Zero Hedge

Authored by James Durso via RealClearDefense.,com, For decades, energy policy in Washington was debated on the basis of economics, climate change, and domestic politics. That era is over. The United States is entering a period where energy security must be recognized as a core pillar of national security and military readiness. The global competition underway with China is not just about trade or tariffs.

Fraud is entering a new era. Businesses across North America expect fraud trends like biometric fraud, deepfake scams, and synthetic identities to become more common in 2026 as criminals adopt faster and more sophisticated tools. This visualization, created by Visual Capitalist's Julia Wendling, in partnership with Inigo for the Fraud in Data campaign’s sixth post, uses data from the Sumsub Fraud Report 2025 to explore the fraud trends businesses believe will shape the future of digital risk.

Confucius once observed that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. The beginning of financial wisdom is to call a promise a promise — and then to notice that the world is drowning in them. Every financial asset that men have invented is, at its dignified core, a promise. A bond is a government’s solemn vow to repay — the kind of vow that governments make with great ceremony and break with even greater creativity.

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times, SAN DIEGO - As the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border slowed to a trickle, agents shifted gears. Now, they're focused on seizing drugs - in record amounts - as the border is more secure than ever, officials told The Epoch Times.

Low-cost kamikaze drones are fundamentally reshaping the modern battlefield and forcing militaries to rethink procurement strategies built around expensive, high-end weapons systems. In the Middle East, US Special Forces learned the hard way that cheap Iranian Shahed-style drones can eliminate multi-million-dollar (if not billion-dollar) communications, radar, and command-and-control nodes.

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness, Years ago, when my oldest son was a Boy Scout, he was asked to write a report/make a presentation on a modern American “hero.” He chose Elon Musk, and I, of course, rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my head. I knew Musk was a successful businessman, but I also knew that he was both an advocate for and a seasoned manipulator of Big Government.

America remains one of the world’s most influential countries, but public opinion of the U.S. varies widely across the globe. Some of its strongest support now comes from emerging economies such as Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, while favorability has weakened across several longtime Western allies. This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks how people in 45 countries view the U.S. using January 2026 survey data from Morning Consult’s America Reputation Tracker.

Authored by Glenn Cameron via BitcoinMagazine.com, There is now $15 billion sitting in three securities being marketed to bitcoin holders as the safer, smarter way to access bitcoin exposure: Strategy’s preferred stack, STRC, and SATA. The pitch is identical across all three. Tax-favored. 11.5% income. Backed by bitcoin. Money-market risk. 82.7% of the buyer base is retail.

In recent weeks, there have been two key tensions surrounding the ongoing historic AI rollout: the first one is the increasingly explosive debate over surging token costs (which we discussed most recently in "The Value Didn't Arrive": Bain Finds Cost-Savings From AI Falling Far Short Of Projections", "From Singularity To Tokenomics: The AI Narrative Hit A Snag" and "From Singularity To Tokenomics, Part II: The Subsidy Just Ran Out", and which the FT addressed today in "We created a monster’").

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance GLJ Research’s Gordon Johnson is one of my favorite analysts on the street to read and gets a rare endorsement from me (I hate basically everyone selling sell-side style research) because, like my friend Mark Spiegel, he is one of the last few analysts out there that seems committed to the truth….no matter how ridiculous it makes him look in the short term while he’s waiting for his theses to play out.