Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.

Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance.

The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed Iran it could take out the very anti-missile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.

The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped. By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99 percent of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.

Moreover, it was reported that more than 50 percent of Iran’s roughly 115-120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.

Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s non-stop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.

Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.

Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the US, the UK, and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.

Even if half of Iran’s ballistic missiles did launch successfully, only a handful apparently neared their intended targets—in sharp contrast to Israel’s successful attack on Iranian missile batteries. Is it thus conceivable that any Iranian-nuclear-tipped missile launched toward Israel might pose as great a threat to Iran itself or its neighbors as to Israel?

And even if such missiles made it into the air and even if they successfully traversed Arab airspace, there is still an overwhelming chance they would be neutralized before detonating above Israel.

Any such launch would warrant an immediate Israeli response. And the incoming bombs and missiles would likely have a 100 percent certainty of evading Iran’s countermeasures and hitting their targets.

Now that the soil of both Iran and Israel is no longer sacred and immune from attack, the mystique of the Iranian nuclear threat has dissipated.

It should be harder for the theocracy to shake down Western governments for hostage bribes, sanctions relief, and Iran-deal giveaways on the implied threat of Iran successfully nuking the Jewish state.

The new reality is that Iran has goaded an Israel that has numerous nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened silos and on submarines. Tehran has zero ability to stop any of these missiles or sophisticated fifth-generation Israeli aircraft armed with nuclear bombs and missiles.

Iran must now fear that if it launched 2-3 nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies, or be knocked down by the tripartite Israel anti-missile defense system.

Add it all up, and the Iranian attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time it threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.

Its failure to stop a much smaller Israel response, coupled with the overwhelming success of Israel and its allies in stopping a much larger Iranian attack, reminds the Iranian autocracy that its shrill rhetoric is designed to mask its impotence and to hide its own vulnerabilities from its enemies.

And the long-suffering Iranian people?

The truth will come out that its own theocracy hit the Israeli homeland with negligible results and earned a successful, though merely demonstrative, Israeli response in return.

So Iranians will learn their homeland is now vulnerable and, for the future, no longer off limits.

And they will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.

As a result, they may conclude that the real enemies of the Iranian nation are not the Jewish people of Israel after all, but their own unhinged Islamist theocrats.

Data by Gallup shows that Americans’ views of China have continued to worsen after 2018.

The deterioration started with the U.S.-China trade war under President Donald Trump, continued during the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China and has recently taken on yet another dimension among concerns about widespread Chinese tech and industrial espionage and subversion as well as continued human rights abuses and tension surrounding Taiwan.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, among American adults in 2024, unfavorable views of China were voiced by 77 percent of respondents after having reached a high of 84 percent in early 2023. In 2005, that figure had stood at just 47 percent.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In 2023, 77 percent of Americans said the viewed Taiwan very or mostly favorable. At the same time, 66 percent saw the military power of China as a critical threat, up from 41 percent in 2016.

64 percent said the same about the economic power of China.

Republicans voters saw China more critical with just 6 percent who had a favorable view in 2023, compared to 18 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Independents.

That year, favorable views of China in the U.S. reached an all-time low of just 15 percent overall. Again, Republicans were more critical of China’s military and economic prowess, with 80-81 percent seeing it as a major threat.

Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

The “scramble for Antarctica” is slowly gathering steam, and it is not unrelated to a new “scramble for the Americas.” The ramifications for the Indo-Pacific and, indeed, for the global strategic balance are also profound.

By 2024, Antarctica had at least 82 bases from more than 30 countries. China has five bases, three built within the past decade (the latest in February), and three with year-round manning.

Antarctica, in its own right, is home to many mineral and oceanic riches, but it is also key to a number of military, navigational, and other resources. The revival of interest in global-reach fractional orbital bombardment systems (FOBS), for example, relying on polar orbit delivery of hypersonic weapons, depends on having assets in both polar regions. The region may have certain properties that are ideal for collecting signals intelligence.

But the case of Antarctica is particularly interesting because it is, in essence, “no man’s land,” truly a terra nullius; it is the last major landmass that is essentially outside the realm of the “ownership” of national governments.

Significantly, the “scramble for Africa,” which reached its zenith in the 19th century, is now facing the prospect of a widespread and not necessarily peaceful “undoing” as the great powers comprehensively lose their influence there. But that is another story. What is significant now is the competition of the major powers and others for dominance in Antarctica, and this is not unrelated to interest in the Arctic.

Change throughout the global systems of governance was accelerating through 2024, with the main focus on the internal divisions of most societies, the decline in trust in—or prestige of—almost all nation-states and their governance, and a breakdown in transnational governance bodies. In macro terms, it is a period of conflict between globalist totalitarianism and nationalism.

But if Africa was perceived in and before the 19th century as a region ripe for conquest and exploitation, and many areas of the world were then only beginning to be opened to a new, industrialized world, then Antarctica today is the great treasure open for seizure, if only for the fact that it has no native inhabitants capable of speaking for themselves.

The tenets of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty are being largely honored in the breach. The treaty primarily spells out the demilitarization of the continent. While it is true that there are no formal combatant forces there, it is not true that the landmass is free from military and strategic usage. The Antarctic Treaty, initially proposed by the United States, was adopted in 1959 by 12 nations: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A number of other nations acceded to the treaty, among which Brazil, (then) West Germany, India, and Poland were the most actively engaged in Antarctic research. The treaty supposedly ensured the non-militarization of the continent and freedom of scientific investigation.

Nothing in the treaty was, the 1959 document said, to be interpreted as “a renunciation or diminution by any Contracting Party of any basis of claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.” Thus, the seven nations that have outstanding (and often overlapping) claims to Antarctica emanating outward like slices of a pie—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK—may harbor hopes to have their claims recognized internationally “at some future time.”

That future time has begun.

The claims have been staked, and the next decade may see some of these claims become concrete. At the time of the Antarctic Treaty’s creation, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) claimed the right to acquire the entire Antarctic. The Russian Federation, which succeeded the USSR, has not renounced that option.

A widely accepted but not fixed concept on which nations have territorial rights to Antarctica is based on sovereign land exposure to the continent. Thus, the exposure is determined by a “pie-chart” set of lines from the South Pole to the eastern and western extremes of the facing landmass. Under this arrangement, Australia is the largest stakeholder in Antarctica, and the South Atlantic British territories, such as the Falkland Islands and South George, give the UK exposure to the continent. Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and France also have claims under this formula. It would not be unexpected for South Africa to stake a claim under this arrangement.

But thus far, it has all been based on the 1959 Treaty and “understandings.” Nothing has been defined and tested by conquest or the increasingly frail “international courts.” We are in an age when Cold War and post-Cold War treaties are being discarded—often wisely because they have been overtaken by history—while we plunge further into the age when supposedly binding treaties are being interpreted as “suggestions.” And global governance mechanisms, such as the United Nations and regional organizations, are unable to halt unilateral power projection by force.

Significantly, communist China does not see Antarctica in isolation but as a component of its global—and globalist—projection.

China on Feb. 7 inaugurated its Ross Sea scientific research station near the Ross Sea region and the U.S. McMurdo station and those of New Zealand, South Korea, Italy, Germany, and France, starting operations in an outpost in a part of the Antarctic due south of Australia and New Zealand for the first time. The Qinling station will be staffed year-round with quarters sufficient to house as many as 80 people in the summer months. China has four other research stations in other parts of Antarctica built from 1985 to 2014—Zhongshan, Taishan, Kunlun, and Great Wall—with two year-round stations like Qinling.

Chinese ice-breaker Xuelong, or “Snow Dragon,” sets off from a port in Shanghai on Nov. 8, 2017. Xuelong steamed south from Shanghai on Nov. 8, bound for Antarctica to establish China’s newest base as Beijing strives to become a polar power. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Construction of Qinling first broke ground in 2018, but its launch was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2023, China sent its biggest Antarctic fleet and more than 460 personnel to the site to help complete the station.

However, in the broader sense, the 2020s began to see the unraveling of those Cold War and immediate post-Cold War treaties, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, largely because they constrained the Western alliance and Russia but did not put limitations on Beijing.

The result is that the world is entering an era when not only are formal arrangements governing military behavior disintegrating, and the so-called rules-based world order is being repudiated (particularly by the Chinese regime), but so, too, is the influence of regional bodies, such as the African Union (AU), the Organization of American States (OAS), and so on.

The OAS has, in fact, become meaningless. This links to the Antarctica question because China has not only been building its polar capacities but has also built linked installations in South America for its space capacities.

China’s Espacio Lejano Station, which, according to Wikipedia, “is a radio station located in Loncopué Department, Neuquén Province, Argentina, and is operated by the Chinese National Space Administration as part of the Chinese Deep Space Network, in collaboration with Argentina’s National Space Activities Commission (CONAE). The Chinese Deep Space Network is managed by the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC), which reports to the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] Strategic Support Force.” No Argentine officials, including those from CONAE, are permitted access to the 200-hectare facility, which has been operating since 2018.

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, was reported in 2024 to be anxious to ensure Argentinian access to the base. China is also known to utilize South America for other space-related activities.

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, speaks to the crowd from a balcony of the Casa Rosada government palace during his inauguration day in Buenos Aires on Dec. 10, 2023. (Cezaro de Luca/AFP via Getty Images)

The Argentine Congress did not approve the 50-year lease to China of the land for the station until February 2015, but work had already begun on it in 2013, and it was completed in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Chinese regime’s penetration of the entire Caribbean network of small countries, as well as much of the Western Hemisphere south of the United States, has been completed for some time. The old U.S. Monroe Doctrine, initiated in 1823 to give Washington the “right” to keep European powers out of the southern Americas, has completely given way to the influence of Beijing.

So what happens when China breaks apart strategically, and how will this happen?

China is becoming increasingly preoccupied with internal difficulties and threats. Its economy, never as large as Beijing claimed in recent years, is now in tatters. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views the internal threat as greater than the external challenge is exemplified by the reality that it spends more on internal security forces than the People’s Liberation Army.

While building its gold reserves to diversify away from the U.S. dollar (Beijing is quietly moving out of its holdings of U.S. debt), China is facing a shortage of funds and is, in any event, facing the prospect of a leadership challenge. This portends an open question, but what is clear is that a period of chaos can be anticipated.

It may be true that the United States has gradually absorbed the impact of a reduced dependence on the Chinese market and funds, but the rest of the Americas have not, and neither has Australia, for example. In a period of transformation, China may well attempt some external adventures that could mark the end of the present strategic framework. This could well unravel Antarctica’s special status.

“The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time,” explains Tucker Carlson as part of his wide-ranging discussion with Joe Rogan.

Reflecting on the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre, Carlson remarks that “I’ve nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs…”

“I’m not attacking [AOC] for being dumb, and the White House Press Secretary is in the same category, but the idea that dumb person has no idea she’s dumb, she really thinks like she won the prize, she’s the most impressive, like:

“I’m White House Press Secretary because I’m the best talker in America.”

It’s so crazy and yet the smartest people I know are very often sort of, they have humility.”

Watch the brief discussion below:

Tucker Carlson about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre: “The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. I’ve nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs….I’m not attacking her for being dumb but the… pic.twitter.com/aL9PyyWyyf

— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 26, 2024

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court indicated on April 25 that it would issue a narrow ruling refining the scope of presidential immunity while leaving the details of former President Donald Trump’s other legal battles up to lower courts.

The most immediate effect of their decision on President Trump’s legal battles would be to delay his Washington case, where his immunity appeal originated. That trial was scheduled to start on March 4 but, more recently, observers have been questioning whether it will even start before the election.

Sending the case back to D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan would presumably force her to continue pre-trial proceedings with an added layer: Determining how to square Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment with the Supreme Court’s new definition of immunity.

Based on their April 25 questions, the justices are expected to distinguish between official and unofficial acts while ruling that presidents enjoy some immunity for the official ones. But it’s unclear how specific they will be in their description and whether they’ll provide enough instructions for the lower court to avoid yet another appeal that could once again reach the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court could remand the immunity case with very little, if any, instruction, let the district court come up with its opinion, and then let the appellate court deal with it again,” John Shu, a constitutional law expert who served in both Bush administrations, told The Epoch Times. He added, “I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, because we’d end up right where we are today.”

Even if the case does proceed to trial, it’s questionable how effective it will be without some of the indicted actions that President Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, said were private and therefore outside the scope of immunity. Michael Dreeben, who argued for Mr. Smith, said the Justice Department was willing to proceed with a weakened indictment.

Perhaps previewing the court’s opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts worried that without official acts, the trial court may be proceeding with a “one-legged stool.” Mr. Sauer responded that he didn’t think the case “would be able to go forward.”

Mark Miller, senior counsel at the Pacific Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times that Justice Roberts could require a special interrogatory verdict form in which the jury is asked to distinguish between official and nonofficial conduct in weighing President Trump’s case.

State of Trump’s Other Cases

It’s difficult to predict how the court’s decision would impact President Trump’s other ongoing criminal cases. Their future may hinge on the justices’ particular phrasing rather than merely distinguishing between official and non-official acts.

The Georgia election case is the most likely to be impacted by the decision since the accusations are most similar to the Washington trial, which will likely loom large in the justices’ deliberations.

But as the court indicated, their eventual opinion will have long-lasting impacts on other cases. “We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch told Mr. Dreeben. The opinion would presumably ripple through multiple levels of the justice system as well. In an exchange with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Mr. Dreeben acknowledged that immunity would apply to both state and federal prosecutions.

On the day of the oral argument, President Trump was facing state charges related to his purported attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election with a “hush money” payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford. In that case, he tried raising presidential immunity as a reason to exclude certain evidence since it came from his official communications channels as president.

New York Judge Juan Merchan said the motion was filed too late but it nevertheless highlighted the complicated nature of President Trump’s cases as they relate to immunity. While the alleged payment to Ms. Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, was made before the election, the purported falsification of documents didn’t occur until after he took office.

President Trump theoretically could appeal a conviction in New York based on the Supreme Court’s decision. It’s unclear, however, whether the payments would fall under the type of immunity that the Supreme Court eventually granted.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta on Feb. 15, 2024. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool via Getty Images)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis requested the Georgia trial start in August but that seemed increasingly unlikely after information surfaced about her affair with Nathan Wade, one of her top prosecutors.

“That’s not even going to … start before the election,” Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain told The Epoch Times.

Kevin O’Brien, a former assistant U.S. attorney, similarly told The Epoch Times that “no one” knows when the Georgia trial will start. “Even under the best of circumstances, it wasn’t going to start until next year,” he said.

Post-Election Fallout

If the Georgia trial proceeded, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee would presumably need to parse out that indictment like Judge Chutkan would with the one in Washington.

Besides President Trump, more than a dozen others were named in the Georgia indictment. Those included former aides like former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Experts like South Texas College of Law Professor Josh Blackman and Mr. Chamberlain suggested it was unlikely the immunity decision would afford substantial protection to defendants other than President Trump.

Mr. Meadows filed an amicus brief in which he told the Supreme Court that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution made him immune from charges in Fulton County because they “arise from his official acts as Chief of Staff.” It’s unclear how the court will rule or affirm criminal immunity for advisers, if at all.

“The Court should therefore take care to ensure that it leaves intact the robust immunity from state prosecution afforded under the Supremacy Clause, particularly as it relates to subordinate federal officials,” he said.

Then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, on Oct. 21, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

President Trump’s remaining federal case in Florida involves his handling of classified documents and was initially scheduled to start on May 20, but that appeared to be in limbo. The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion in June, meaning that a delayed trial in Florida could see an attempt by President Trump to raise legal arguments from the justices’ opinions.

As in the New York case, it appeared that President Trump could appeal a would-be conviction depending on the scope of immunity provided by the Supreme Court’s decision. “It would definitely impact [the Florida and Georgia cases] because both of those deal with what Trump and his lawyers would argue are official acts,” constitutional attorney Gayle Trotter told The Epoch Times.

In February, President Trump asked Florida Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss 32 counts in his indictment based on presidential immunity. She has yet to issue a decision on that motion.

Regardless of how the justices rule on immunity, oral argument raised the prospect that presidents can override the effects of state and federal prosecutions by pardoning themselves.

Assuming any of his trials extend past his would-be inauguration, it’s questionable whether he could use his pardon authority on himself.

Justice Gorsuch noted that “happily,” the question of a president’s self-pardoning “has never been presented to us.” Mr. Dreeben told the court: “I don’t believe the Department of Justice has taken a position [on self-pardoning]. The only authority that I’m aware of is a member of the Office of Legal Counsel wrote on a memorandum that there is no self-pardon authority. As far as I know, the Department has not addressed it further.”

Via the Post Millennial,

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff’s luggage was stolen out of his parked car in a downtown San Francisco parking garage on Thursday. He later attended speaking event and dinner in a shirt and hiking vest.   

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the left-wing Senate hopeful was at the event to thank high-profile lawyer Joe Cotchett for his support to replace the late Dianne Feinstein.    

The outlet reported that Schiff’s car had been parked in the garage to visit the area.  

Cotchett’s press agent Lee Houskeeper, who was at the dinner at Ristorante Rocca and warned Schiff not to leave anything in the car, reportedly said, “I guess it’s ‘Welcome to San Francisco.’”    

Cotchett said Schiff was not fazed by the incident and went about his business during the visit and acted as if everything was normal.     

The congressman told the Chronicle, “Yes, they took my bags. But I’m here to thank Joe.”    

Schiff ended up speaking without a suit jacket during the event and instead donned a shirt and hiking vest.   

“Maybe he can go out with Willie Brown to choose a new suit from one of the many fine clothing establishments in San Francisco,” Houskeeper joked, mentioning the former San Francisco mayor.  “Willie knows them all.”    

Schiff grew up in the city and has been in the California delegations for over 20 years while crime has become a growing issue for Californians.    

Crime has in San Francisco has led a mass exodus of retailers from the downtown core. This includes the likes of stores such as J. Crew, Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack, and entire malls closing up shop.    

Last year a CNN crew that was reporting on the rampant crime had their vehicle broken into and equipment stolen. 

Via Bitcoin Magazine,

Bitcoin is one of the most robust distributed systems in the history of mankind. For fifteen years it has ticked along block by block with only two disruptions in its first few years that were very quickly handled by responsive developers the minute they manifested themselves. Aside from that, it has ticked along producing a block roughly every ten minutes with no interruptions.

This reliability has set a golden standard of expectations for Bitcoin users, encouraging them to view it as a completely unstoppable system.

In many peoples’ minds, Bitcoin has already won, and the world is just catching up with that realization. “Bitcoin is inevitable” as many would say.

This doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is literally unstoppable though, there are possible events that could cause massive damage or disruption to the network if they were to occur. We’re going to go through a few of these examples today and see how they would likely play out.

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

Bitcoin represents a serious conundrum for governments worldwide in multiple ways. First, it functions as a system allowing global payments to flow from one user to another, irrespective of borders or financial controls.

But while governments can’t stop the overall Bitcoin system from continuing to function, they can introduce regulations to impact its participants. In order to really disrupt the Bitcoin network itself governments would have to go after the miners that actually add new blocks to the blockchain to keep the system progressing forward.

This was done before in 2021, when the Chinese government banned bitcoin mining. Almost 50% of the network hashrate went offline as Chinese miners began migrating to the rest of the world.

The network kept on ticking.

In the worst-case scenario, the Chinese government could have enforced confiscation of mining hardware. That would have left the CCP in control of all of those miners, which could have been put to use engaging in a 51% attack on the network. But that didn’t happen. Even if the confiscatory approach had been taken, rather than simply enforcing a mining ban, it would have been deeply unlikely to succeed in attacking the network given the complexity of coordination among collaborators.

For example, one of the places large amounts of hashrate migrated to was Iran. Lots of rumors circulated at the time of miners bribing Iranian military officials in order to get their machines past customs into the country.

If governments attempted to seize mining equipment and closed borders preventing equipment from being shipped internationally, the possibility of bribing government officials or illegally smuggling them out is very real given the financial incentive to do so. For such a seizure event to present an existential risk to the network itself, a government would need to be able to seize over 51% of the active network hashrate. All it would take is a small enough percentage to sneak through the borders to ensure that what was left to be seized did not surpass that 51% threshold and the network would remain safe.

As hashrate further decentralizes around the globe, the possibility of such an action creating a risk to Bitcoin itself continues to shrink. While it still remains a possibility, the more governments that would be required to cooperate to pull off such a move, the less likely such an event is. Bitcoin’s resilience shines through, as empirically demonstrated by the actions of the CCP in 2021.

POWER GRID FAILURE

Bitcoin miners cannot function without electricity. They’re computers at the end of the day, so that’s an obvious reality. This presents a big risk to miners who depend on power generation and delivery infrastructure.

Many natural disasters can cause power failures and issues with the grid. Hurricanes, wildfires, extreme weather events like cold snaps can disrupt power infrastructure. A prime example of a of such events impacting hashrate was seen in Texas during winter storm Uri in 2021. The scale of these events, however, do not directly pose a systemic risk to the Bitcoin network. Texas losing power, even with ~30% of the network hashrate located within the state, would not bring down or destroy the Bitcoin network.

As shown in 2021 during the Chinese mining ban, even with ~50% of the network hashrate going offline in an incredibly short period of time, the network continued to function. Yes, the blocktime interval increased dramatically and induced a large spike in transaction fees to confirm transactions quickly, but the network itself continued functioning and processing transactions without interruption.

Even if we were to imagine a much larger scale event, such as a massive solar storm knocking out power for half of the entire planet, the other half would still have functioning power. The miners located in that half of the globe would continue mining, continue confirming transactions, and the network would march along functioning just fine for half of the planet. Even people on the half of the globe without power, as long as they have maintained a physical backup of their seed phrase, will still have access to their funds whenever power is restored or they can make their way to a place with a functioning grid.

Power would need to be taken out for essentially the entire planet to actually kill Bitcoin, otherwise, it will keep chugging away in a corner somewhere until power is brought back online and it can “regenerate” itself expanding back around the globe.

INTERNET DISRUPTIONS

While the internet is composed of decentralized protocols in a similar fashion to Bitcoin, the actual infrastructure underlying it is owned mostly by large multinational corporations and governments (again similar to Bitcoin infrastructure like miners). The ownership of this infrastructure is still relatively distributed among many players globally, but it is not the same degree of distribution as a highly decentralized system like a mesh network.

There are still rather large chokepoints and bottlenecks that if disrupted or attacked can cause a massive degradation of reliability and functionality. Almost everyone connects to the wider internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), this market is dominated in most of the world by a handful of large providers in any given region. There isn’t much choice between providers, and this represents a large chokepoint for people interacting with the internet. If an ISP filters or denies you access and there isn’t another provider to choose from, you’re in trouble.

Similarly, your ability to talk to someone on the other side of the world is due to larger “backbone” networks run by major corporations, and underwater fiber-optic cables along the ocean floor. These cables are highly centralized chokepoints for communications between different countries and continents. If the operators were to begin filtering information passing through them, or someone were to physically sever the cables themselves, it could cause massive disruption of global internet traffic.

So what could actually be done if either of these things happened? If an ISP started filtering Bitcoin traffic to users, people would have their nodes disconnected from the network. Broadcasting transactions might be impossible, depending on how harshly the ISP filters traffic. But the rest of the network would keep chugging along. Services like Blockstream’s satellite feed exist, and a bitcoin transaction is such a small piece of data that any momentary connection to an unfiltered network would be enough to broadcast your payments.

Even larger-scale interruptions of connections between countries or regions amount to a simple irritation in the grand scheme of things. Let’s say a country like Russia had its internet connection to the outside world completely severed. If Russian miners didn’t shut down, the blockchain would fork into two separate chains because miners inside and outside Russia would not receive each others’ blocks. Whenever that connection was repaired, whichever group of miners had mined a longer chain would simply “overwrite” the shorter one, erasing the transactions that took place on the other shorter chain.

There is also a high possibility such a chainsplit doesn’t even occur in such a situation. Blockstream’s satellite service offers a way for people even without the internet to continue receiving blocks in real time from the rest of the network. This, in combination with satellite uplinks (which are not as simple to block), or even radio relays, could allow Russian miners to continue mining a single blockchain with the rest of the network through an outage.

Yet again, Bitcoin’s resilience can find a way.

WRAPPING UP

Bitcoin is not quite literally invincible, or unstoppable, but it is unbelievably resilient in the face of disruption or adversarial attack on the network. It was literally designed to function this way. The entire point of decentralized networks is to be robust in the face of threats and disruptions, and Bitcoin has succeeded amazingly in that design goal.

The world has, and will continue to see, incredibly massive destructive events. Whether that entails weather events or cosmic events, acts of intentional sabotage or warfare, or just plain old government regulation, Bitcoin has survived many of them already. It will most likely continue to survive everything thrown at it into the future.

It’s not invincible, but it is resilient. The type of event or disaster it would take to actually take Bitcoin offline permanently would be something of such a massive scale of destruction, that in the unlikely event it does occur, we will all have much bigger problems than Bitcoin ceasing to function. 

Some cities seem to attract the rich. Take New York City for example, which has 340,000 high-net-worth residents with investable assets of more than $1 million.

But there’s a vast difference between being a millionaire and a billionaire. So where do the richest of them all live?

Using data from the Hurun Global Rich List 2024, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao ranks the top 20 cities with the highest number of billionaires in 2024.

A caveat to these rich lists: sources often vary on figures and exact rankings. For example, in last year’s reports, Forbes had New York as the city with the most billionaires, while the Hurun Global Rich List placed Beijing at the top spot.

Ranked: Top 20 Cities with the Most Billionaires in 2024

The Chinese economy’s doldrums over the course of the past year have affected its ultra-wealthy residents in key cities.

Beijing, the city with the most billionaires in 2023, has not only ceded its spot to New York, but has dropped to #4, overtaken by London and Mumbai.

In fact all Chinese cities on the top 20 list have lost billionaires between 2023–24. Consequently, they’ve all lost ranking spots as well, with Hangzhou seeing the biggest slide (-5) in the top 20.

Where China lost, all other Asian cities—except Seoul—in the top 20 have gained ranks. Indian cities lead the way, with New Delhi (+6) and Mumbai (+3) having climbed the most.

At a country level, China and the U.S combine to make up half of the cities in the top 20. They are also home to about half of the world’s 3,200 billionaire population.

In other news of note: Hurun officially counts Taylor Swift as a billionaire, estimating her net worth at $1.2 billion.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice has arrested two Chinese nationals who allegedly plotted to export U.S. technology to advance the People’s Republic of China’s military operations.

Han Li, 44, and Lin Chen, 64, have been charged with several counts of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), in addition to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), for attempting to export a machine used to process silicon microchips.

“The export restrictions at issue in this case were put in place to prevent the illicit procurement of commodities and technologies for unauthorized military end use in the People’s Republic of China,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail Ramsey said in a press release on the arrests.

“This office will continue to vigorously enforce the nation’s export laws, including those pertaining to advanced technologies, to protect our national security.”

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olson explained that the defendants “sought to evade export controls to obtain U.S. semiconductors” that they were then going to ship to a Chinese company.

In 2014, the Department of Commerce placed restrictions on the Chengdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC) based in China, which made it “ineligible to receive exports of certain U.S. technologies and services.”

“As alleged in the indictment, between at least May 2015 and August 2018, Li and Chen conspired to evade the export restrictions imposed by the Department of Commerce on CGTC by using intermediary companies,” the DOJ said.

“Specifically, the defendants sought to illegally obtain for CGTC a DTX-150 Automatic Diamond Scriber Breaker machine from Dynatex International, a Santa Rosa, California company.”

The DOJ said the defendants purposefully avoided getting the Department of Commerce’s authorization to export the CGTC, the DOJ said.

“The defendants sought to obtain the machine through an intermediary company called Jiangsu Hantang International (JHI), which they fraudulently represented as the purchaser and end user, a proxy they fraudulently represented as the purchaser and end user,” the DOJ said.

“To avoid detection, Li and Chen instructed Dynatex International to ensure that the export information associated with the sale did not list CGTC as the ultimate consignee of the shipment.”

Li, the DOJ said, is suspected to be in China.

Both Li and Chen are charged with counts of conspiracy to violate IEEPA, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine, and a count of false electronic export information activities, which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. They are also charged on a count of smuggling, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and IEEPA violations, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California and the DOJ’s National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control department will prosecute the case.

“This arrest highlights the importance of interagency collaboration in preventing illegal exports that could compromise sensitive technologies and our national security as well as undermine our American economy,” said Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Tatum King.  

Brent Burmester, a special agent in charge with the Department of Commerce, said stopping “the flow of U.S. semiconductor technology” that goes to advance the People’s Republic of China’s “military modernization efforts” is key to protecting the country’s national security.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Tripp suggested that businesses in the U.S. should establish a relationship with their local FBI field office “to help protect against the pervasive threat of criminals looking to steal American technology.”

“We will aggressively pursue anyone who violates export control laws designed to protect our national and economic security,” Mr. Tripp said.

In a 2023 report on FBI Director Christopher Wray’s roundtable discussion on CBS News, Mr. Wray called the Chinese Communist Party “the defining threat of this generation.”

He said in the discussion that the FBI has 2,000 active investigations “just related to the Chinese government’s effort to steal information.”

“There is no country that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to our ideas, our innovation, our economic security, and ultimately our national security,” he said.

Can happiness be quantified?

Some approaches that try to answer this question make a distinction between two differing components of happiness: a daily experience part, and a more general life evaluation (which includes how people think about their life as a whole).

The World Happiness Report – first launched in 2012 – has been making a serious go at quantifying happiness, by examining Gallup poll data that asks respondents in nearly every country to evaluate their life on a 0–10 scale. From this they extrapolate a single “happiness score” out of 10 to compare how happy (or unhappy) countries are.

More than a decade later, the 2024 World Happiness Report continues the mission, and Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao visualizes the latest findings below to show which countries have become sadder in the intervening years.

Which Countries Have Become Unhappier Since 2010?

Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world right now, and is also 60% unhappier than over a decade ago, indicating how much life has worsened since 2010.

In 2021, the Taliban officially returned to power in Afghanistan, after nearly two decades of American occupation in the country. The Islamic fundamentalist group has made life harder, especially for women, who are restricted from pursuing higher education, travel, and work.

On a broader scale, the Afghan economy has suffered post-Taliban takeover, with various consequent effects: mass unemployment, a drop in income, malnutrition, and a crumbling healthcare system.

Nine countries in total saw their happiness score drop by a full point or more, on the 0–10 scale.

Noticeably, many of them have seen years of social and economic upheaval. Lebanon, for example, has been grappling with decades of corruption, and a severe liquidity crisis since 2019 that has resulted in a banking system collapse, sending poverty levels skyrocketing.

In Jordan, unprecedented population growth—from refugees leaving Iraq and Syria—has aggravated unemployment rates. A somewhat abrupt change in the line of succession has also raised concerns about political stability in the country.