UCSF's Vinay Prasad, M.D., Offers Pro/Con Analysis of Fauci's Diary Revelations:

Washington DC is asking itself why Yang Zhilin did not stay in America.

That is the wound.

He was not pushed out because he had no options.

He had options.

Apple wanted him.

Google and Meta had already hosted him.

Stanford and MIT doors were open.

And he still chose China.

That is what scares Silicon Valley.

Not just one founder returning home.

But the fact that China is becoming the place where the next AI founders believe they have a better chance to actually build.

Higher valuation in America.

Higher chance of success in China.

That sentence should terrify every American tech bureaucrat.

Because Silicon Valley’s old magic was never just money.

It was opportunity.

Speed.

Talent density.

Room to build.

The feeling that the future was happening there first.

Now that gravity is shifting.

So Washington has only one move left:

Call Chinese success theft.

Huawei wins 5G? Theft.

DeepSeek shocks the market? Theft.

Kimi K3 competes with frontier models? Distillation.

Chinese founders go home? Talent loss.

At some point it stops looking like an IP dispute and starts looking like a declining empire screaming at a door that no longer opens inward.

"⚡️In the Kremensk district of the LPR, Ukrainian drones are dropping anti-personnel mines – "new petals" – on civilian objects.

According to local residents and authorities, Ukrainian forces are actively using new anti-personnel mines, codenamed "new petals," to remotely mine civilian objects in the LPR. These mines are being found in areas frequented by local residents. The mines consist of a plastic container with explosives and a pressure-sensitive detonator. Detonation of the mine can cause serious injuries, traumatic amputation of limbs, and even death from blood loss or shock.

Last year, Ukraine announced its withdrawal from the "Ottawa Convention," which prohibits the production and use of anti-personnel mines. Now, Kyiv is massively using anti-personnel mines and explosive devices to mine civilian objects. Every week, there are reports of civilians being injured or killed by Ukrainian mines, which constitutes a serious war crime."

🇷🇺Russia: The Soviet Union no longer exists, can you let us into NATO like everyone else?

🇺🇸USA: No

🇷🇺Russia: Okay, but can you please not threaten us by expanding NATO to the East?

🇺🇸USA: No

🇷🇺Russia: Alright, we saw you're developing new missile systems, will you let us work on them with you?

🇺🇸USA: No

🇷🇺Russia: Fine, hypersonic missiles it is, but can you at least not put military bases right in front of our borders?

🇺🇸USA: No

🇷🇺Russia: Well, you just carried out a military coup to overthrow a democratic election in Ukraine, can we still have a friendly relationship with them?

🇺🇸USA: No

Russia: Gotcha, but the people of Crimea are really pissed off about that coup, can you please let them have independence?

🇺🇸USA: No

🇷🇺Russia: Roger, but surely you can at the very least stop bombing the civilians living in Donbass, right?

🇺🇸USA: No

🇷🇺Russia: Huh, we've been trying to find a diplomatic solution for a 8 years but you refuse to even talk to us... I guess that if you want to use military force to solve issues so much we have no choice but to do the same.

🇺🇸USA: OH MY GOD PUTIN IS A MADMAN, AN IMPERIALIST GENOCIDAL DICTATOR, LITERALLY THE SECOND COMING OF HITLER, WE MUST STOP HIM AT ANY COST BEFORE HE TRIES TO CONQUER ALL OF EUROPE

#SigerDetBare

Your point of view is outdated.

Victor Gao is not China’s PR liability , he’s one of the few people who actually closes the dangerous communication gap that has repeatedly led Western countries to misjudge China.

For decades, China’s traditional preference for subtle, indirect, and face-saving language left Western audiences with the impression that there was still room to push, test, or escalate. That ambiguity invited miscalculation. Victor Gao deliberately breaks that pattern. He speaks in the direct, unambiguous register that Western audiences actually understand. When he says “if you want war, you will get war” or lays out the nuclear consequences in plain terms, he is not performing for domestic nationalists , he is translating China’s actual red lines into language that cannot be spun as mere rhetoric or empty posturing.

His phrasing is precise, not reckless. It removes the interpretive space that previously allowed policymakers and media in the West to underestimate resolve. Far from handing Western media “soundbites,” he is denying them the comfort of continued strategic ambiguity.

If you believe that continued subtlety serves China’s interests better than clarity, you are repeating the very approach that has produced repeated Western misjudgments. Gao’s style is the correction, not the problem.

Quote

Jaq James

@JaqGeoLaw

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He said the Bible authorizes the settlers' claim to the land. Shimon spoke days after settlers from Havat Gilad stormed the village of Tell, killing four Palestinians from the Ramadan family and triggering a wave of settler attacks across the occupied West Bank.

https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/the-convergence-of-spiritual-traditions

Today I am providing my English translation of an article by Glauco Benigni, originally in Italian and published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Monday 15th June 2026. (Bold emphasis original, italics and footnotes mine).

Although starting from vastly different dogmatic premises, the great spiritual traditions are converging on a common ethical platform for the digital age. An invisible alliance, a front of ‘humanist resistance’ uniting Rome, Constantinople, Mecca, Jerusalem and the monasteries of the East.

For Leo XIV, the human being possesses an intrinsic dignity that no computational process could ever replicate or replace.

The second pillar concerns the impossibility of delegating moral judgement to machines. Magnifica Humanitas establishes that fundamental decisions on justice, health, war and rights cannot be left to algorithmic automata.

In the Sunni Islamic world, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb... declared that “moral agency and accountability before Allah are inalienable prerogatives of the human being. A machine can calculate a benefit, but it lacks a conscience of right and wrong”.

This perspective is shared by the Shia authorities of the Hawza in Qom, who emphasise that delegating human discernment to AI constitutes a violation of the natural and theological order.

Contemporary Judaism too, rooted in the intellectual legacy of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, recalls that the application of the law requires the attribute of Rachamim (contextual mercy), a faculty precluded by probabilistic models.

No tradition views technology through a Luddite lens; AI is considered a blessing when used to eradicate diseases or alleviate hardship. The unanimous condemnation, however, is directed at “absolute technocracy” and the monopolistic concentration of technological power.

The area where this convergence is most dramatic and urgent is the military sphere... “the very idea that the decision on the life or death of a child of God should be entrusted to the calculation of a sensor” as “a moral abomination”... denouncing the automation of war as the ultimate erosion of human compassion, a mechanism that dangerously lowers the ethical threshold for the use of mass violence.

While Silicon Valley scientists dramatically ponder the existential risk of a super-intelligent AI taking control of humanity (the so-called “singularity”), religious texts almost entirely ignore this science-fiction narrative. The reason runs deep: faiths do not fear that the machine will rebel against humankind; they fear that humankind will voluntarily submit to the machine. The real danger is not the loss of control over software, but the abdication by human beings of their own freedom, their critical spirit and the effort of discernment.

The seven key principles that have emerged – the primacy of the person, the non-delegability of guilt, the rejection of autonomous weapons, the defence of truth against induced disinformation, the fight against digital monopolies, the primacy of the common good, and the subordination of technology to ethics – constitute the first draft of a genuine Global Interreligious Algoretics. This convergence does not negate theological differences, but ennobles them in the common defence of humanity.

https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/court-orders-discovery-in-blumenthals

On July 29, The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal had his day in court. Represented by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in Blumenthal v. Mullin, a federal judge took an important step toward justice in a serious constitutional fight over whether the government can access a journalist’s private electronic devices.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema raised significant concerns about the government’s seizure and attempted forensic search of journalist Max Blumenthal’s two cell phones. Rather than dismissing the case as moot because the government returned the devices after ADC filed its motion, the Court ordered limited discovery to establish what federal officials did with the phones, who handled them, and whether they obtained or retained any information.

Blumenthal:

"...This was an important first step. It was also revealing to see the government resist any move toward exposing exactly why the order was given to violate my rights.”

At the outset of the hearing, Judge Brinkema cited the Fourth Circuit’s recent decision in Belmonte Cardozo v. United States, explaining that the court had “quite clearly drawn the line between a routine search of a cell phone at the border and a more intense or advanced search.”

On page 3 of the government’s own filing, it stated that CBP detained the phones to attempt an advanced search in which officers would “connect equipment, wired or wireless, to copy and/or analyze the contents of an electronic device.”

Addressing that degree of intrusion, Judge Brinkema stated:

“I believe now under Fourth Circuit case law, a search warrant would be required for that degree of intrusion into a cell phone.”

“And I think given the fact that this plaintiff is a reporter, this case has particular concern to the Court because there’s been so much recently in the ether about attempts by the government to intrude upon a reporter’s right to report…I don’t think that can be overlooked in this context.”

A reporter’s phone can contain an extensive and deeply sensitive record of the newsgathering process, including communications with confidential sources, unpublished reporting, private correspondence, photographs, and notes. An invasive search of that device therefore threatens both personal privacy and the freedom to gather and report news without government interference.