Trump's Project Freedom Launches as Kuwait Hits Zero Oil Exports & China Develops AI-Augmented Soldiers

Daily Digest
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Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/trumps-project-freedom-launches-as-kuwait-hits-zero-oil-exports-china-develops-ai-augmented-soldiers/

Geopolitics

President Trump announced Project Freedom, set to begin today, as a coordination effort with countries, insurers, and shipping firms to guide non-conflict vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials described it as not involving Navy escorts. The initiative supports merchant ships transiting the corridor, which carries a quarter of global oil trade, fuel, and fertilizers, backed by guided-missile destroyers, over 100 aircraft, unmanned platforms, and 15,000 U.S. Central Command service members. Trump called it a humanitarian gesture for ships low on supplies amid positive talks with Iran, warning that interference would be met forcefully. Iran stated that U.S. interference violates the ceasefire and rejected management by Trump’s posts. A senior Iranian official reportedly called the plan a provocation to create an escalation pretext.

Meanwhile, Iran submitted a 14-point plan via Pakistani mediators demanding the U.S. lift its blockade of the Strait, withdraw all forces from the Middle East, and end hostilities, including Israel’s war with Hezbollah, within 30 days. The plan omitted its nuclear program. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed the focus on ending the war and denied joint mine-clearing. Trump expressed dissatisfaction and provided a counter-proposal. The IRGC intelligence unit set a Pentagon deadline to end the port blockade, citing shifts by Europe, China, and Russia against Washington. A cargo ship was hit off Sirik, Iran — the first such attack since April 22 — with all crew safe. Iran’s Foreign Ministry confirmed receipt of a U.S. counter-proposal through the same mediators.

Energy

Kuwait exported zero barrels of crude oil in April, the first halt since the 1991 Gulf War, according to Tanker Trackers data, after declaring force majeure on April 17 due to the Strait of Hormuz shutdown. It previously exported 1.85 million barrels per day, mostly to Asia, from 2.7 million bpd production. Now, it’s exporting zero on 1.2 million bpd of production. Oil comprises 50% of GDP and 90% of government revenue. OPEC+ nations, including Kuwait, agreed to raise June output quotas by 188,000 bpd, though analysts described the move as largely symbolic given export constraints.

Meanwhile, Michigan diesel prices reached $5.990 per gallon, a record surpassing 2022’s $5.955 peak.

Economy

Commodity costs for U.S. automakers have risen by about $5 billion this year due to the Iran war, according to first-quarter earnings reports from General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. GM forecasts $1.5 billion to $2 billion in added costs from aluminum, plastics, energy, and DRAM chips amid logistics disruptions. Ford projected over $2 billion in headwinds, an increase of $1 billion, due to global aluminum and steel shortages worsened by strikes on smelters in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain that removed 3 million metric tons of capacity. Stellantis estimated 1 billion euros in raw material costs if prices hold. London Metal Exchange aluminum futures reached a four-year high near $3,492 a ton, with U.S. buyers facing record premiums atop 50% Section 232 tariffs. Carmakers have pledged cost-discipline measures to offset the added expenses.

In other news, Jane Street Group distributed $9.4 billion in employee compensation last year, doubling the prior year’s payouts after nearly $40 billion in trading revenue. With 3,500 employees, the average pay was about $2.7 million. Founded in 2000, trading depositary receipts and later expanding into ETFs and bonds, the firm grew its capital base to $45 billion. It invests in tech firms, including Anthropic and CoreWeave, operates without a traditional CEO via partners, and recruits mathematicians and engineers. It faces allegations of Indian market manipulation and a Terraform Labs lawsuit, but plans London expansion.

Lastly, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen disclosed an unsolicited $56 billion bid for eBay at $125 per share in cash and stock, a 20% premium, according to a filing citing GameStop’s 5% stake and $9 billion cash hoard. Cohen reportedly sees synergies from GameStop’s stores and logistics to compete in e-commerce, collectibles, and gaming. He holds a commitment from TD Bank for $20 billion in debt financing and has threatened a proxy fight if rebuffed. Analysts questioned the financing, noting eBay’s market cap is nearly four times GameStop’s, and synergies, though some cited potential cost savings and revenue opportunities. eBay shares rose as much as 13% premarket.

US Politics

A website called GTFO ICE, launched by former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor in partnership with Project Salt Box and Steve Schmidt’s Save America Movement, exposed personal details of 17,662 sign-ups through a public REST API without authentication or rate limiting. Taylor promoted the platform on The Rachel Maddow Show as a rapid response network against proposed ICE facilities. It collected names, emails, phone numbers, and zip codes. Bluesky users reported receiving texts claiming their data had been forwarded to federal authorities, including the FBI, HSI, and ICE. The site paused signups for a security review, then displayed an under construction message. Taylor, whose security clearance was suspended in April 2025, reportedly for treasonous conduct, leads DEFIANCE.org, which received over $625,000 in funding from Arabella Advisors and Sixteen Thirty Fund via coalition principals. Media contact Scott Goodstein previously directed digital efforts for the Obama and Sanders campaigns. The site’s operators described reports of data being forwarded to authorities as unconfirmed and possibly a spoof.

Artificial Intelligence

Former Harvard chemistry chair Charles Lieber, convicted in 2021 of hiding $750,000 annual ties to China’s Thousand Talents program, now directs Shenzhen’s government-funded Institute for Brain Research Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies. The lab is developing brain-computer interfaces to boost mental agility and awareness, as prioritized in China’s five-year plan. Lieber cited superior resources, including primate facilities unavailable at Harvard, and recruited another Harvard scientist, despite supervised release terms allowing 2024 travel to China. Lieber has stated that his work benefits all humanity.

On a related subject, DARPA’s N3 program developed nonsurgical neurotechnology for soldiers to control drones and weapons via brainwaves bidirectionally, reaching Phase III human trials by 2023 at institutions including Carnegie Mellon, which tested SharpFocus for high-resolution stimulation. Funded for six teams, the project went silent post-trials. DARPA states it is complete and does not operationalize the tech, directing queries to teams for 2026 details. DARPA noted that ethical and legal experts provided guidance throughout the program’s development.

In other news, researchers at the University of Gothenburg fabricated “bixonimania,” a fake eye condition from screen exposure, via two 2024 preprints with bogus authors, institutions, and funders like the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation. Large language models, including Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and later ChatGPT, cited it as real despite red flags such as “this entire paper is made up.” Reportedly, humans also referenced the fake condition. The preprints were later retracted once the ruse became known. Commentators have used this as an example of how AI (and people) can be so easily manipulated into believing completely false information.

Sources

Bluesky Meltdown: Ex-Trump Aide’s Anti-ICE Site Doxxes 18K Activists

Nearly 18,000 left-wing activists on BlueSky are in panic mode this weekend after an anti-ICE activist website launched by a fired Trump official exposed their personal details due to a vulnerable connection (an unprotected API).

Source | Submitted by PhilH

Iran War Fuels $5 Billion Commodity Crunch for U.S. Carmakers

Iran War Drives $5 Billion Commodity Squeeze on US Carmakers

Source | Submitted by PhilH

Jane Street Doubles Employee Payouts to $9.4 Billion After Record $40B Year

The firm paid roughly $9.4 billion in compensation last year, more than twice what it distributed a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.

Source

Wall Street Skeptical of GameStop’s $56 Billion eBay Takeover Bid

Wall Street analysts were broadly “skeptical” of Cohen’s ability to finance the deal

Source

Trump’s “Project Freedom”: Hormuz Ship Coordination, Not Escorts, Sparks Iranian Fury

President Trump did not announce an escort mission just now, US officials say.

Source

Iran’s Maximalist Ultimatum: US Must Quit Middle East in 30 Days, Nukes Off the Table

Iran has slapped the US with a new set of “maximalist” demands and a 30-day deadline for them to be fulfilled.

Source

Kuwait’s Oil Exports Hit Zero: First Blank Slate in 35 Years Amid Hormuz Shutdown

Kuwait exported zero barrels of crude oil last month, according to data from a shipping monitor, marking the first such halt since the 1991 Gulf War.

Source

Ex-Harvard Scientist Defects to China to Build AI Super-Soldiers via Brain Interfaces

A top scientist from Harvard has defected to China and will lend his world-leading expertise to the nation’s program to create a new army of AI-augmented “super-soldiers.”

Source

DARPA’s Silent Brain-Drone Link: Human Trials End, Secrecy Reigns

The project reached its final phase of human testing in 2023 but has since gone completely silent, with no public results or explanation of what happened.

Source

Bixonimania: The Fake Disease That Fooled AI (and Some Humans)

European scientists created a fake disease called “bixonimania” to see if it could trick AI. They succeeded.

Source

Michigan Diesel Prices Smash All-Time Record at $5.990

#Michigan has set a new all-time record for average diesel price at $5.990

Source | Submitted by Chris Martenson

Pentagon Deploys 15K Troops, Destroyers to Hormuz: “Not an Escort Mission”

They cannot both be true.

Source

In addition to sources submitted by community members, the following were also used in the creation of this report: Hagerstown Rapid Response Substack, Financial Times, Drop Site News, The New Region, Al Jazeera, GasBuddy, AAA, Detroit News, New York Post, and DARPA.mil.

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“War department of defense is preparing as if the next war is coming and it is with China- by 2027”

He’s always a little extreme and arrogant but a lot of what he’s said has come to fruition.

He also said watch the next few weeks maybe Trump actually has a non-staged “event” by generals that don’t want him plunging the US into a mess of a war

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It reminds of the old Cheech and Chong bit and Japanese pilots’ comment when the Japanese admiral told pilots to kill themselves by flying into ships. I have no idea why I thought of that.

That would drop like a RRRROCK if the truck drivers would simply only drive their vehicles down hill. Gravity is free energy. I’ve always said that. Plus, only driving downhill is MAGA and patriotic opposed to Democrat losers complaining.

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https://x.com/isfjcutebear/status/2051216688088285290?s=20

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I don’t know who is behind the Iranian Lego meme YT videos but they are hilarious while exposing the hypocrisy by the US and Israel? They are getting tons of views. There’s supposedly a few of them that have gotten over a billion views.

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I knew the USA had lost when Iran started out - trolling Trump

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This article is resurected via the Way Back Machine from the Times of Israel from 2012. A jewish writer opines that “Jews DO Control the Media.”

Elad Nehorai is a writer living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn…

Jews DO control the media

We Jews are a funny breed. We love to brag about every Jewish actor. Sometimes we even pretend an actor is Jewish just because we like him enough that we think he deserves to be on our team. We brag about Jewish authors, Jewish politicians, Jewish directors. Every time someone mentions any movie or book or piece of art, we inevitably say something like, “Did you know that he was Jewish?” That’s just how we roll.

We’re a driven group, and not just in regards to the art world. We have, for example, AIPAC, which was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably. And we brag about it. Again, it’s just what we do.

But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”

Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!

Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene. Just about every movie or TV show, whether it be “Tropic Thunder” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is rife with actors, directors, and writers who are Jewish. Did you know that all eight major film studios are run by Jews?

But that’s not all. We also control the ads that go on those TV shows.

And let’s not forget AIPAC, every anti-Semite’s favorite punching bag. We’re talking an organization that’s practically the equivalent of the Elders of Zion. I’ll never forget when I was involved in Israeli advocacy in college and being at one of the many AIPAC conventions. A man literally stood in front of us and told us that their whole goal was to only work with top-50 school graduate students because they would eventually be the people making changes in the government. Here I am, an idealistic little kid that goes to a bottom 50 school (ASU) who wants to do some grassroots advocacy, and these guys are literally talking about infiltrating the government. Intense.

Now, I know what everyone will say. That everyone tries to lobby. Every minority group and every majority group. That every group has some successful actors and directors. But that’s a far call from saying that we run Hollywood and Madison Avenue. That the Mel Gibsons of the world are right in saying we’re deliberately using our power to take over the world. That we’ve got some crazy conspiracy going down.

Okay. Fine. So some of that is kooky talk.

But let’s look at it a bit deeper.

Maybe it’s true: everyone lobbies. Maybe it’s true there are actors of every ethnicity out there. But come on. We’re the ones who are bragging about this stuff all the time. Can’t we admit that we’re incredibly successful? Can’t we say it to the world?

I’ll give my theory for why Jews don’t want to talk about their control of the media.

First of all, as much as Jews like to admit that so many of them are successful, and that so many of them have accomplished so much, they hate to admit that it has to do with they’re being Jewish. Maybe they’ll admit that it has something to do with the Jewish experience. But how many Jews will admit that there is something inherently a part of every single one of them that helps them to accomplish amazing things?

The ADL chairman, Abe Foxman, was interviewed in a great article about the subject and he said that he “would prefer people say that many executives in the industry ‘happen to be Jewish.’” This just about sums up the party line.

The truth is, the anti-Semites got it right. We Jews have something planted in each one of us that makes us completely different from every group in the world. We’re talking about a group of people that just got put in death camps, endured pogroms, their whole families decimated. And then they came to America, the one place that ever really let them have as much power as they wanted, and suddenly they’re taking over. Please don’t tell me that any other group in the world has ever done that. Only the Jews. And we’ve done it before. That’s why the Jews were enslaved in Egypt. We were too successful. Go look at the Torah — it’s right there. And we did it in Germany too.

This ability to succeed, this inner drive, comes not from the years of education or any other sort of conditional factors, but because of the inner spark within each Jew.

Now, the reason groups like the ADL and AIPAC hate admitting this is because, first of all, they are secular organizations. Their whole agenda is to prove that every Jew is the same as every other person in the world. I cannot imagine a more outlandish agenda. No, we’re different. We’re special.

Of course, people hate when anyone says this. They assume that if you’re saying that Jews are special, it somehow implies that they’re better.

To be honest, I’m not really sure what the word “better” even means. What I do know is that being special simply means a person has a responsibility to do good.

I think that’s the real reason most Jews are so afraid to admit that there’s something inherently powerful and good about them. Not because they’re afraid of being special. But because they’re afraid of being responsible. It means that they’re suddenly culpable when they create dirty TV shows that sully the spiritual atmosphere of the world. It means that things can’t just be created for the sake of amusement or fun or even “art.”

Suddenly, we can’t screw up the world.

The interesting thing is that Jews have done so much for the world in so many other ways. They’ve moved forward civil rights; they’ve helped save lives in Darfur, Haiti and just about everywhere else.

But that’s not enough. Fixing the world physically is only half the battle.

Our larger battle, the harder battle, is elevating the world spiritually. And this is what the people that fight with every inch of their soul to prove that Jews are just the same as everyone else are afraid of. It means that we can no longer just “express ourselves.” We’ll have to start thinking about the things we create and the way we act. It means we’ll have to start working together. It means we’ll have to hold one other, and ourselves, to a higher standard.

The time has come, though. We no longer have to change our names. We no longer have to blend in like chameleons. We own a whole freaking country.

Instead, we can be proud of who we are, and simultaneously aware of our huge responsibility — and opportunity.

The comment section is pretty intense: https://archive.ph/ihHMJ#selection-987.1-995.109

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I got introduced to this at an early age, about 5 or 6. Bobby Gail and I were planning to get married, but once we sat down on the curb of our apartments in NE DC and she told me we couldn’t get married, her mother said she had to marry somebody Jewish.

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