Mitali Saran

Writes stuff. Strong political leaning--away from fascism & fakery. Motto: Down with pookiness.

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

Prediction: When this insecure, thuggish, crass regime is finally overthrown, it will be by a woman.

[Lt Gen H S Panag(R) @rwac48]

Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, Kashmir ki Beti Haryana Lao!
News 18 has shown more guts than ANI which broke the news took down the story!

‘Now We Can Bring Kashmiri Girls for Marriage’: Haryana CM Khattar at ‘Beti Bachao’ Event - News18 https://t.co/nEzlBPPusS

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

The BJP-RSS behemoth builds systems of mass control because it has zero actual people skills.

[Gitanjali J Angmo @GitanjaliAngmo]

I am at Safdarjung hospital in Delhi where @Wangchuk66 has been admitted. Nothing should be administered to him orally or intravenous without take consent from me, his family and his doctors who have been monitoring his health for the past 20 days.

[Sanitary Panels @sanitarypanels]

The "award" was created 3 days before Modi’s visit lmao

[Suhasini Haidar @suhasinih]

This is a damning report on the targeting of children by Israeli forces 2023-2025.
Awaiting MEA response.

[Hartosh Singh Bal @HartoshSinghBal]

one year after, the truth of what happened. and much as AI and Boeing may claim otherwise, they are culpable. if they had acted on the information they had about the aircraft just before take-off, the flight should never have been allowed to depart.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

The “privatization of sovereignty”

[Christophe Boutry @Ced_haurus]

Palantir vient de publier son manifeste. Lisez-le.

Pas pour ce qu'il dit sur la tech. Pour ce qu'il dit sur le politique. Sur l'idéologie de Karp et Thiel. Sur la guerre. Sur vous.

Quand une entreprise privée se donne pour mission de définir qui doit être surveillé, ciblé, prédit, neutralisé, et qu'elle publie simultanément un texte expliquant pourquoi contester cela serait de la faiblesse civilisationnelle, on n'est plus dans la stratégie d'entreprise. On est dans la privatisation du souverain. Le droit de décider de l'ennemi, qui fut toujours le geste politique fondateur des États, est en train d'être racheté par une entreprise cotée au Nasdaq.

Ce manifeste repose sur un seul tour de passe-passe, répété sous vingt formes différentes : rendre l'inévitable ce qui est en réalité un choix. Les armes à IA ? Elles seront construites de toute façon, alors autant que ce soit nous.

La surveillance algorithmique ? La réalité géopolitique l'exige.

Le réarmement de l'Occident, la hiérarchie des cultures, la disqualification du pluralisme comme naïveté dangereuse ? Simple lucidité face au monde tel qu'il est.

C'est le geste idéologique par excellence : ne pas interdire la question, mais la rendre indécente.

Ce que Palantir appelle réalisme est en fait une décision philosophique radicale : le conflit est la vérité permanente du monde, la délibération démocratique est une fragilité que l'adversaire exploitera, et une élite technologique privée est mieux placée qu'un peuple pour tirer les conséquences de cette vérité.
C'est du schmittisme en hoodie. C'est littéralement la structure de leur pensée.

Le danger n'est pas qu'ils soient fous. Le danger est qu'ils soient riches, cohérents, et déjà à l'intérieur des États. Palantir ne frappe pas à la porte des gouvernements pour vendre un outil. Elle arrive avec une cosmologie complète : voici comment fonctionne le monde, voici vos ennemis, voici pourquoi vous ne pouvez pas vous permettre de débattre, et voici notre contrat.

Palantir est l'ennemie des peuples et de la démocratie. Ce qu'ils construisent, c'est un pouvoir technocratique que personne n'a élu et que personne ne pourra destituer.

[Iran in Ghana @IRAN_GHANA]

You don't follow Iranian embassies. THEY find you.

One retweet and suddenly your whole timeline looks like an "Iranian embassies" group chat. Your barber is debating Hormuz. Your alley cat has radicalized opinions on maritime law.
Monkeys in Delhi are stealing phones just to follow us before handing them back. A band of pigeons just dropped their debut single "Goodbye Imperialism."

Don't resist Zafar. We didn't choose this life either. But a certain President keeps tweeting and we simply cannot stop.

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

French journalist Marine Vlahovic is found dead in her home in Marseille while working on a documentary exposing the israeli genocide of #Gaza

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

US: Effective lethality over tepid legality! Death and destruction all day every day! No quarter, no mercy! No stupid rules of engagement! Bad planning to have a girl’s school near a military base!

Iran: *closes the Strait of Hormuz*

US: Hey no fair 😭

[Yinka Ogunnubi @yinkanubi]

This 📌

[Suhasini Haidar @suhasinih]

Interesting that someone so openly communal and divisive about India was granted a visa and political clearance by @meaindia (reqd for all such events) when so many leaders, thinkers, academics and authors are denied.

[Roger Sollenberger @SollenbergerRC]

“Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the President of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover up.” https://t.co/Fh3ouolK7p

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

The result of a nation-building plan in which optics matter more than substance, and critical thinking is seen as a threat rather than a path to self-improvement: You beat your chest over cringe-y nonsense, while the world watches and exploits your hubris.

[Priyanshu Ratnakar @0xratnakar]

the impact ai summit in delhi was a perfect demonstration of why india keeps losing in tech

and i’m tired of pretending it wasn’t a disaster.

let me paint the actual picture:

> cash-only payments at a “digital india” upi ??
> pm visit → main hall cleared for hours, everyone else just stood around doing nothing
> exhibitors locked out of their own stalls
> 3-hour queue just to enter
> a founder’s product got stolen during the summit
> no wifi at an ai event.
> can’t take your keys if you came via car/bike
> no laptop/camera at tech event
> people were asked to sit on the ground
> speaker lineup with consultants/bureaucrats who’ve never shipped a real product
> the registration system crashed multiple times. people who registered weeks in advance couldn’t get in.

vips walked past massive queues while founders and builders stood outside in the heat. 🤡

and 27 countries witnessed all of this live

networking areas? no space to stand.

many demos didn’t work because there was no stable internet. 5g??

this is what happens when optics matter more than execution.
when innovation becomes photo-op

the sad part is india has insane talent.

founders building world class products.
engineers and researchers doing real work.

leave India for a sec, im at network school and the youngest crowd is all Indians.

but we keep shooting ourselves in the foot with performative nonsense.

the west isn’t winning because they’re smarter.
they’re winning because they care about details.

because they respect builders.
because their tech summits actually work.

same story when @sama came to india last time.
boomer uncles asked the dumbest questions.
and when he said it’s hard for india to build foundational models, we took it on our ego.

rn, every founder who attended left embarrassed.

imagine international delegate left with stories about our “infrastructure.”

many friends and young builder lost a little more faith.

this wasn’t just bad planning.
it was a signal of what we value.
and clearly, it’s security theater and photo-ops over builders.

we can do better.
we have the talent.
we have the market.
we have the potential.

what we don’t have is execution and respect for the people building the future.

maybe one day we will do better. till then if you’re a founder, ignore the noise. keep building.

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

I bet you it didn’t cross his mind that his pathetic threats might be outed.

[Mahua Moitra @MahuaMoitra]

Also do not appreciate @HardeepSPuri calling me to ask me to delete tweet & telling me if “people” come after me now he won’t be able to help it. I’ll take my chances, Sir. Your thug armies don’t scare me.

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

This madly eloquent essay made it out of Iran's communication blackout. https://t.co/DxLzndOLR7

[Ankit Mayank @mr_mayank]

Meet Alok Anand, an average Indian man & a proud Andhbhakt.

A young pilot lost her life while flying alongwith #AjitPawar 💔

But he chooses to blame her, vilify her & calls for the boycott of women.

He doesn't know that Sambhavi was the first officer but the Captain was a man, both talented unlike Alok.

Don't be like Alok. Respect women.

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

Daring to hope for better-wine-and-cheese liberals

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

Wrote a thing, in case anyone needs more thoughts on the subject of social media. https://t.co/o5FjLi0tf4

[Mitali Saran @mitalisaran]

We've got no fig leaves left, and a heinously clear view of the dicks running the world.