientifically gifted students from across the nation converge, where competition is brutal and expectations are extremely high.

Pang Zhongwang belongs to that world now. He is a doctoral researcher in precision instrumentation, working on technologies China still struggles to import. He publishes papers in the world's top scientific journals. He holds patents. He works at the sharp edge of China's scientific self-reliance.

But Pang did not come from a background of privilege.

He came from the poorest family of the poorest village that barely survived.

Pang was born in rural Wuqiang County, Hebei Province, into a family that seemed, from the start, condemned by fate. His mother suffered from congenital spina bifida. She had no legs and spent her life in a wheelchair. She had never attended school, never learned to read in the formal sense. His father suffered from severe schizophrenia, unable to communicate normally with others, often isolated in his own mental world.

The family survived on subsistence farming, relying largely on elderly grandparents. A modest government stipend kept them from starvation. Then, when Pang was just six years old, doctors diagnosed him with congenital heart disease.

By any ordinary measure, this was a family being pushed toward collapse.

Yet something unusual was happening inside that small, poor home.

Pang’s mother never complained.
She was serene, cheerful and quietly determined her son should receive the best education. Pang speaks of his family without embarrassment or bitterness. He says his mother was extraordinary, and that there was nothing about his family he was ever ashamed of. “Which part of my family,” he asked during his now famous interview, “is not worthy of being spoken about? My mother is such a good person. My grandparents too are so good. Surrounded with so much goodness, I should be envied rather than pitied”

Though Pang's mother had never gone to school, she refused to surrender to ignorance. She watched her nephew recite classical Chinese poems and asked him to teach them to her. She memorized the verses herself, then recited them to Pang while holding him as a toddler. Poems entered his world before textbooks ever did. Between moments of pain, she did handicraft embroidery work, earning money one piece at a time.

When Pang was diagnosed with heart disease at the age of six, his mother did what she had always done: she acted instead of indulging in lamentation. Sitting in her wheelchair, she had Pang push her from door to door, asking villagers for help. People knew the money might never be repaid. They gave it anyway. Nearly 40,000 yuan (about $6000) was raised — a staggering sum for a rural village. Pang never forgot this. In a way, his achievements belong to every villager who helped his family survive.

Pang learned responsibility early.
By the age of five, he was standing on stools to cook. He followed elderly relatives to collect scrap materials for money. At twelve, he left home to attend a middle school in a neighboring town. His weekly living expense was about 20 yuan ($3) Every weekend he returned home to wash clothes, cook meals, and care for his mother.

Academically, however, he moved with astonishing speed. By high school, Pang was not merely a top student — he won national awards in mathematics, physics, and biology competitions, a combination rare enough to shock educators across Hebei Province. II/

In 2017, he entered the national college entrance exam and scored among the very top students. He was admitted to Tsinghua University’s Department of Precision Instrumentation.

At first, Pang assumed he would need to work multiple jobs to survive in Beijing. But Qiu Yong, then president of Tsinghua, personally visited Pang’s home in Hebei and made a simple promise: no student at Tsinghua would drop out because of poverty. The school would provide Pang with financial aid to cover the tuition and living expenses.

Still, Tsinghua was a shock. Pang later admitted that for the first time, he felt intellectually challenged — not by life, but by peers as gifted as himself. A professor named Shi Zongkai offered him a crucial insight: the purpose of university is not to be good at everything, but to discover what you are uniquely good at, and pursue it relentlessly.

The idea changed him. Pang stabilized. He improved every year. He won the university’s Academic Progress Award four consecutive times, served as a class leader, and paid for much of his education through scholarships and work-study programs. When offered financial aid, he voluntarily gave it up, believing other students needed it more.

Then, during his junior year, tragedy returned.

His mother fell gravely ill and passed away at 48 years old. Pang later recalled seeing, for the first time, the deep wounds her body had carried in silence. The day before she died, sensing the end, she called Pang and his grandmother to her bedside. She spoke little — except for one thing she could not let go of: her worry for her son. Giving birth to and raising her son was the meaning of her life.

Pang continued.

He was accepted into a combined master’s–PhD program at Tsinghua. Before even completing his doctorate, he broke through a key technological bottleneck in precision instrumentation — a field where China still relies heavily on imports, including medical imaging and high-end diagnostic equipment. He published an important paper. He secured invention patents.

Globally, many Nobel Prizes have been awarded for the creation of a single groundbreaking instrument. That is how strategic this field is.

Today, Pang Zhongwang works quietly within that strategic domain as a top scientist. He speaks often about responsibility, about how each generation inherits unfinished tasks, and how scientific independence is not abstract, but practical and urgent.

Western sanctions and technological containment were designed around a simple assumption: that a country emerging from poverty and historical ignorance could be permanently locked out of the highest levels of science. China broke that assumption through its people — determined scientists forged in conditions far harsher than any trade restriction. One of them is Pang Zhongwang. Born into utter poverty, raised by a mother with no legs and no schooling, and growing up in a family shadowed by repeated outbreaks of illness, Pang’s rise to the frontiers of precision science is not just a personal story. It reflects how China, within a single generation, moved from scarcity to abundance, from dependence to self-reliance — almost a miracle, but in fact the cumulative result of millions of lives that refused to surrender to circumstance.

He was raised by a mother who had no legs, no education, no complaints — yet taught him poetry. dignity and serenity. That, more than anything else, may explain why Pang Zhongwang has achieved so much. His name Pang Zhongwang means "The Expectation of the Village”. He has fulfilled the expectations, not just of the family and the village but the whole nation. He is one of the top Chinese scientists working hard to break the Western sanctions on China.

Cat Playing With Its Mouse: The Meaning Behind China’s Radar Lock on Japan’s F-15J on December 6th

There is real tension in the air between Japan and China. Washington is slowly retreating from the Western Pacific, abandoning the region to Japan and telling it to hold the line alone. The world has shifted. There was a time when China was weak and poor, when every bully felt entitled to trample it. Those days are over. China rose for one purpose: to never again be abused and bullied. And now, strong and self-assured, China can finally settle accounts with the old tormentors — and Japan is at the top of that list.

But the age of war has changed. The modern battlefield is not measured by bayonets or trenches, but by fire-control radars, AI-driven targeting systems, and the kind of technological superiority that lets you toy with your opponent without firing a shot.

And this is exactly what unfolded on December 6.

The Fire-Control Radar Incident: A Gun to the Forehead

Koizumi Shinzorō, Japan’s Prime Minister, wanted confrontation, and China responded with precision. On December 6, Japan’s Defense Minister publicly admitted that J-15s launched from the Liaoning carrier had twice locked Japan’s F-15Js with fire-control radar over the high seas southeast of Okinawa. He called it “dangerous” and expressed “deep regret.”

He is right to feel danger.
This was no accident, no miscalculation.
This was the PLA presenting a complete offensive posture, signaling that the region is one fingertip away from war — and China is fully prepared to exercise their rights under UN Charter Article 107.

Most people have no idea how deadly serious “fire-control illumination” is.

Japan’s F-15J pilot certainly knew: his cockpit must have exploded into warning alarms; Imagine that shrill beeping screaming through the cockpit for half an hour - enough to drive any normal person mad; his breathing must have turned shallow; his hands probably shook as he tried to maneuver away from the lock.

However, even under that level of crushing psychological pressure, the Japanese pilot chose to stay inside the zone rather than fleeing. This is kamicaze level provocation.

Because the moment fire-control goes live, the radar narrows into a focused beam, feeding exact parameters to the missile under the jet’s wing. In peacetime exercises, a sustained lock counts as a confirmed kill. In real combat, nobody activates it unless they are ready to shoot.

And China kept that beam on the F-15J for over half an hour.

First lock: 16:32–16:35, three full minutes.

Second lock: 18:37–19:08, more than thirty minutes.

There is no suspense about how this confrontation would end in a real war. It would be a guaranteed kill.

The Cat and the Mouse

To be precise, the J-15 wasn’t merely locking and unlocking. It was playing — the way a cat toys with a mouse trapped under its paw.

Japan’s F-15J was that mouse. II/

Once locked, the cockpit becomes a Christmas tree of warnings; the RWR screams in the pilot’s helmet; adrenaline spikes; the mind panics. The mouse claws at the cage, tries to wriggle free, tries to break the lock. But every attempt fails because the cat simply tightens its grip.

Half an hour like this.
Half an hour of Japanese pilot gasping, sweating, trying to break free — and failing.

A cornered mouse usually lashes out. It bites. It fights.
But Japan didn’t.

A mouse locked for thirty minutes without firing means one of three things:

1. The pilot has nerves of steel — unlikely.

2. The pilot has given up — even more unlikely.

3. The pilot was ordered before takeoff not to fire under any circumstances.

This is why China locked Japan for thirty full minutes:
to raise the temperature, to test the threshold, to force choices.

Japan now has only two options:

Kneel and beg for de-escalation, or

Fire the first shot — and face the consequences.

Koizumi Shinzorō can bow, but Japan As a nation cannot. Japan cannot afford humiliation. In its own geopolitical psychology, it must thrash, it must provoke, it must pretend it still has teeth.

But China is the cat now.
Japan is the mouse.

And the mouse knows the cage door is closing.

Historical Pattern

Japanese pilots edging closer, provoking first, and then blaming China for “aggressiveness”—this is an old pattern wearing new clothes. Anyone who sees this radar-illumination incident as ordinary friction is missing the point. What alarms the Chinese people is not the confrontation, but the déjà-vu of history.

The Liaoning Carrier's military exercise and itinerary was planned in advance, publicly announced, carried out in international waters. Yet under these clear conditions, Japanese fighters chose to close in, shadow at close distance, then accuse China afterward with a vague claim of “being dangerously illuminated.” Anyone who understands air combat knows ordinary search and track modes are basic survival; the only thing that signals attack intent is full guidance lock, a point Japan avoids to discuss entirely. And if they truly believed they were under attack, would a Japanese jet loiter for thirty minutes? Of course not.

Their mission was deliberate prolonged provocation. They could have left the exercise zone at any time—beyond it, China’s radar would have ceased tracking.

The real issue is why Japan keeps pushing this close—close enough to squeeze out even the margin for miscalculation. This combination of probing forward while claiming victimhood is a copy-paste of history.

In 1931, Japan’s frontline soldiers in Manchuria repeatedly advanced, creating friction with Chinese forces. They then claimed they were “checking if the South Manchuria Railway bridge had been destroyed”—a pretext to justify a full-scale military invasion. This was the Mukden Incident (also called the Manchurian Incident), which gave Japan the excuse to seize large swaths of Chinese territory, starting a campaign that ultimately reshaped Northeast Asia.

Two years later, in 1933, tensions simmered again along the northern borders, culminating in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937. Japanese units conducted repeated standoffs, tests, and provocations near the bridge outside Beijing, inching forward step by step. When a staged gunshot occurred, it was used to claim Chinese hostility, instantly escalating into full-blown war—the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Poetic Justice - China’s Deindustrialization That Never Came — And Why the West Can No Longer Sell to China

A response to @RobinBHarding article “China is making trade impossible”

For years, Western analysts warned of China’s impending “deindustrialization.” (collapse). It was supposed to be the natural arc of economic development — rising wages, declining manufacturing, and eventual dependence on foreign imports. Instead, the exact opposite occurred. China doubled down on industry, expanded its production capacity across nearly every sector, and reached a point where foreign manufacturers increasingly find they have nothing China needs that it cannot already produce cheaper, faster, or at greater scale.
Washington’s long-term objective became clear: remove China from the global supply chain and rebuild a world where critical manufacturing returned to the U.S. or was redistributed among American-aligned economies. Multinationals were pressured to leave China, shift production to India or Vietnam, and restructure procurement so that even Chinese contractors had to relocate or lose business. Apple complied, moving a portion of iPhone assembly to India — only to discover that quality consistency, supply-chain density, and industrial discipline were not easily transplanted. Early batches of India-assembled devices saw high defect rates and higher consumer complaints, a reminder that manufacturing excellence is not a commodity one can simply ship across borders. China is not just a location; it is a mature industrial ecosystem that the U.S. has found impossible to replicate elsewhere.

China's continuously upgrading industrialization did not happen accidentally. It is the consequence of sanctions, energy shocks, financialization in the West, and Beijing’s deliberate push toward self-reliance. Today, the paradox is clear: the West hoped to constrain China’s industrial rise. In doing so, it forced China to industrialize further — until the point where selling industrial products to China is no longer a viable business model.

1. The Russia Lesson: A Future Sanctioned China Must Produce Everything
The complaint that “China is making trade impossible” is as valid as “Russia is making trade impossible.”

Western policy planners openly state that if Beijing reunifies with Taiwan, sanctions could mirror the Russia regime: financial cutoff, technology bans, trade strangulation. China drew the conclusion early — self-reliance is not optional. It is national survival.

Russian industry after 2022 became a raw case study. Aircraft parts, semiconductors, machine tools — everything suddenly had to be produced domestically or sourced through alternative channels. China watched in real time. A country of 1.4 billion cannot afford such dependence. It must be able to manufacture jet engines, lithography machines, industrial robots, port cranes, agricultural equipment, ie, everything at home. Not 70%, not 90%. One hundred percent. Total self-reliance is insurance. Long-term. Strategic. Existential.

Today, that is already close to reality. 2. Tech Sanctions Forced Domestic Capability. Dependence is fatal.

The first front was semiconductor tech. Washington banned sales of advanced chips, restricted Nvidia GPUs, pressured TSMC and Samsung, and froze ASML lithography exports. The logic was to cut China from the high-end supply chain and slow its technological ascent.

The result was the inverse.

Investment into domestic lithography surged. The number of semiconductor fabs under construction in China in 2024-2025 exceeded the total of the U.S., EU, Japan and South Korea combined. Firms pivoted into ASICs, chiplet design, indigenous stacks — not replacements, but parallel architecture. China accelerated at the mid-range node, dominating 28nm, 14nm, and racing into 7nm. Meanwhile, AI chips designed in-house now power data-centers without a single Nvidia card inside the system.

The West hoped to maintain monopoly through embargo. Instead, it created a formidable technological competitor.

The sanctions on Huawei were intended as a warning to all of China’s rising industry. Washington cut the company off from chips, operating systems, foundries, and even global supply partners, aiming to cripple it as a symbol of American technological dominance. Huawei was meant to serve as an example: defy the U.S., develop too fast, and you will be brought to your knees. But the result was the opposite. The shock of Huawei’s near-strangulation triggered a nationwide reflex — companies large and small began shifting to domestic suppliers, investing in indigenous chip design, operating systems, and industrial software. Huawei’s struggle became a lesson written into the consciousness of every Chinese manufacturer: depend on foreign technology, and your lifeline can be cut overnight. The fear the U.S. intended to instill has backfired — instead of submission, it produced absolute self-reliance.

The Spectre of War: History's Shadow over the China-Japan Relationship

The relationship between China and Japan today unfolds beneath a long, unbroken historical shadow. It is not a mere rivalry between two modern states, but an encounter between dark memory and shifting power: one nation rising to restore itself, the other trapped beneath the guilt of the most unspeakable crimes in its past. China’s Great Rejuvenation is inseparable from the need to close a macabre chapter left deliberately unfinished — a chapter preserved not by accident, but by the United States, which shielded Japan’s wartime architects in exchange for their post-war service.

Justice was suspended in the twentieth century. It returns now with the quiet, heavy force of inevitability.

I. The Wound That History Refused to Close

The violence inflicted by the Japanese Imperial Army did not merely kill; it aimed to strip dignity, identity, and the basic architecture of human feeling. It is a trauma that remains alive in Chinese memory because it was never acknowledged, never repented, and never judged.

Accounts describe the brutality in stark, clinical detail:

Humiliation and psychological torture as ritual:
The massacres were never mere executions. Before the massacre, entire communities were routinely coerced into sexual acts of degradation and perversity so extreme they were crafted to crush the human spirit itself. Those who resisted were subjected to immediate, public dismemberment—limbs hacked off before their families, whose screams and pleas became part of the spectacle.

Cruelty disguised as science:
Unit 731 stands as one of the darkest episodes in modern human history. Vivisection on living subjects was conducted as a matter of routine. In one experiment, researchers sought to measure the breaking point of maternal instinct: a mother and her infant were placed inside a sealed oven, and Japanese observers recorded how long it would take the mother to lay down her child on the searing metal floor and stand on it to temporarily shield herself from being burnt. The aim was never scientific discovery. It's sadistic domination.

The deeper wound lies in the aftermath. These criminals were never punished. Majority of the architects of these crimes were shielded, repurposed, and reintegrated. They reappeared in post-war Japan as bureaucrats, industrialists, political founders—symbols of the new Japan built atop old shadows.

Japan’s official posture towards their heinous war crimes has been one of denial and evasion. Every refusal to acknowledge, every carefully worded diplomatic statement, reopens the trauma in Chinese memory. The Japanese state knows what Japan has done to the Chinese people. Just as Israeli society openly celebrates what has been inflicted on Gaza, Japan’s nationalist camp has long taken pride, not shame, in what was done to China. No apology, no remorse—only the glorification of crime as sacrifice and necessity. The doctors who observed how long it would take a mother to stand on her baby in a sealed oven went on to become respected academics, corporate leaders, pillars of the post-war order.
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II. A Lineage of Impunity

​The continuous official visits by Japanese politicians to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines 14 Class-A war criminals, are viewed by Chinese people as an active glorification of these crimes and a fundamental denial of the historical reality. This posture reinforces the Chinese perception that Japan carries a deep-seated, unrepentant guilt, seeking not to atone, but to suppress the memory of its victims.

They are acts of effrontery and a shameless declaration: Japan has done nothing wrong. These war criminals of the most sadistic kind in human history are Japan's national heroes.

Japan’s refusal to offer a full, official apology is mirrored by its political genealogy. The country’s far-right lineage connects directly to the wartime regime.

Kishi Nobusuke, Tojo’s wartime Minister of Commerce and Industry, arrested as a suspected Class-A war criminal, was released without trial. He co-founded the Liberal Democratic Party and became Prime Minister (1957–1960).

His grandson, Abe Shinzo, openly revered Kishi as his “No. 1 role model.” Abe built his career on historical revisionism and the dismantling of Japan’s post-war constraints.

Today’s leading figures—including Takaichi Sanae, heir to the same ideological tradition—echo this hawkish lineage. Takaichi has declared openly that Japan may need to intervene militarily in a Taiwan contingency—framing the Taiwan Strait as central to Japan’s national security.

III. The Urge to Rearm

Japan’s far-right establishment seeks to cast off Article 9 of the Constitution, which forbids maintaining war potential. They view the US–China rivalry as a historic opportunity to break the post-war shackles.

To that end:

Japan is raising defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2027.

Destroyers are being converted into de facto aircraft carriers.

Long-range counterstrike missiles—capable of hitting China’s industrial heartlands—are being acquired.

The nuclear question, once taboo, is resurfacing.

For a nation that has never confronted its wartime crimes, this ambition carries a destabilizing weight.

"China directly or indirectly makes about 3.5% of the goods Americans buy."

The Dangerous Illusion of the 3.5%

Why a low statistic hides a massive strategic vulnerability.

At first glance, the claim that "China directly or indirectly makes only about 3.5% of the goods Americans buy" feels reassuring. It suggests that despite the geopolitical noise, the two economies are relatively distinct and that US reliance on Chinese manufacturing is manageable—a minor feature of a vast economy rather than a structural pillar.
However, relying on this figure to measure dependency is a dangerous mistake. It confuses economic value with strategic criticality. By focusing on the final price tag of goods, US leaders mask two profound vulnerabilities: an addiction to artificially cheap consumption and a fragility in US critical supply chains that no GDP statistic can capture.

The "Welfare" Trap of Cheap Consumption
The primary reason the 3.5% figure is so low is that Chinese manufacturing is incredibly efficient and inexpensive. When an American buys a toaster or a smartphone, the vast majority of that purchase price stays in the US to pay for branding, logistics, retail real estate, and marketing. Only a sliver flows back to the factory in Shenzhen.

Economically, this looks like low dependence. In reality, it is a form of consumer welfare.

Because Chinese production effectively subsidizes the cost of living for the American working and middle classes, it provides a "standard of living surplus" that allows Americans to buy more with less.

The US has effectively outsourced the suppression of inflation. To "liberate" the US economy from this dynamic would not just mean shifting factories; it would mean accepting a sudden, sharp decrease in purchasing power. The reliance isn't measured in dollars spent, but in the lifestyle those dollars can afford. The US is not just buying goods; it is importing a subsidy that holds its consumer economy together.

The 0.000001% That Matters

The second, and more lethal, flaw in the "it’s not a lot" argument is the assumption that all dollars are created equal. They are not.
In a complex system, a $10 billion import of plastic toys counts the same as a $10 billion import of advanced pharmaceuticals or rare earth magnets. But if the toys stop arriving, Americans are merely annoyed. If the magnets stop arriving, industries collapse.

This is the Rare Earth Paradox. The strategic minerals required to build F-35 fighter jets, EV batteries, and medical MRI machines represent a microscopic fraction of the US GDP—perhaps 0.000001%. Yet, they are the indispensable "vitamins" of the industrial body. A human body can survive without thousands of calories of starch, but it will shut down without a tiny amount of iron or B12.

China’s dominance in the processing of these elements means they hold the keys to the entire high-tech ecosystem. The low dollar value of these imports is actually what makes them so dangerous: because they were cheap, the US ignored them. Because they represented a rounding error on the balance sheet, the US allowed a geopolitical rival to monopolize the choke points of the future.

Further, ​this "only 3.5% claim" underscores the fragile symbiosis between the two nations. While the US economy retains the high-value service functions—branding, logistics, retail real estate, and marketing—these sectors are entirely contingent upon the continuous, low-cost flow of Chinese manufactured goods. If this supply stops, billions in US logistics capital and millions of related jobs are instantly rendered obsolete, triggering a massive, domestic economic contraction.

https://x.com/PandemicTruther/status/1992321025800081698

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​Moreover, this dependency extends to critical national sectors like healthcare. The US health industry represents nearly 20% of GDP, and its stability is highly vulnerable. While US firms still hold the patents and conduct the R&D (even losing this ground at a fast pace to China), the manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and core intermediate chemicals for many essential generic drugs is overwhelmingly sourced from China. This creates an extreme supply chain choke point.

Furthermore, this vulnerability is compounded by the rapid shift where China is quickly moving from being a mere manufacturing source to a global innovation competitor, challenging US dominance in Pharmaceutical R&D and novel drug patents, meaning US dependence is expanding from goods on the shelf to the future knowledge that determines which medicines are available a decade from now.

​It is not an exaggeration to state that a complete, sudden cutoff of the Chinese supply chain would not merely cause a recession; it would trigger an unprecedented economic depression, effectively paralyzing critical industries and rendering large portions of the US service economy non-functional..

Conclusion: The Fragility of Efficiency
The claim that China represents "not a lot" of the US economy is technically accurate but strategically blinding.

The US has built an economy where the lowest-value but critical strategic components—the cheap screws, the raw minerals, the basic PCBs. the rare earths are the foundation for its highest-value outputs. By judging US dependence solely on the final receipt, US leaders miss the reality: the 3.5% isn't just "stuff." It is the keystone that holds up the arch. Removing it doesn't just lower the GDP by a few percentage points; it threatens to bring the structure down.

#nexperia

The Nexperia Saga: How a Small Dutch Chipmaker’s “Security Review” Accidentally Handed China a Strategic Superweapon

In recent months, the behavior of several small European states has taken on a strangely theatrical tone, as if reenacting scenes from old imperial tales, assigning themselves roles far larger than reality allows. The Netherlands, convinced that history still answered to its old maps, stepped forward with misplaced certainty. By launching an abrupt “security review” of Nexperia, it tried to reclaim a company it had long since lost.

For small powers, one rule never changes: either you wield real leverage, or you understand your limits. Lose both, and strategy becomes sleepwalking.

The Nexperia case isn’t a simple corporate dispute—it is a textbook example of how a small misjudgment at the margins of the chip industry can trigger a continental crisis.

And the spark originated in Washington.

In September 2025, the United States unveiled its “50% penetration rule,” a sweeping mechanism declaring that if Washington sanctioned a company, all connected entities—subsidiaries, affiliates, partners—would inherit the same fate. More than a sanction, it was a fragmentation grenade thrown into the global supply chain.

The next day, The Hague awoke with a jolt. Dusting off a Cold War–era law from 1952, it struck Nexperia with surgical force: freezing assets, suspending management, and stripping the CEO of authority. Pure robbery in broad daylight.

The justification was European supply chain security. Beneath that veneer lay a far more provincial impulse: a belief that, under American cover, the Netherlands could simply reclaim Nexperia, sold years earlier to a Chinese company. What The Hague failed to grasp was that Nexperia’s real body was not in Europe.

The logo may be Dutch. The headquarters may be Dutch. But the lifeblood of the company—production, packaging, testing, logistics—is firmly rooted in China.

An estimated 70–80% of Nexperia’s output comes from Chinese facilities, especially Dongguan. European capacity is symbolic. Believing that an administrative move in The Hague could command a company physically anchored in China was an extraordinary misread of reality.

Reality responded immediately. Chinese management treated the Dutch seizure as expropriation. Operational links to headquarters were severed. Backup systems activated. Settlements shifted entirely to RMB. Overseas orders halted. The Chinese arm began running autonomously.

The Dutch headquarters became a shell overnight:

No authority.

No production.

No compliance.

No leverage.

Factories ignored commands. Systems froze. Personnel aligned with China. Control did not fade—it inverted.

The Netherlands tried to retaliate by cutting wafer supplies, imagining a chokepoint still existed. But China had long built reserves, localized wafer supply, and fortified weak links. The supposed chokepoint collapsed instantly. II/

Europe soon understood the scale of the mistake. Volkswagen estimated that two weeks without Nexperia chips would halt production and burn €2 billion. BMW, Mercedes, Renault, Toyota, Nissan—all signaled costly disruptions. European automotive associations descended on The Hague demanding immediate correction.

Media asked the humiliating question openly: How did Europe allow its industrial arteries to end up inside China’s borders?

Even ASML—the jewel of Europe’s tech crown—watched Beijing nervously as murmurs of rare earth adjustments circulated. If the Netherlands attacked Nexperia, China could retaliate against ASML. Insurance premiums spiked. The tremor rippled across the continent.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government did nothing. Europe fragmented politically. Germany’s foreign minister flew to Beijing—no meeting granted. French automakers emphasized they wanted no part of The Hague’s gamble. Brussels repeated only one message: restore production, avoid escalation.

Because in the semiconductor world, power does not reside in headquarters on paper. Power belongs to the factories. And the factories are in China.

Phase two of the disaster unfolded: believing it was squeezing China, the Netherlands had inadvertently unplugged Europe’s industrial core. Then, with the dark humor of geopolitics, Washington quietly suspended its 50% rule for a year—without warning, without explanation. European capitals called Washington in panic; the U.S. stepped back, leaving its smaller ally to absorb the consequences.

In that moment, the Netherlands realized it was not a partner. It was a buffer. A shield.

Domestic politics imploded. Ministries contradicted each other publicly. Courts were dragged into the crisis. The Economy Minister insisted he had acted correctly, even as Europe braced for industrial shutdown. The far-right declared it proof of national treason.

The pattern was unmistakable:

Washington set the direction.

Washington applied pressure.

The Netherlands executed.

Washington retreated.

Europe revolted.

The Netherlands bore the blame.

A lesson in how sovereignty erodes when strategic decisions are outsourced.

The miscalculations were painful:

Automakers bypassed the Netherlands entirely—buying wafers in Europe and shipping them to China for packaging.

China revealed it had already replaced European wafers.

The Netherlands discovered it was a pawn, not a player.

When the dust settled, Dutch Nexperia was gutted, the Chinese operation ran independently, and Europe learned that supply chains move faster than political narratives.

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.