Observer

covfefe austere scholar

[Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz]

If you’d told me a few years ago this is where we’d be on Iran, I’d have said you were high:

1. Nuke program set back years. Enrichment and reprocessing gutted, weaponization sites destroyed, Fordow inoperable, Natanz in ruins, a generation of senior nuclear scientists eliminated.

2. Ballistic missile program crippled. Monthly production down from 100 to near zero. Roughly half the regime’s missiles and launchers destroyed. The IRGC Aerospace Force commander who ran the missile enterprise dead.

3. Air defenses devastated. American and Israeli airpower dominating Iranian skies, with strike aircraft operating over the country with near impunity.

4. Full economic warfare. Not just OFAC sanctions anymore, but military pressure layered on top: naval blockade, near-zero oil exports, choked imports, wrecked steel and petrochemical sectors, triple-digit inflation, and a currency that is effectively worthless.

5. Regime decapitation. Khamenei dead. Larijani dead. Hundreds of senior IRGC, intelligence, military, and Basij commanders dead including the IRGC commander-in-chief, the armed forces chief of staff, and the Aerospace Force commander. Mojtaba Khamenei inheriting a hollowed-out regime with no supreme authority and a gutted command structure.

6. The region turning on Tehran. Gulf states shutting down the sanctions-busting, money-laundering, and financial escape routes the regime has relied on for years. No Arab capital willing to throw Iran a lifeline. China and Russia providing limited support.

7. Proxy network shattered. Hezbollah and Hamas heavily degraded. Houthi political leadership taking direct Israeli strikes. The “Axis of Resistance” and “ring of fire” are now more slogans than real threats.

8. Syrian corridor severed. Assad is gone. The new government in Damascus is actively blocking Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah: arresting smugglers and publicly declaring Syria will no longer serve as a transit corridor for Tehran’s terrorists. The land bridge to the Mediterranean that took decades to build is effectively closed.

9. Lebanon pivoting west. With Hezbollah battered and resupply choked, Israel and Lebanon have opened direct peace talks for the first time since 1983, aimed at a permanent agreement and Hezbollah’s disarmament. Beirut now asserting that the Lebanese armed forces alone are responsible for national defense. This is a direct repudiation of Hezbollah’s “resistance” claim. TBD.

10. Deterrence exposed as a bluff. Four direct attacks on Israel — April 2024, October 2024, June 2025, March 2026 — failed to impose strategic cost and instead triggered heavy retaliation. Iran couldn’t even use Syria as a launchpad.

11.Economy hollowed out from within. Power shortages, water crises, factory shutdowns, pension unrest, and mass protests. Nationwide demonstrations erupted in December 2025 after a year of economic freefall, with bazaaris, oil workers, and truckers, the regime’s traditional support base, joining strikes across all 31 provinces. Running out of oil storage space. Fuel shortages. The worst crisis since 1979.

12. Scientific and technical brain drain. Beyond the nuclear experts, Iran has lost a generation of irreplaceable expertise in missile design, centrifuge engineering, and weapons development. The survivors are harder to recruit and easier to deter.

13. Naval power decimated. The regular navy shattered, IRGC navy taking growing losses as CENTCOM moves to reopen Hormuz.

And against all of this: the regime forced to play its Hormuz card at its weakest possible moment when the U.S. has options instead of when we didn’t: namely, Tehran with nuclear-armed ICBMs, 10,000 ballistic missiles, a Chinese- and Russian-built military, hundreds of thousands of attack drones, a fully operational terror network, and hundreds of billions of dollars to harden its economy.

That’s the strategic picture. It’s extraordinary. Much more to do but I can’t comprehend how much has been achieved.

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Bill Maher asks how the government is “failing the poor so badly” when he pays “60 PERCENT” of his earnings in taxes.

“Last week was tax day… I paid the government probably almost 60% of what I earn. That’s a lot.”

“And I… wouldn’t mind if Bernie Sanders would stop saying the rich don’t pay taxes.”

“The top 10% pay 72% of all federal income taxes. And the bottom half, 3%.”

“The Democratic Socialists talk about socialism like we don’t already have a lot: Social Security, unemployment, Medicare, nutritional assistance, Medicaid, Obamacare, disability, housing subsidies.”

“How can you be soaking the rich and failing the poor so badly? How can it be that the federal government alone took in over 5 trillion in taxes last year, and we still need that?”

“Are we really this incompetent and corrupt?”

[Kaitlin Bennett @KaitMarieox]

Triggered Democrats FREAK OUT when I tell them these IRAN quotes were said by Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, & Joe Biden, and NOT Donald Trump 🤣

[Jason Robertson @JRobFromMN]

Minnesota is so retarded

We give hundreds of Billions of dollars to daycares and autism centers and they don’t verify they are an actual business or have kids or clients there

Meanwhile,
I’m getting my kitchen remodeled.

My licensed and insured contractor had to get a permit to unhook and rehook my sink

Then we had to have a city inspector verify the work

The Government literally does more auditing on a citizen installing a sink than they do to verify that learing centers getting Millions actually have kids there

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

No Kings explained for people who think they're fighting fascism.

You're standing in a crowd on Saturday. You look around and think yeah. No Kings. This is what democracy looks like.

Bro.

You're holding a sign made by a communist billionaire who lives in Shanghai.

You live in a constitutional republic.

Elections. Term limits. A free press that spent four years calling the president a fascist without one journalist being arrested.

The modern left's definition of fascism:

You love your country? Fascist.

You want to enforce the border? Racist.

You think parents should raise their kids? Bigot.

You want to know who's voting in your elections? Jim Crow.

Being patriotic is fascism to the modern left.

But every country has borders and enforces them. 176 countries require ID to vote. That's the definition of a country.

But the Democratic establishment told you otherwise. And you believed them.

Congress has a 15% approval rating. 80% of Americans disapprove. 97% of incumbents got re-elected.

Chuck Schumer. 46 years. Longer than Stalin.

Steny Hoyer. 45 years. Longer than Mao.

Mitch McConnell. 42 years. 5x more than Napoleon.

Nancy Pelosi. 39 years. Longer than Henry VIII.

Maxine Waters. 35 years. Longer than Mussolini.

Bernie Sanders. 35 years. Triple Hitler's entire reign.

Trump. 5 years and 3 months. Won the popular vote and the electoral vote.

But Trump is the king. Okay buddy.

You don't hate kings. You hate kings that aren't yours.
And Saturday they had you in the streets carrying their water.

The Democratic Party installed a president without letting you vote. Biden quit on a Sunday. By Tuesday your queen was crowned.

No primary. No debate. No ballot. First time since 1968.

Three days before your march every Senate Democrat voted against photo ID to vote.

During COVID you carried a vaccine card everywhere like a hall pass from the government just to eat at a restaurant.

But getting a birth certificate or waiting two hours at the DMV to prove you're a citizen before you vote? That's oppression.

The Democratic Party is pro illegal immigration.

Counts non-citizens in the Census. Census determines congressional seats. More non-citizens means more seats means more power. No voter ID means no way to check.

That's how you keep power without wearing a crown.

Biden built a censorship machine.

Pressured Facebook to suppress true information and admitted it in writing. Censored scientists. Censored doctors. Censored JOKES. The Biden White House told Facebook to remove "humor and satire."

They literally went after people for making fun of them. UK does it better tho...

Everything they censored turned out to be right. They just outsourced the silencing to Silicon Valley.

And it doesn't stop at speech.

The extreme left justifies taking children from families.

Six thousand schools rewrite children's identities without telling parents. And the State has the right to intervene.

The Hitler Youth did this. Mao's Red Guards did this. The Soviets built statues of a child who reported his own father.

Same playbook.

During Covid, your bakery got shut down. Church closed. You couldn't hold your dying mother's hand at the hospital.

But thousands packed together during BLM to burn Minneapolis and THAT was essential civic engagement. Obviously.

$2 billion in damage. 25 dead. 2,000 cops injured. 20 states burning. VP Kamala promoted a bail fund for the rioters. No investigation. No hearings.

January 6. One building. Few hours. 1,000 prosecuted. Two years of televised hearings.

Kings decide which violence counts. The left decided.

Charlie Kirk spent his life walking onto campuses asking for honest debate. He was assassinated.

CSIS terrorism database. 2025 is the first year in 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber right-wing. Yet no one brings this up.

75% of liberal students say preventing a speaker from talking is justified. 27% say violence is acceptable.

Liberals who went to Trump rallies: "I never felt unsafe." "The experience changed me."

Conservatives who show up on liberal campuses get screamed at, blocked, and assassinated.

One side talks. The other side screams.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation marched with you Saturday.

Their stated purpose in their own words: "Revolution." Not reform. Marxism.

The system that killed a hundred million people last century. They had you holding their signs while they said it out loud.

500 groups. $3 billion in revenue. Pre-printed signs. The signs were ready before you were angry.

The money leads to Neville Roy Singham. Billionaire in Shanghai. Attends CCP workshops. Funnels millions through shell companies at UPS mailboxes. Three Congressional committees have subpoenaed him as a suspected CCP foreign agent.

You thought you were fighting for democracy. You were carrying water for Beijing.

"Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind." Spoken by the ACLU lawyer who defended Nazis in court because it was their constitutional right.

Bill Clinton put 100,000 cops on the street. Reformed welfare. Said illegal immigration is wrong to a standing ovation. Told America the era of big government is over.

Today his own party would call him a fascist.

The 1990s Democrat defended free speech for Nazis. Yours censors doctors for telling the truth.

The 1990s Democrat held open primaries. Yours installed a nominee without a vote.

The 1990s Democrat trusted parents. Yours takes their children.

Historians measure fascism across eight traits. Here's who checks the boxes in 2026:

Censorship of political opposition. Democrats.

Contempt for democratic process. Democrats.

Tolerance of political violence. Democrats.

State ideology forced on families. Democrats.

Corporate-state fusion. Democrats.

Scapegoating and manufactured enemies. Both sides.

Cult of personality. Both sides.

Ultranationalism. Republicans.

Five for the left. One for the right. Two shared.

You marched against kings on Saturday.

You marched FOR kings.

You just didn't know which was which.

Stop being gaslit.

I hope you understand what's at stake.

[Steven Fiorillo @stevenfiorillo]

My post on Friday regarding the estate tax proposal in New York got 600,000+ views, so clearly this struck a nerve. Some individuals asked me to back up what I said so I am going to discuss what happens when states push tax policy past the breaking point. Here is what the data shows and it’s worse than most people realize. According to IRS migration data, New York has lost $111 billion in net adjusted gross income over the last decade from residents moving to other states. That’s not hypothetical, that’s $111 billion in taxable income that used to fund schools, subways, police, and infrastructure that is now funding those things in Florida and Texas rather than New York. California lost $102 billion over the same period. Florida gained $196 billion. Texas gained $54 billion. That’s not a coincidence, it’s a pattern.

Between 2018 and 2024, 561 companies relocated their headquarters across the country. The San Francisco Bay Area lost 156 corporate headquarters. Los Angeles lost 106. New York City lost 27. Meanwhile Dallas alone gained 100, Austin gained 81, and Nashville gained 35. This didn’t come to a halt in 2025 or 2026. Palantir $PLTR which was the largest publicly traded company in Colorado, announced in February that it was moving its headquarters from Denver to Miami. It was PLTR’s second move in six years after leaving Silicon Valley in 2020. The governor of Colorado said he found out through a social media post. ExxonMobil’s $XOM board unanimously recommended that shareholders approve reincorporating the company from New Jersey to Texas after 144 years at the vote in May. Exxon has physically operated out of Texas since 1989, and its CEO said Texas has created a policy environment that allows them to maximize shareholder value. Chevron $CVX completed its move from California to Houston. In-N-Out Burger is opening a 100,000-square-foot eastern headquarters near Nashville and is leaving California. These aren’t outliers anymore as this is becoming the new normal.

It’s not just corporate headquarters moving. Entire financial ecosystems are relocating. Citadel, one of the most profitable hedge funds in the world, moved its headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022 and has been building out aggressively ever since. They’re constructing a massive new waterfront headquarters in Miami’s Brickell financial district. Elliott Management moved to West Palm Beach. Carl Icahn moved Icahn Enterprises from New York to Sunny Isles Beach. Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management relocated to St. Petersburg. Goldman Sachs $GS is building a $500 million campus in Dallas designed to house over 5,000 employees. JPMorgan Chase $JPM and Wells Fargo $WFC have both invested hundreds of millions into massive new campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Wells Fargo is also moving its wealth management division from San Francisco to West Palm Beach. NYSE Texas a reincorporation of the 143-year old Chicago Stock Exchange officially launched in Dallas in early 2025. The Texas Stock Exchange which is a brand new national securities exchange backed by over $160 million from BlackRock $BLK , Citadel Securities, and Charles Schwab $SCHW is set to begin trading by the end of this year. Nasdaq has also expanded its Texas presence with operations in Irving.

When you have that level of financial infrastructure being built in a single metro area, that’s not a trend it’s an ecosystem being constructed from scratch to compete directly with New York. Each of these moves represents not just a company but thousands of high-paying jobs, billions in local economic activity, and a signal to every other firm still on the fence that states with competitive rather than restrictive policy are creating enticing operating environments.

Currently over 1 million residents have left New York for other states since 2020 according to the latest Census estimates. International immigration has partially offset the population headcount, but it hasn’t replaced the tax base. The people leaving earn significantly more on average than the people arriving. Almost 1,700 millionaires changed their address out of New York in 2024 alone. Millionaires paid 44.6% of all personal income tax collected in the state last year. The proposed response to this fragility is to drop the estate tax threshold from $7.1 million to $750,000, raise the top rate to 50%, add a new 2% income tax surcharge on millionaires, increase corporate taxes, and add a capital gains surcharge. Under these proposals, the combined federal, state, and city top marginal rate on high earners in New York City would approach 54%. That’s a policy framework that ignores everything the last decade of data has told us.

The Dallas mayor just publicly predicted an “avalanche” of NYC financial firms heading to Texas under these policies. Florida realtors are seeing a surge of inquiries from wealthy New Yorkers. Cities like Miami, Austin, and Nashville are building entire ecosystems including schools, cultural centers, and financial services clusters which are designed specifically to attract the people New York is pushing out. Ken Griffin and Stephen Ross just launched a $10 million campaign called “Ambitious Accelerated” to recruit more businesses to what they’re calling Florida’s “Tech Gold Coast.” They’re not waiting for New York to figure it out. They’re actively recruiting our talent, our capital, and our tax base.

That’s what makes this moment so critical. We are in the middle of the most competitive environment for jobs, businesses, and investment that this country has ever seen. States are actively building infrastructure to attract employers and high earners. This is the time to compete, not to double down on the same policy approach that has been pushing wealth and businesses to lower-tax states for a decade. Texas entered its latest legislative session with a $24 billion surplus while having no personal or corporate income tax. Think about that for a moment, no personal or corporate income tax and they have a $24 billion surplus. Florida added more new businesses than any other state in 2024, with over 266,000 formed in a single year. These states didn’t create an attractive business landscape out of thin air. They made deliberate policy choices to create environments where businesses want to operate, where employers want to hire, and where working people can actually build something without the ground shifting underneath them every budget cycle.

This matters because of what it means for everyday people. When a company relocates its headquarters, it doesn’t just move a sign, the entire company leaves, from the executive team to the support staff. It doesn’t stop there because that's only internal. Externally, all of the trades that may do work for the company will no longer receive those phone calls. The restaurants will no longer see those repeat customers. The tax revenue from those paychecks won’t be collected, and future job growth in the community from that company will cease to exist. When Dallas gained 100 corporate headquarters over six years, that meant tens of thousands of new jobs, new residents spending money, new homes being purchased, new small businesses opening to serve those people. That’s how local economies actually grow. That’s how neighborhoods stay alive, and when a corporate headquarters leaves a city, the exact opposite happens. The jobs thin out, the spending dries up, the small businesses that depended on that foot traffic start closing, and the tax base that funded public services shrinks.

New York has every natural advantage in the world. The talent, infrastructure, culture, and institutions are all here, but it won’t be enough if the policy environment drives away the employers and investors who create opportunities for everyone else. The states that are growing right now aren’t growing by accident. They made a decision to be competitive. They kept tax burdens manageable, they created regulatory clarity for businesses, and they built an environment where employers want to expand and hire. New York has every tool to do the same thing. The question is whether the people making the decisions recognize that we’re in a competition and right now, we’re not acting like it.

Here’s the part nobody in Albany wants to hear. The people who leave don’t just take their tax returns with them. They take their fundraising networks, philanthropy, job creation, and spending to a new economy. A city that once attracted the world’s most ambitious people risks becoming a place they leave once they’ve made it, or worse, a place they never lay down roots. That’s not ideology. It’s an economic reality that the IRS, Census, and corporate relocation data have been telling us. I said it in my first post, and I’ll say it again. When you tax people past the point where the math makes sense, they leave. When they leave, the burden falls on everyone who doesn’t have the resources to relocate. It’s time to take a common-sense approach to policy and make the great state of New York competitive again. New York has a decision to make. Either it continues down this path and alienates more taxpayers or it becomes more competitive.

I love this state, but I am extremely worried for it’s future. We should be building a thriving ecosystem with an abundance of opportunities for New Yorkers, but instead we are pushing entrepreneurs and businesses to states that are more competitive with policy. Is this really the path we want to take not only for the current residents but for the next generation?

@amitisinvesting @basispointpod @chamath @Jason @BillAckman @kevinolearytv @patrickbetdavid @PBDsPodcast

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

I think it's hilarious that @nickshirleyy exposed so much fraud in Minnesota that Democrats in Virginia are now responding by filing legislation to ban the government from investigating it in their own state.

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

Considering how hard they fought to keep Hamas in Gaza,

How staunchly they’re protecting the Islamic regime in Iran,

How undone they’ve become over the removal of Maduro in Venezuela,

The only conclusion is that there is nothing leftists despise more than freedom & humanity.

[Brent Scher @BrentScher]

Schumer disclosing classified conversations to argue that he should have been told more in those classified conversations.

[Drew Holden @DrewHolden360]

🧵THREAD🧵

The legacy media didn’t miss the Minnesota Somalian fraud story.

They actively dismissed it as made up, racist, or xenophobic.

Before the stories are quietly edited, I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Only in America can a kid wear $150 shoes, sip a $8 coffee, and post from a $1,200 phone about being oppressed and claiming capitalism has failed them.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

My predictions for what will happen:

1) Youthquake: the rebellion that powers the Left
Mamdani’s win lights a fire under voters under 35. Social feeds overflow with clips about rent, wages, and “the people vs. the billionaires.” It works—at least for a while.
Think Corbyn in the UK: a fast rise, a faster crash.

2) Trump’s counter-attack: the money siege
Trump calls New York “the socialist showcase” and cuts federal aid wherever possible.
Red-state governors copy the move, turning funding into a weapon.
Expect the phrase “no bailout for blue cities” to go viral.

3) The great taxpayer exit
The top 1 percent—who pay roughly 40 percent of NYC taxes—start hedging or leaving. Money migrates south to Florida and Texas. Within months, budgets wobble, credit spreads widen, and reality replaces rhetoric.

4) The streets erupt
When promises hit the wall of arithmetic, anger replaces hope. Tenant groups, unions, and activists flood the streets, blaming one another. New York becomes the protest capital of the West—London-style demonstrations on steroids.

5) The building freeze
Projects stall as investors pull back. The skyline cranes don’t vanish overnight—but progress slows, and cost overruns explode. “Big plans, no money” becomes late-night punchline material.

6) The charisma crash
For a while, Mamdani’s energy and media savvy make him untouchable. Then reality bites: revenue falls, expectations soar. By summer, even loyal fans will become “disillusioned.”

7) The AOC–Mamdani 2028 flirtation
Progressives dream of a national ticket. It thrills activists and splits the party.
Moderates see a movement that can’t count; conservatives see the perfect foil.

8) Midterm mayhem
The House goes down to the wire - most likely, the GOP will lose; the Senate will remain in Republican hands.
Every GOP ad runs the same line: “Do you want your city to look like New York?” Democrats cling to cultural wins; the Right reclaims the economic narrative.

9) The misinformation tsunami
Social media turns the election into theater. Memes and “rigged vote” claims drown out policy. Faith in institutions drops another few points—and nobody knows how to rebuild it.

10) The slow-motion bleed
No collapse, just steady decline. Debt rises, entrepreneurs flee, rules multiply.
New York stays iconic but stagnant—a global warning that even great cities can be strangled by over-promising and over-regulating

[Jean @queens_parents]

In other words, an unelected body will be dictating policies to Zohran by DSA working groups/committee👇
“We work very closely with Zohran…A lot of Zohran staff are DSA members and leaders…He planned and built his run as a DSA campaign.”
https://t.co/zJjYgrzXNd

[Jean @queens_parents]

I don’t know who needs to hear this but this eye-opening admission from Zohran Mamdani just 2 years ago that the ultimate goal of the Democratic Socialists as an organization is to infiltrate govt at all levels is terrifying.

[Observer @Conservetwitt]

@ScottAdamsSays Democrat
Imaginary
Concerns

aka DICS

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

.@NYTimes as usual promotes its false narrative.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇺🇸 NEW ENGLAND: 40% REPUBLICAN VOTES, 0 REPUBLICAN REPRESENTATIVES

This is one of the strangest political paradoxes in America right now.

New England’s six states - Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut - collectively give around 40% of their votes to Republicans, yet not a single one of their members of Congress is Republican.

That means roughly 2 out of every 5 voters in the region have 0 direct representation in the U.S. House or Senate.

It’s a sign of how urban clustering, gerrymandering, and deep partisan polarization have reshaped the political map.

Democrats dominate the region’s congressional districts so completely that even significant GOP minorities are effectively locked out.

In the birthplace of the American Revolution, nearly half the electorate has become politically invisible.

Source: @JDVance, @elonmusk

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

In the past 96 hours, Hamas has executed over 100 Palestinians in Gaza.

Mehdi Hasan? Not a word.

Ana Kasparian? Not a word.

Cenk Uygur? Not a word.

The media? Not a word.

The UN? Not a word.

[Amit Segal @AmitSegal]

Hamas is the only army in the world that wears civilian clothes during war and puts on uniforms during ceasefires.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Here's a question I know many are wondering about: why did China wait until now to use rare earths as leverage against the US? Why not in the first Trump administration when the US started the trade hostilities? Or when the Biden administration unleashed the chips export controls 3 years ago?

I just watched a fascinating explanation by a Chinese analyst and, unexpectedly, a big part of the explanation is... helium.

I had no idea but as he explains (source here: https://t.co/eUbbU5QIHW), all the way until 2022 China imported 95% of its helium and most of it was controlled by the US. Of the world's ten largest helium producers, four were American companies, and the remaining six all used American technology.

Helium isn't just a party balloons gas: it has plenty of industrial applications for things such as quantum computing, rocket technology, MRI machines, as a coolant for chip lithography equipment, etc.

In a nutshell what he's explaining is that with helium the US had an even stronger card to play if China ever used the rare earths card.

This raised huge alarm bells inside China. In an article published in late 2022 in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science (https://t.co/eZhyv438LK), several researchers from PetroChina’s Beijing-based Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development stressed that China would be greatly affected if the US imposed a “stranglehold” blockade on helium exports.

So over the past few years there were gigantic efforts in China to break the "helium shackles," with seven helium extraction facilities going into production, and China also switching imports from the US in favor of imports from friendly countries like Russia.

China's research ecosystem also went into overdrive to find solutions to the helium dependency issues, with China's Academy of Sciences awarding its annual 2024 "Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize" to a new helium extraction technology project (https://t.co/eWs163mfaO) because "these scientific and engineering achievements broke the long-standing monopoly of the US and ensured the security of China's helium resources" (https://t.co/d7YquWKFGS)

The result: by the end of 2024 China had cut its helium dependence on the US to less than 5% (https://t.co/wOxm8VRZJj). The "helium shackles" were broken.

That's what most people don't realize: power isn't about intentions or rhetoric - it's about what you can actually do. Many wonder why countries almost never retaliate when the US imposes sanctions or export controls. The answer is simple: they can't. They lack the alternatives, the technology, the supply chains.

China is the first country that systematically worked to eliminate every single pressure point, with humongous efforts. It's not just helium: it's chips, energy, telecommunication, pharmaceuticals, etc.

That's why the rare earth card can finally be played now. Not because China suddenly became aggressive, but because they have developed the capabilities to say "no."

Last word: as a European, this is both depressing and inspiring. Depressing because it highlights the immense magnitude of the task at hand to become genuinely sovereign and develop our own capabilities to say "no." Inspiring because China demonstrated that it can actually be done, and relatively fast if we execute competently. Although with the current crop of folks at the helm in Europe, that last part is admittedly a very, very big "if"...