JRiley

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

The corruption of the US government is so insanely blatant:

The Trump admin signed a deal with Kazakhstan to give a little-known US company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.

The sons of Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are invested in the project, and will make tons of money.

The US government is providing $1.6 billion of federal financing, much of which will go into the pockets of the sons of Trump and Lutnick.

Source: https://t.co/SHKJkNGfl0

[yanguoliusheng @szygls]

美的空调这一波在欧洲真的火爆了。 这种能直接放在窗口的一体式空调，从800欧一路涨到2000欧还买不到。当然要提一下，格力空调的货也排到8月份了。

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

USAID money funded coronavirus research in China that killed millions of people

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

Here's a link to her video on X: https://t.co/DrFGU67tkk

[DNI Tulsi Gabbard @DNIGabbard]

Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It’s time you know the truth.

https://t.co/3YJSstB7d4

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

THE U.S. CAUSED THE COVID PANDEMIC, not China, the U.S. government revealed today.

“It's time the American people learn the real story," spy chief Tulsi Gabbard in a sensation-causing video released on X and a statement on the internet.

And what a story it is.

.

TRUTH AT LAST
The US spent millions to finance a lab in China’s Wuhan to experiment on killer viruses.

The research was on a technique called “gain of function” which some people see as weaponization of the viruses.

That research is “now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic,” said Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence.

“This dangerous research caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives,” she added.

.

PREFERRED NARRATIVE
After the pandemic broke out, Washington then worked to tell the world it could not have been a lab leak.

The preferred story circulating at the time was to say that animal-to-human transmission evolved in China due to the circumstances there.

But the evidence tells a different tale, the US spy chief said, releasing a new batch of top secret documents today, her last day in office. "It's time you know the truth," she said.

.

120 BIOLABS

The story begins with the US quietly setting up 120 biological laboratories across more than 30 countries. Some of these laboratories were involved in research on hazardous pathogens, she said.

Dr Anthony Fauci, while serving as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sent millions of dollars of US taxpayer cash to be spent on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, she said.

In 2019, the Covid-19 virus apparently emerged in several locations around the world—but was first formally detected by scientists in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.

It was soon found all over the world. The “pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions,” Gabbard said.

.

PREFERRED NARRATIVE
For the US, the preferred story was that it was NOT a lab leak—because the world would realize that the Pentagon was financing biolabs around the world, and at home.

People raising the alarm about the biolabs were accused of “pushing Russian and Chinese disinformation”.

When the existence of the labs could not be denied, the BBC and other media reported that they were “peaceful labs” which were financed for entirely positive reasons—a line that Pentagon-watchers found hard to swallow.

.

LIED ABOUT INTELLIGENCE CONNECTION
Fauci worked with senior intelligence agents in the early days of the pandemic to shape the narrative but lied about it, Gabbard said.

In his testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2024, he was asked under oath whether he had communicated with intelligence agencies concerning viral research before, during or after the pandemic.

Fauci replied: "Not to my knowledge, about COVID."

In January 2025, many people were puzzled when Former President Joe Biden issued “a pre-emptive pardon” to Fauci. Pardons, by definition, are given to people who have broken the law—but this had not happened at that time.

.

TREMENDOUS HARDSHIP
Gabbard is retiring to spend more time with her husband, who has cancer.

But she wanted to get the truth about this subject out there before she disappeared. She says the evidence indicates US-funded research was the root of the problem.

"The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and for countless people around the world,” she said.

Links to her statement and the documents are provided below.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is interesting: contrary to what the media are widely reporting, the delay in the gigantic Power of Siberia 2 pipeline project from the West of Russia to China isn't a matter of price, but of agreeing on the route.

This is according to Boris Titov, chairman of the Russian side of the Russia-China Committee for Friendship, Peace and Development: "This is not the matter of price as many mass media outlets wrote, that we cannot negotiate the price. The issue is not with that. The issue relates more to logistics. Making a proper decision on the route of this gas pipeline."

The negotiations on the route are especially complex because they do not only involve China and Russia but also Mongolia, through which the pipeline would transit.

This pipeline would be immensely consequential not only for China but - perhaps even more so - for Europe as well, as it permanently redirects gas from Russia's West Siberian fields (Yamal) eastwards. Those same gas fields that previously fed Europe via Nord Stream and the Yamal-Europe corridor.

In other words, once there's a final decision on Power of Siberia 2 - and it looks like there'll be soon - Europe's access to cheap Russian gas won't be just politically blocked, it'll be physically gone.

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Trump: "If it weren't for the United States of America, with me…Israel would not exist right now. Israel would have been blown off the face of the earth, one hundred percent — and every smart person in Israel knows that."

[Sulaiman Ahmed @ShaykhSulaiman]

BREAKING: TRUMP CALLS OUT ISRAEL FOR TARGETING CIVILIANS IN LEBANON:

“You don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you are looking for somebody.

There are a lot of people in those houses, and they are not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you.”

[USA NEWS 🇺🇸 @usanewshq]

What is going on? Another F/A-18 just crashed in Washington state. 👀

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

BREAKING NEWS: Canadian leader Mark Carney is pulling the plug on a fake “human rights watchdog” which did nothing but demonize the Chinese, it was revealed last night.

The Canadian taxpayer will no longer finance the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, or CORE.

CORE was launched in 2019 as a group which would investigate human rights violations committed by Canadian companies operating around the world, which of course has about 200 countries and territories.

But in reality, it did nothing of the sort.

.

DARK TRUTH
CORE had only one target: China. All it did was back up the brutal China demonization narrative spun by the US National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA spin-off.

This originally alleged a “genocide” of Chinese Uyghurs, but when not a single victim could be identified, was switched to claiming “slave labor” of the same group.

In six years of burning Canadian taxpayer cash, all of CORE’s cases were attempts to stop people employing Chinese Uyghurs.

CORE targeted three garment makers, Ralph Lauren, Nike and Levi Strauss, and two mining companies, GobiMin and Dynasty Gold Corp.

The slave labor claim was based on an extraordinarily unfair ruling from the US Commerce Department that every item from Uyghur areas is classified by default as a production of slave labor, even if it was produced entirely by machine, or by someone else. Thus, reality itself was subverted.

The Canadian government, under Justin Trudeau, adopted this patently absurd system.

.

HURTING UYGHURS
At a 2024 international meeting to discuss this topic, delegates concluded that products, rights, and jobs, of Uyghur people were being hit hard – not by the Chinese government but by deeply unfair sanctions and policies from the United States and allies such as Canada.

The west was "clearly harming the people they were claiming to defend", warned speakers at the International Symposium on Employment and Social Security in Xinjiang in December of that year.

More than 200 representatives from 44 countries, regions and organizations attended the event.

.

ANOTHER TRUMP TARIFF
Meanwhile, the US is launching a new tariff of 12.5 per cent on goods from countries around the world which it deems has failed “to restrict the importation of goods produced by forced labor”.

This is supposed to apply to at least 59 countries, preliminary reports say.

But a CNBC report on the new policy has only one illustration: a picture of workers in Xinjiang.

This neatly encapsulates another problem facing people who prefer the truth to US-manufactured narratives.

The western mainstream media constantly quotes five groups:
- The World Uyghur Congress
- The Uyghur American Association
- The Uyghur Human Rights Project
- The Campaign for Uyghurs, and
- The Uyghur Transitional Database.

Western mainstream media staff print their claims while never mentioning that ALL OF THEM, not one or two or three, but all five of them, were financed by the National Endowment for Democracy.

[DNI Tulsi Gabbard @DNIGabbard]

Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.

In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function research around the world, and increase transparency and accountability, ODNI will continue working with partners across the Administration to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what “research” is being conducted.

https://t.co/pLMD0krc69

[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

Netanyahu has decided to accept the Iranian deal. Security officials are despondent and see it as a disaster. Ynet brings some high level quotes from them:

1) A senior Israeli official said "Nobody is happy with this. We understand it is not good for us, and that it harms Israeli interests. What is troubling is that Israel cannot influence it. Its voice is not being heard."

2) The anger at Trump is palpable.: "Trump screwed us, we took the hit. We're no longer in the loop and can't really influence anything."

3) Israelis fear Iran will be economically revived: "They've blown money on the Iranians, who are getting everything they want. They'll build a missile corps, and we'll have to pour money into interceptors." Israel sees oil revenue flowing back into the exact capabilities the war was meant to degrade.

4) They don't believe a deal will adequately deal with the nuclear issue: "The real test of the deal is removing the uranium and destroying it. If that doesn't happen, the sense of a bad deal will turn into something more concrete."

5) They fear this will embolden Iran: "Iran has smelled that it can achieve things by force, and it will use that against its neighbors and against us."

6) The deepest worry is not military. It is perception. After months of direct fire, Iran is seen across the region as the side that took the pressure and did not fold: "the regional working assumption will be that it was signed under Iranian pressure and American capitulation, rather than the reverse."

Israel is concerned that Iran will be stronger, the US will be weaker and that the future for it will be bleak in the region. This war has been a disaster for Israel.

[Marcus Stanley @MarcusMStanley]

Legendary journalist Seymour Hersh claims that an Administration insider leaked information to him that Trump raised the possibility of using U.S. nuclear weapons in Iran.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it's by their Shanghai bureau chief - not some outside contributor.

The title is "The China debate cannot continue like this!" and the article makes the case that it's suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it's rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China - whichever direction they go (anti or pro) - then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people's imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it's literally the main point I've been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light...

I also believe, as I argued in my article "Are Western media turning China-friendly?" last year (https://t.co/Xg1hoSRtNy) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don't have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don't want to, they just won't do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is... convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you're a journalist reading this and you're peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that's simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a "threat" to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn't China. It's you.

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

A massive global survey of nearly 100 countries found that most people see the United States as the biggest threat to the world, and they prefer China over the US.

I summarized the findings here:
https://t.co/EzU3bUcWyq

[Michael Spencer @ReadFuturist]

Despite being by far the most funded AI startup in the world, OpenAI’s models are basically not useful in the real world that matters - developers and Startups.

Chinese models are 10x to 30x cheaper than U.S. models and have good enough performance for most tasks.

Chinese models went from about 1% of developer usage in 2024 to more than 60% in May, and 80% of U.S. AI startups are now using Chinese open-source AI models.

OpenAI’s models are mostly just getting people addicted to inferior products. While Chinese models are helping developers build stuff according to OpenRouter’s API data.

What conclusions are we supposed to draw from this data?

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

Claudia Sheinbaum has approval ratings of between 70 and 80%, thanks to her progressive policies which have lifted over 8 million people out of poverty.

So of course the @NYTimes finds some reason to attack her.

They hate her because she shows what can be done.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Extraordinary chart: Chinese AI models have now completely overtaken their US competitors on OpenRouter, the largest API aggregator out there for AI models.

Interestingly it's really a 2026 story: beforehand US models were truly dominant.

This is mainly due to the release of models like Kimi K2.5 (released in Jan 26), MiniMax M2.5 (Feb 26), and, of course, DeepSeek V4 (released in April).

Like I wrote after the release of DeepSeek V4, for most tasks, favoring Chinese AI models is literally a no-brainer in almost all respects:

- At least 10 times cheaper than US models
- At least 90% as good for most tasks (programming, copywriting, etc.)
- Your data and privacy are MORE secure as it's open source and you can (and should) use it in a way where no-one sees your data, like self-hosting or via Zero Data Retention (ZDR) providers.

Honestly it's so freaking obvious that at this stage there are two categories of AI users: those who already use Chinese models, and those who will.

Src for graph: https://t.co/hh1N11JdFl

[James Wood 武杰士 @commiepommie]

🇯🇵 Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s anti-China PM, Exposed by Her Family: Her Grandson Started Full-Time at a Top Chinese University. She Was the Last to Know 🇨🇳

Japan’s most outspoken anti-China politician just faced a family situation that politics can’t sweep under the rug. Her only grandson has started full-time study at a top Chinese university this year. She found out after it was already decided.

Sanae Takaichi built a career on hardline confrontation with China. Yasukuni visits, constant red-line pushing, the usual right-wing performance that keeps her base energised. Yet the boy she expected to carry on the family name politically, her son’s only child, is now pursuing a full multi-year degree in China.

Not a short exchange. It’s a real undergraduate commitment at one of China’s premier universities, not a holiday program. The student bypassed the usual prestigious US and UK universities for a Chinese path.

The timing intensifies the pain. Only when the bags were packed and flights were booked did Takaichi learn the news. Her son, who is expected to take over her political endeavours, made the decision after personally examining Chinese higher education, specifically engineering and technology. He evaluated daily safety conditions, finding both options to be superior to the others.

Japanese media and online reaction has been merciless. “Anti-China is the job, running to China is real life” captures the mood in six words. Old clips of Takaichi attacking other politicians for being too soft on China are circulating with new captions asking how red her face is right now.

This isn’t an isolated case. Global political families are quietly making the same calculation. Trump’s granddaughter, Putin’s granddaughter, Vucic’s son and Biden’s niece have all spent time learning Chinese or studying in China. Once you look beyond the rhetoric, the pattern becomes clear.

The numbers back it up too. Japanese students heading to the US have fallen for five straight years while the flow toward China keeps growing. When families evaluating education quality, cost, safety and long-term opportunity look at the data, the results keep pointing in one direction.

Takaichi’s brand was built on painting China as a permanent adversary. Her own household just reached a different conclusion. That gap between public performance and private choice is the part that travels.

When the grandkids of the harshest critics are opting for Chinese universities, it makes you wonder where the real long-term investments are going.