Geopol Analyst

International security, diplomacy, military & intel.

[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.

[Maria Dubovikova @politblogme]

One of the most heartbreaking examples of nonverbal communication to emerge from Iran.
I cannot call this a mere propaganda piece. It is the unbearable truth, laid bare through the profound art of cinematography and animation.

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Day 500 of the Russian war in Ukraine.

I am president of the Kyiv School of Economics, a former minister of economy of Ukraine, and a professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh. I left the US for Kyiv 4 days before the war.

These are the lessons I learned. 1/

[Igor Sushko @igorsushko]

🚨Part 2: Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen. As I continue translating & transcribing you can encourage me by Subscribing or donating https://t.co/LOxiphHvZN✊

[WarTranslated @wartranslated]

Prigozhin today is once again seen explaining how invaluable Wagner is for Russia, and how retreating from Bakhmut will lead to the collapse of the whole Russian front.

Also appears to be hinting at the fact that his mercenaries might find it rather unpleasant if they suspect that Russian authorities set them up by not providing ammo and reinforcements.

Besides. Why is he talking about retreating from Bakhmut at all, if just yesterday he was claiming to have “nearly surrounded” it?

[Alexander Gabuev 陳寒士 @AlexGabuev]

🧵🇨🇳🇷🇺
Does China distance itself from Russia because of war against Ukraine? A terrific @FT piece helps to understand how Beijing wants its policy towards Moscow to be seen in Western capitals. Spoiler alert: the real policy might be very different. Let me help to unpack it. 1/

[GeoConfirmed @GeoConfirmed]

GeoConfirmed, little thread.

"'Russian Defense Minister Shoigu inspected the forward positions of the Russian army in the combat zone,' the Russian media write."

❌No forward positions and no combat zone. (Thanks to @GlasnostGone)

He flew near the Kherson-Crimean border.
1/8

[Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture]

War is a very destructive human endeavour. But war is also a learning opportunity for military institutions. Many governments and institutions are watching the war in #Ukraine for insights into future competition and conflict. A thread on lessons and the war. 1/25 🧵

[Andrew S. Weiss @andrewsweiss]

1/x So many memorable passages in this remarkably candid interview with General Valery Zaluzhny, head of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Take time to read the whole thing. Here's couple of highlights.

@TheEconomist @shashj

[Geopol Analyst @S207183]

@ruudoverdegrens @fvdr Als je het desinformatie noemt heb je niet echt opgelet afgelopen 2,5 jaar. Duik maar weer eens in de artikelen en interview een paar van de honderden artsen (ook in de VS, FRA) die met succes IVM en HCQ hebben gebruikt.

[BLYSKAVKA @blyskavka_ua]

⚡️ Russia has attacked Ukraine with a missile with a simulated nuclear warhead — Defense Express

One of the missiles shot down over Kyiv on November 17 was a nuclear warhead simulator. This may indicate that the stock of cruise missiles in Russia is reaching a critical limit.

[J. A. Guerrero-Saade @juanandres_gs]

I love the idea of having this APT mysteries list to refer to (and hopefully collectively 'solve'). No better Cyber Paleontologist than @craiu.
https://t.co/mNo16asXEl

[Howard Altman @haltman]

Ukrainian Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Defense Intelligence directorate, told me about when he thinks the war will end, why Moscow keeps pushing the dirty bomb story, when Ukraine will recapture Kherson City and Crimea, and much, much more.

https://t.co/wA82wWfgmC

[John Hudson @John_Hudson]

Just obtained the letter Russia sent to the UN Security Council on Ukrainian "dirty bombs." It's way out there. It includes scenarios about how Ukraine would indigenously produce a so-called "dirty bomb" using its existing nuclear power plants.

[Andrey Baklitskiy @baklitskiy]

As Ru Defense Minister & Chief of General Staff were calling their Western counterparts suggesting Ukraine might use a “dirty bomb” on its own territory to frame Russia, I tried to unpack and make some sense of the whole situation 🧵1/20

[Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 @DefenceHQ]

A statement on the Chief of the Defence Staff’s call with the Russian Chief of the General Staff, General of the Army Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov:

[Dr. Liana Fix @LianaFix]

This is a most fascinating inside story of the run-up to the war by Boris Bondarev, the only Russian diplomat who quit his job and publicly criticized Moscow. Some take-outs in the thread below 👇 🧵

https://t.co/zf2Bj5fv6n

[Deborah Haynes @haynesdeborah]

Defence Secretary @BWallaceMP is in the US on a seemingly hastily-arranged trip. Fellow minister @JSHeappey hinted at what it’s about: “To have the sort of conversations that… beyond belief really the fact we are at a time when these sorts of conversations are necessary”