Trump Says Xi Assured Him China Will Not Invade Taiwan During His Presidency

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised him that China will refrain from invading Taiwan for the next four years.

Trump made the remarks during a nearly 30-minute-long interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier which was filmed on Air Force One and aired while the president was in Alaska meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I will never do it as long as you’re president; President Xi told me that, and I said, well, I appreciate that,” Trump said.

The guarantee does not extend to future administrations, the president noted.

“But he also said, but I am very patient, and China is very patient,” Trump said. “Say, well, that’s up to you, but it better not happen now.”

It remains unclear when Xi made the remarks.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

Taiwan, a self-governing democratic island territory, is viewed by Beijing as a breakaway province. Its freedom remains a volatile point of contention in U.S.-China relations. 

The United States guarantees defensive arms to Taipei under the Taiwan Relations Act.  

Xi has vowed to achieve “reunification” with the island by any means necessary, and he’s ramped up military exercises in the waters around the island. 

Optimism that the president’s foreign policy agenda will deter China’s aggression is a recurring theme in the administration’s first 200 days.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin in March that China will stay out of Taiwan.

“I follow President Trump’s lead, and he is confident that President Xi will not make that move during his presidency,” Bessent said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly declared at the Shangri-La Dialogue—an annual summit held in Singapore by the International Institute for Strategic Studies—in May that China is signaling a desire to be capable of attacking the island nation by 2027, with a buildup in nuclear weapons and military readiness.

“Every day you see it. China’s military harasses Taiwan,” Hegseth said.

“It has to be clear to all that Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.”

He expressed confidence that the communist regime will wait until the current administration leaves office, but warned of the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to world peace.

“Again, to be clear: any attempt by communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,” Hegseth said. “There’s no reason to sugarcoat it. The threat China poses is real.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 15:10

Boiled Frogs: AI Slop, Phishing, Deep-Fakes, & Spam, Spam, Spam

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

We're frogs in a pot that's being heated so gradually that we no longer notice the sewage is extinguishing the utility of the Web.

Let's take "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome" and direct it on the Internet, the digital realm that is now central to modern life The incentives are making money from attention, i.e. clicks, engagement, etc. by any means available, and a burgeoning universe of cons, deception, extortion and fraud.

And with those incentives, the outcome is an ever-expanding river of toxic sewage, a river of AI slop, deep-fakes, phishing, clickbait and spam, spam, spam on every device, every platform, every screen.

This is not inconsequential. A physician-correspondent recently reported that he was researching a cardiovascular condition online and realized the article he was reviewing was AI slop, a conglomeration of inaccurate diagrams and plausible-sounding nonsense slapped together to get whatever meager income would be generated by a modest number of views.

That's the incentive the Big Tech platforms set up: since it's a low-odds gamble that any post will go viral on a large enough scale to make serious income, the incentive is to post 1,000 AI slop posts which each collect 1,000 views. In other words, make it up on volume.

Since the Internet is global, people in low-income nations have an incentive to generate AI slop to earn what is a pittance in developed nations. The barrier to entry is low--anyone can produce veritable mountains of AI slop with free tools and low-cost bandwidth--and the gains, however modest, are welcome if paid work is scarce.

The same "make it up on volume" approach incentivizes churning out millions of phishing and spam SMS, emails and posts on every platform under the sun. If there's only one sucker per 10,000 entreaties, then send out 10 million.

Since views and engagement generate income, the more outrageous the clickbait, the better. And of course, the greater the volume of clickbait, the greater the income stream flowing to platforms hosting the clickbait.

AI tools incentivize creating deep-fakes of celebrities' voices and personas which can then be deployed to con older Internet users who are often credulous enough to believe that yes, Owen Wilson is talking to me, see, it's him.

Every legitimate institution is now a tripwire for phishing and spam. Your USPS package can't be delivered, here's your Social Security Statement, and so on.

AI Search is broken, too. I couldn't find the original PropOrNot "fake-news about fake-news" list from 2016, and AI search concluded it was not available. Then a correspondent sent me a post on Zero Hedge which prominently displayed the entire original PropOrNot list. (oftwominds.com was on the list, thank you very much.)

Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton "Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools" (November 25, 2016)

The burden of shadow work required to delete, unsubscribe and purge our lives of all this sewage is growing heavier by the day. This calls to mind the boiled-frog analogy: we're frogs in a pot that's being heated so gradually that we no longer notice the sewage is extinguishing the utility of the Web.

And the reason is--drum roll--that's how everyone makes money: views, engagement, scams, cons, fraud and above all, sheer volume. And who makes money from volume? The Big Tech platforms. So what if it's misleading AI slop, deep-fake scams or clickbait, the more "engagement" we get, the more money we make.

So where's the incentive to staunch the flood of sewage? There isn't one. The incentive is to shrug and let the user sort it out by burning their own time.

If we want a different outcome, we have to change the incentives.

*  *  *

Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

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Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 11:40

WoodMac Sounds Alarm On Transformer Shortage Amid AI Data Center Boom

The AI data center boom could soon face some serious headwinds, and the problem isn't a shortage of Nvidia GPUs, but America's fragile power grid.

A combination of disastrous green policies and soaring data center power demand has already sparked a power bill crisis across the Mid-Atlantic states, while a nationwide grid-tightening crisis unfolds. This has triggered a growing wave of discontent among residents in Maryland and New Jersey, who are angered by Democrats' prioritization of green policies that have retired stable fossil fuel power generation in favor of unreliable solar and wind, resulting in power bill inflation like never seen before.

Making matters worse, AI data centers are counting on an upgraded grid to handle new base loads of power. This massive, multi-layered supply chain needed to upgrade the grid spans raw materials, transmission lines, circuit breakers, cables, control systems, and power generation systems.

Yet one of the most critical components in that upgrade cycle, transformers, is already in dangerously short supply.

A new report from global research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie highlights that U.S. efforts to upgrade power grids for AI-driven data centers will push transformer demand beyond supply by 30% this year, driving up costs and delaying projects. Analysts warn the shortage will only worsen and persist well into the decade's end.

The supply deficit, fueled by AI-related data center growth and broader electrification trends, threatens grid reliability and the whole data center buildout.

Viewed as a national security threat, the U.S. production of transformers can't keep pace, meaning about 80% of units will be imported, mostly from South Korea, Mexico, and other countries.

"We have seen such a large increase in power demand," said Ben Boucher, a senior analyst of supply chain and data analytics at Wood Mackenzie, adding, "AI is necessitating data center expansion, which is pushing up electricity usage."

Just weeks ago, we warned that U.S. transformer wait times have ballooned from 50 to 127 weeks, crippling grid resilience, whether it's upgrading power grids or replacing units damaged by storms, wildfires, or domestic terrorism attacks by radical leftists.

In short, the AI data center boom is colliding with a power grid already under strain from failed green policies, surging electricity demand, and a worsening transformer shortage. This is far from ideal in the era of massive data center buildouts, and wait until outrage over skyrocketing power bills goes fully mainstream. We bet that's coming.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 11:05

Sanctions Are Just As Deadly As War: Lancet Study

Via The Libertarian Institute

Ron Paul, the libertarian leaning former Texas congressman and GOP candidate for president, has always maintained that sanctions are acts of war. The Lancet Global Health recently published a study that proves him right.

Economists Mark Weisbrot, Francisco Rodríguez, and Silvio Rendón have found that the yearly total excess human death toll associated with economic sanctions across the world is roughly equivalent to the annual human death tolls of active wars and combat. In fact, the study reveals that on average the civilian deaths caused by sanctions exceed battle-related casualties in kinetic conflicts each year.

AFP/Getty Images

According to the study, the worst effects on populations across various age groups are caused by unilateral US and EU sanctions against targeted countries. The researchers argue “unilateral sanctions imposed by the USA or the EU might be designed in ways that have a greater negative effect on target populations.” UN sanctions, they add, “have been framed as efforts to minimise their impact on civilian populations, although the extent to which they have achieved this goal remains debated.”

In the period of 2012-2021, for example, the unilateral sanctions’ annual global death toll on average was 564, 258. The study also notes that most of the civilian deaths attributeable to sanctions between 1970 and 2020 were children less than five years old.

Economic and unilateral sanctions kill the most vulnerable members of a population including primarily children, the elderly, and the sick. The press release regarding the study, published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, states “The researchers studied sanctions’ effects on age-specific mortality rates. They found that children under five made up 51 percent of total deaths due to sanctions over the 1970–2021 period. Most deaths (77 percent over the same period) were aged 0–15 and 60–80.”

The press release continues, “The study is the first to systematically examine the effects of sanctions on age-specific mortality in cross-country data using methods designed to address causal questions on observational data.” The researchers conclude that “the effects of sanctions on mortality generally increase over time, with longer-lived sanctions episodes resulting in higher tolls on lives.”

Washington has imposed  brutal “maximum pressure” or “crippling” sanctions on poor countries across the world such as Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. Over the years, it has been documented that these sanctions have contributed to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of people in Venezuela and Iraq alone.

The US also imposes extensive sanctions regimes on more powerful countries than those listed above such as Russia and Iran. By cutting off the possibility of economic cooperation and interdependence, war has resulted in both cases during the last three years.

In 2021, erstwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that Washington was absolutely committed “to [opposing] the reconstruction of Syria” absent regime change. To that end, the US implemented a callous sanctions regime on Syria using the bipartisan Caesar Act, a law which targeted any person or entity of any nationality that attempted to do business with the war-torn country. These sanctions deliberately targeted the country’s engineering and construction sectors.

As a result, the civilian population was devastated. In 2022, Alena Douhan, a UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, visited Syria. She explained at the time that the sanctions “severely harm human rights and prevent any efforts for early recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction.”

Douhan stressed that “12 million Syrians grapple with food insecurity” and “90% of Syria’s population currently lives in poverty,” with limited access to food, shelter, water, electricity, healthcare, heating, cooking, fuel, and transportation. Partly as a result of the bipartisan economic war on Syria, Al Qaeda offshoots were able to seize Damascus and take over the country. Since then, sectarian violence has seen thousands of civilians slaughtered.

The use of sanctions, largely spearheaded by the US, has spread across the world over the last several decades. “25% of all countries [were] subject to some type of sanctions by either the USA, the EU, or the UN in the 2010–22 period, by contrast with an average of only 8% in the 1960s.”

Rodríguez insists the entire policy of economic warfare must be reevaluated. “We have seen economic sanctions — especially those imposed by the US — contribute substantially to economic collapse in targeted countries, such as Venezuela… Sanctions often fail to achieve their stated objectives and instead only punish the civilian populations of the targeted countries. It is well past time that the US, EU, and other powerful actors in the international community seriously reconsider this cruel and often counterproductive mechanism.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 10:30

DOGE's AI Tool 'SweetREX' Set To Take Buzzsaw To Federal Regulations

Following Elon Musk’s exit from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Democrats and mainstream media have largely turned their attention elsewhere. Yet, DOGE is quietly making steady progress on an ambitious plan to overhaul federal regulations, according to a report.

Central to the effort is an AI tool under development, the SweetREX Deregulation AI Plan Builder (SweetREX DAIP), designed to “promote prudent financial management and alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens.”

The little-known project is being spearheaded by Christopher Sweet, a DOGE staffer initially presented as a “special assistant,” who was, until recently, a third-year student at the University of Chicago.

WIRED reports:

SweetREX was developed by associates of DOGE operating out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The plan is to roll it out to other US agencies. Members of the call included staffers from across the government, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of State, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, among others.

Leading Wednesday's call alongside Sweet was Scott Langmack, a DOGE-affiliated senior adviser at HUD and, according to his LinkedIn profile, the COO of technology company Kukun. (WIRED previously reported that he had application-level access to critical HUD systems; Kukun is a proptech firm that is, according to its website, “on a long-term mission to aggregate the hardest to find data.”) While Sweet led the development side of SweetREX, Langmack said he was taking point on demoing the tool for different agencies and pitching them on its benefits.

DOGE is likely to use the AI tool to eliminate up to 50% of 200,000 federal regulations by January 2026. A DOGE PowerPoint presentation, titled the “DOGE Deregulation Opportunity,” projects that the effort could yield $3.3 trillion annually in economic benefits.

“The DOGE experts creating these plans are the best and brightest in the business and are embarking on a never-before-attempted transformation of government systems and operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness,” an administration spokesperson told the Washington Post, which first reported on the DOGE presentation.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court cleared a key hurdle for DOGE, rejecting a labor union effort to restrict the agency’s access to sensitive U.S. user data from government agencies. In a 2-1 decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s injunction that had blocked DOGE from accessing data held by the U.S. Department of Education, Treasury Department, and Office of Personnel Management, citing potential violations of federal privacy laws, according to Fox News.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 09:55

Merz's Germany: 100 Days Of Economic Deep Freeze

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The German federal government is already staggering into its first major crisis just months after its election. That it also stands economically bare amidst mostly self-inflicted turbulence has gone largely unnoticed. Meanwhile, no one in Berlin seems concerned about the country’s economic catastrophe.

To call Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s first 100 days a false start would be the understatement of the year. His initial report card is a disaster. His ostentatious alignment with the Left in fighting the AfD, the catastrophic decision to halt arms deliveries to Israel, and the break with Germany’s last vestiges of state raison d’être will contribute to the premature end of this coalition just as much as Merz’s wobbly course in the debate over the SPD-nominated Federal Constitutional Court judge Brosius-Gersdorf.

Fear-Driven Shock Paralysis

Merz is fear-driven, fleeing to the international stage to project an aura of strength domestically against the background of bellicose noise in Russia policy, avoiding the looming collapse of his government and the embarrassment of a short-lived chancellorship. Armament, military readiness, and a pinch of patriotism—this is the thin veneer of Merz’s last line of defense.

It is the nature of the media that the EU’s disastrous handling of the trade conflict with the US, the Gaza crisis, and the escalation of the Ukraine conflict dominate headlines. Meanwhile, Germany’s economic decline accelerates. To be fair, Merz inherited a poisoned political legacy. The country’s deep recession was handed down by his predecessor Olaf Scholz, along with the dire state of the German social funds, which currently show a deficit of around €47 billion.

The extreme imbalances in Germany’s social system - resulting from the recession, demographic aging, and uncontrolled migration - cannot be blamed on Merz any more than the hyperstate-like public sector, now managing half of all economic output through its channels. The energy crisis is also a fact the new government must confront, layered atop a complex mix of structural deficits that have rendered Germany nearly untouchable in the global competitive landscape.

Problem Recognized?

The question must be: Has Merz at least recognized the severity of the country’s economic crisis? And if so, what measures does his government plan to reverse it? In the third year of recession and with a loss of 700,000 jobs since 2019, it is clear Berlin knows the political course leads Germany toward catastrophe.

On the plus side, Merz can claim his so-called “investment booster,” mainly composed of two measures: the temporary reintroduction of declining balance depreciation until 2029 and a corporate tax cut from 15% to 10% starting 2028. These measures would relieve the economy by €11.3 billion, roughly 0.23% of GDP—laughably small given the economy already carries €146 billion in unnecessary bureaucracy costs.

Merz should have wielded the chainsaw here, but no German politician dares challenge a bureaucracy that has grown into a state within a state, adding half a million employees in the last six years.

Reform Refusal and Course Maintenance

Merz’s original promise to cut electricity taxes for business and consumers also signals, unspoken, that the green transition is seen as the root of the energy crisis, driving energy-intensive firms out of the country. Last year alone, €64.5 billion in direct investments left Germany, a long-standing trend now accelerating.

Consequently, Germany is losing its economic foundation, on the verge of becoming Europe’s Rust Belt, much like parts of the US. Yet Berlin does nothing: no electricity tax cut, no return to nuclear, no scrapping of the burdensome heating law. Merz refuses any reforms in the green transition. We are witnessing the continuation of Habeck’s deindustrialization agenda.

Merz avoids all conflict with Brussels’ Green Deal. The core of centralist policy, the key to Germany’s economic liberation, remains untouched, regardless of how sharply the recession bites.

An orderly withdrawal of the state from the frozen energy sector, weighed down by subsidies and regulations, is nowhere in sight. Talks with Moscow over gas imports are unthinkable—Brussels stubbornly polishes the 19th sanctions package. Merz watches as a policy takes root that delivers Germany a fatal economic blow.

Systemic Collapse

Even social fund problems, the scandalous citizen’s allowance, now promoted globally as aid for migrants, fall under economic policy. Like a rabbit before a snake, the government freezes amid widening deficits, attempting to fix health and pension insurance with new debt and supplementary transfers. Only an effective migration policy shift and painful reforms to social benefits could reverse the downward spiral.

Merz allows Germany to head toward French-style conditions—his historically and legally dubious €1 trillion debt program will push Germany into the middle ranks of European debt states, raising the debt-to-GDP ratio to 95%, turning the federal budget into an unbearable weight. Infrastructure spending is nice, but with social funds in crisis and defense commitments rising, resources will barely suffice to maintain existing assets.

No Regulatory Turnaround

Unless Germany’s economic course turns 180 degrees, this government will go down as a temporary continuation of the red-green agenda and a footnote in the country’s history. With a coalition backed by the Left, Merz lacks the political capital and personal reform drive to pull Germany out of crisis.

In Argentina today, one can observe the recipe for political turnaround: drastic state downsizing and deregulation should guide policy. The state’s share must shrink enough that private markets regain control of investment allocation.

Merz would need to break the ideological wall of his structurally leftist coalition, cancel the Green Deal with Brussels, and restore diplomatic relations with Moscow to turn the tide. Germany is light-years from such a paradigm shift. Until then, the economic substance left by two postwar generations will be politically squandered.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 09:20

Washington Cancer Patient Has Car Stolen On First Day Of Treatment

On what should have been a day focused solely on fighting prostate cancer, Washington state resident Val Mohney got blindsided by a different kind of battle — car theft.

Mohney, who lives in Davenport, had traveled to Columbia City to stay with his friend Kristen Dean while starting treatment, according to Yahoo. But at around 6 a.m. Tuesday, the police called with news guaranteed to ruin anyone’s morning: his car had been stolen, joyridden, and crashed into a fence at a nearby middle school.

"Unfortunately, I started my day off with having my car ripped off and driven through a fence," he told KING5. "I'm just trying to deal with cancer, and now I have to deal with that."

Yahoo writes that the car was in bad shape — the ignition looked like someone had "taken a grenade" to it — and it was left abandoned in the school parking lot. For Mohney, a real estate agent, the loss isn’t just inconvenient; it’s income-threatening. "I'm the sole bread winner so if I'm not making money there's no money coming in," he said.

"I wouldn't hold out much hope for the tape deck. Or the Creedence."

On top of everything, Mohney is caring for his mother, who has dementia, and his partner, whose disability limits how much they can work. Life has been throwing him lemons, bricks, and the occasional flaming bowling ball, but he’s focusing on his supporters.

"Really, I'm very fortunate because I have a big community of people that love me and I don't know how people that don't do it when stuff like that comes up," he said.

Dean is now shuttling him to work between treatments — a job that apparently now comes with “personal chauffeur” in the description. Seattle police are combing through surveillance footage to find the joyrider, who remains at large. Meanwhile, a GoFundMe is helping Mohney keep going while he battles cancer and, apparently, other people’s bad life choices.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/16/2025 - 08:45