I like to put my money where my mouth is.

If I’m talking about an opportunity… or a sector… it’s probably because I’ve put substantial capital at stake.

For the next three months – and possibly beyond that – there’s one sector of the stock market that’s my biggest buy.

I’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars – in the last month.

I’m not alone in this conviction, either.

See, I dug into all the portfolios at Paradigm Press.

Everything Jim Rickards publishes… from his vantage point of defense, metals and resources…

And every portfolio by James Altucher too… ranging from artificial intelligence and biotech to other, more advanced technologies.

In fact, Enrique Abeyta just recommended one of my favorite companies in this sector, too.

Across Paradigm Press, there’s one company that popped up again and again.

I’m going to name that business for you today, in this article. It’s not behind a paywall. You don’t need to subscribe to anything.

First, I want you to understand what’s at stake.

The Last Time This Happened, Shares Tripled — FAST

The last time I saw the stars align like this was last year during an event we held called the All-In Summit.

See, at the time, we were caught up in this trade war with China…

And that put rare earth metals in focus. Rare earths are essential to all our advanced technology. We can’t have the tech without these resources.

That’s why all three of our primary analysts recommended shares of USA Rare Earth (USAR). They own the largest deposit of these metals anywhere in the world, outside China, who controls over 90% of the world’s processing.

Then, something remarkable happened.

Within two months, shares tripled in price. Reports began to leak of a direct government backing. More investors became aware of the company’s strategic position relative to the Chinese trade war. Analysts started to aggressively raise their price targets.

And that was just the shares. Readers who decided to leverage their trade using options made up to 1,000% — again, in just two months’ time.

(I’ve personally used options to make 1,000% dozens of times… those who say it cannot be done are lying to you).

Sure enough, the government ended up taking a direct stake in the business.

A New, “All In” Buy?

Their research is aligning once more.

There’s a new technology that’s essential to our nation’s security. We can’t protect our borders without it. And we can’t wage war properly without it either – at least, not anymore.

We’ve learned this the hard way due to the war in Iran. They’re using this technology against us to control the Strait of Hormuz and hold the global economy hostage.

Jim likes it for the defense implications. He sees a lot of money rushing into this sector. And indeed, the government is requesting a sizeable increase from last year, for this year’s budget (which starts October 1).

James likes it for another reason. Yes, it’s critical for all the aforementioned reasons. But it’s also one of the finest, real world examples where artificial intelligence is converging with robotics and real automation. Add in the government’s backing… and it looks like a layup.

I’m talking about drones – the technology that is rapidly replacing soldiers on the battlefield.

They’re used for a variety of purposes… surveillance and reconnaissance… kamikaze strikes… and even to counter-strike other drones.

These weapons have been on display during the Ukraine war for almost five years. Russia and Ukraine both use them extensively. There have been numerous, high profile instances where Ukraine has used drones to penetrate Russian territory and disable key infrastructure – allowing them to hold the enemy at bay. It’s one of the reasons this war has dragged on for so long.

Then there’s the war in Iran. Iran can produce drones for about $35,000 that can take out any ship in the Strait. It’s given them massive leverage.

But the biggest fear that I have personally in all this is China. There’s one Chinese company, called DJI, that can produce more drones that every business in America, combined… on a factor of about 100.

China is way ahead when it comes to robotics (not just drones) and other forms of automation. It’s one of the secret reasons why America has been building out AI data centers so aggressively – because we need to catch up, and fast.

The One Stock You Need to Own

The one company that keeps popping up across Paradigm Press is AeroVironment (AVAV) – the largest pure play in the drone space.

They manufacture a kamikaze drone called the Switchblade. It launches into the air, loiters in mid-air while it searches for its target, then attacks – falling from the sky to disable an enemy.

It comes in multiple sizes. Soldiers can carry smaller ones on their back and launch from a strategic position. Larger ones can take out tanks.

The U.S. army has ordered thousands upon thousands of these.

The company is also working on a newer product line, called Mayhem, that is larger, has more range – and is designed to be fully autonomous. It can also perform intelligence gathering, conduct electronic warfare, and of course, bomb opponents to hell.

I own quite a bit of the stock.

But I’m not putting all of my eggs in one basket.

The Government’s 24,000% Investment

I personally own shares of it as well. Enrique also recommended shares of it to some of his subscribers this week.

However, Jim also recommended a special trade that could return more than 10-times your money within weeks.

We’re targeting a major catalyst date.

See, the new federal budget starts October 1. And the government is requesting 24,000% more money for its autonomous warfare program.

Last year, this program received $225.9 million in funding.

This year, they’re asking for $54.6 billion.

The overall budget for drones, counter-drones and autonomous systems is expected to be even larger — $74 billion. We’re talking about the kind of money that major branches of the military spend – all being summoned at once to create what Jim calls “a seventh branch of our nation’s military.”

Nothing has ever happened on this scale.

And as we get closer and closer to the new fiscal year, we expect Wall Street to front run the opportunity.

Because starting October 1, we could see tens of billions of dollars rushing into this relatively new sector of the market where the companies are all really small. AVAV itself is not even a $10 billion company. And when small businesses get enormous backing from the most powerful government in the world, shares can move fast.

I really want you to understand what’s coming. Because this is a major investment theme. And I think it’s going to make a lot of people rich over the next year.

Jim is recommending a trade that could rise rapidly as we march into the new fiscal year. And it’s all starting this week, as Wall Street reveals some important data about how they’re positioning themselves.

I’ve positioned myself accordingly. But it’s also my responsibility to help communicate these ideas to our readers – because I get a bad feeling in my stomach when I’m making money and you’re not.

This opportunity rests at the convergence of so many forces… Washington and Wall Street… AI and defense… robotics and software… and the Pentagon is requesting tens of billions of dollars for it.

The post I’ve Invested $330,471 in This Sector appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

You may have already seen some of what I’m about to share in The Daily Reckoning. But given what we’re focused on here and the sheer amount of money now moving into this corner of the defense industry… I think it deserves a second look.

The drone itself is only part of what’s happening here. Building a military around unmanned systems requires an enormous industrial ecosystem underneath it like chips, sensors, batteries, rare-earth magnets, software, machine tools and, most importantly, the factories capable of producing these systems at scale.

That’s the side of this story Byron has been looking at.

So with that, I’ll pass it over to Byron to show you just how much the battlefield is changing and what this massive buildout could mean for investors…

We’re out of time. The future is now.

I’m talking about drones, which are no longer an exotic military sideshow, tucked away in research labs while the so-called “real warriors” plan the next campaign. Like phalanxes of marching soldiers, or guys riding horses into battle, that era is over. Drones are now the latest – and likely decisive – military thing.

The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, law enforcement and even firefighters are in the drone business. If it can fly, float, roll, crawl, loiter, listen, jam, scout, strike or blow itself up at the right place and time, it belongs in the new, unmanned order of battle.

Think of drones the way old-timers once thought of radios, radar, GPS, precision navigation or night vision. First, they look like clever add-ons, bolted to the airframe, deck plates, or a rack in the back of a truck. Then they become force multipliers. Over time, they become doctrine. Finally, they become table stakes.

Air Power Gets Less-Manned

Begin with air power. The Air Force has been “droning” for years, whether it used that word or not. Cruise missiles, decoys, loitering munitions, anti-radiation weapons and electronic attack packages have blurred the old line between aircraft, missiles and science fiction sky-robots.

A loitering munition can search, wait, attack or return if there is nothing worth killing. MALD, the Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, spoofs air defenses. HARM, the high-speed anti-radiation missile, hunts radar systems. Together, these tools show where air combat has gone: aircraft, missiles and semi-autonomous or autonomous systems now occupy the same battlespace.

MALD missiles. Credit Raytheon/RTX.

In other words, the drone is no longer a science and engineering experiment. It has become a business model for modern war, and a rebuke to past planning processes, acquisition timelines and chronic risk aversion, all designed for a slower world that is long past.

The Pilot Becomes a Mission Commander

Here’s the next step: collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA. These are unmanned aircraft that function via artificial intelligence (AI), built to fly alongside manned fighters, bombers, surveillance birds and tankers. They carry sensors, scout ahead, jam radars, haul missiles, absorb enemy fire or hit targets where commanders do not want to risk a living, breathing pilot. But the key part of a CCA is not the airframe; it’s the autonomy stack that lets the machine sense, decide, maneuver and cooperate inside a larger combat network.

For years, a small community of defense visionaries argued that war would become faster, cheaper, more distributed and driven by autonomous systems and AI. They were called too commercial, too theoretical, too Silicon Valley-ish. Turns out, though, those guys were right.

Now the Air Force has moved CCA from PowerPoint Dreamland to contracts, flight test and production. The air service is not just buying drones. It’s moving toward a procurement model in which hardware and mission software can be competed and upgraded on separate timelines. A future F-35, F-47 or B-21 will not fight alone. It will fight inside a moving code-cloud of sensors, shooters, jammers and electromagnetic tricks.

Drone is my copilot and wingman. Future notional CCA. Credit US Air Force.

And the central question is not whether a pilot is comfortable with an autonomous wingman. Broadly, that decision has been made and now the issue is how the overall package works in wartime, especially when ideas cycle through in days and weeks (and as we’ll discuss below, this is one of many lessons from Ukraine).

Trust in new technology is not an immediate and warm feeling; it must be earned. So, before anyone trusts an AI-driven CCA, the software, communications and cyber defenses must survive deception, electronic attack, GPS denial, spoofed data, degraded links and every other dirty trick a thinking enemy will throw at them.

The old Pentagon way of buying and building new weapons was to fund new ideas on the margin while protecting legacy programs of record. But that luxury is gone, which is why CCA is not just an aviation story. It’s a validation story, a software-assurance story and a network-resilience story.

Manned or unmanned, every aircraft is now a node in a large kill chain. If the network is hacked, delayed, spoofed or denied, the airplane’s performance becomes almost secondary.

The Navy Builds Mother Ships

Characteristically, the Navy took longer to get there, but it is getting there. In the mid-2010s, Northrop Grumman’s X-47B proved that an unmanned aircraft could launch from and land on an aircraft carrier; no small trick, considering that carrier aviation is one of the most demanding operating environments on earth (as I know from first-hand Navy experience).

Navy X-47B autonomous drone in 2015. Credit U.S. Navy.

The actual, experimentalX-47B aircraft (image above) went into storage; but over time, the idea behind the program morphed into Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray, an unmanned carrier-based refueling aircraft.

And okay, aerial refueling may sound boring, but it’s not (again, ask me how I know). Because tanking is range, range is reach and reach is combat power. Meanwhile, MQ-25 lays the command-and-control foundation for a future carrier air wing full of unmanned systems.

Follow that drone-style logic into non-carrier shipbuilding. New vessels are being built with dedicated space to store, fuel, prepare, arm, launch and recover unmanned systems — not just aerial drones, but surface and underwater drones too. In other words, a modern warship is no longer your granddad’s gray hull, stuffed full of guns, missiles and sailors. It has become a mother ship for both controlled and autonomous drones.

USS Somerset (LPD-25) can carry aerial, surface, subsurface drones. Credit U.S. Navy.

Whether launched by air, surface ship or submarine, drones can scout or attack. Underwater drones can map, listen, lay sensors, hunt mines, shadow submarines or perform missions too dangerous or dull for real people. That creates opportunities not just for traditional shipyards, but also for suppliers that can build unmanned vessels cheaply, quickly and at scale.

Ukraine Shows the Future

This is where Ukraine enters the story as a brutal laboratory and testing-range for drones. Small FPV (first person view) drones, long-range strike drones, loitering munitions and improvised systems have changed the character of the battlefield.

Drones watch trenches, spot artillery, attack armor, cut logistic lines, strike air bases and force both sides to move, hide, jam the other guy, and adapt fast. In fact, the life cycle of a drone’s usefulness is not years or months. It can be weeks, days, even hours or minutes because the enemy watches, learns, jams, copies and counters.

One critical lesson from Ukraine is that drones are not just warfighting tools. They are product development under fire.

Production Wins Drone Wars

For investors, the market angle is that drones are not just weapons. They are complex, moving AI learning systems. They require software updates, signal processing, anti-jamming tricks, antennas, batteries, motors, optics, tactics, operators and constant verification.

A drone unit is part air arm, part artillery observer, part radio shack, part machine shop, part software lab and part test range. The side that manufactures faster, ships quicker, assembles more efficiently, tests more realistically, updates software faster and repairs better gains the warfighting edge.

The Factory Is the Front

Now we get to the hard part. You don’t win a drone war with a boutique defense-industrial base. You win it with production, and not by the dozens, hundreds or thousands, but by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

For this vast scope of buildout you need carbon fiber, fiberglass, aluminum, titanium, specialty steels, small engines, propellers, batteries, rare-earth magnets, chips, cameras, antennas, LIDAR, software, test ranges, machine tools and skilled workers. And you need mines, mills, refineries and factories… especially factories.

This is why the new defense companies are talking like mass production industrialists. For example, Anduril’s Barracuda family is built around software-defined, mass-producible autonomous air vehicles. The selling point is not just range or payload. It’s fewer tools, fewer parts, faster assembly and a supply chain designed for scale; to “make it rain missiles,” so to speak.

Mass drop of Anduril “Barracuda” drones. Credit Alex Hollings/You Tube.

In a high-end war, the current arsenal of “exquisite” weapons will be consumed faster than Congress can hold hearings about why the armed forces are out of them. Gold-plated systems designed like hand-sewn, bespoke Saville Row suits may be impressive. But that’s not how to win a modern war against a capable foe.

Follow the Supply Chain

All of this does not mean the old defense primes will go away. Far from it. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon/RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, Huntington Ingalls, L3Harris and others in that arena still have customer relationships, classified program access, integration muscle, product lines, assembly and est facilities, workforce depth, access to capital, and of course entre to Congress.

But the drone boom is opening cracks in the castle wall. Legacy primes have checkbooks and technical benches that can scale. But startups can move faster. The likely winners will combine Silicon Valley speed with Detroit-style production, along with Pentagon-grade technical authority and combat reliability. In other words, the procurement establishment can no longer afford to treat the new crowd as a kiddie-table sideshow.

Watch shipbuilders too. The Navy’s future is not just buying more big gray hulls. The sea service is building out a mixed fleet of crewed ships, unmanned surface vessels, underwater drones, autonomous mine hunters, maritime sensors and launch-and-recover platforms. That points toward demand for steel, engines, electrical systems, autonomy packages, rugged communications, modular payload bays, shipyard capacity and repair yards.

Along these lines, one company that is both legacy but also quite nimble is Huntington Ingalls (HII). It’s worth a longer writeup all on its own, but not here. The takeaway is that HII builds nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and large numbers of surface ships, while is also has an aggressive program of drones called Romulus and Remus; the former being surface drones and the latter for underwater. The company is definitely working to secure long-term Navy business.

(Note: HII is not an official recommendation and we won’t track it here in Strategic Intelligence. But it’s a solid company for long term investors.)

On the other side of the planet, China understands all this about drones and the industrial base. Indeed, China has spent decades building the upstream and downstream muscle behind modern war: ore deposits, mines, mills, refineries, critical minerals, rare-earth magnets, batteries, electronics, components and final assembly. China’s shipyards alone are nothing less than astonishing.

Back here in the U.S., we’re just at the point of broad realization that every drone needs a supply chain before anyone can even think about finding a target. Carbon fiber, chips, magnets, batteries and sensors do not emerge from policy papers. They come from industrial systems that have yet to be built out in America.

All of this also puts rare earths and battery metals on the front page of defense investing. Neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium are magnet words. Magnet words are motor words. Motor words are drone words. Add lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminum and tungsten, and suddenly the drone story is also a mining story, a refining story, a battery story and an industrial metals story.

And no, we’re not tossing out the old platforms. Submarines are still war-winning weapons. Just as aircraft are critical weapons. Plus missiles, tanks, ships, satellites and radars. But ore in the ground is a weapon too. Refineries are weapons. Machine tools are weapons. Battery plants are weapons. Software libraries are weapons. Assembly lines are weapons.

Here’s the takeaway: in the new age of drone warfare, the factory is not behind the front. The factory is the front.

The Investment Lesson

Here’s the investment lesson: Drones change tactics because they put eyes, ears and explosives everywhere. They change operations because commanders can coordinate fires, movement and logistics with persistent surveillance and rapid feedback. And they change strategy because nations must plan for production depth, electronic resilience, data dominance and supply-chain sovereignty.

Follow the money and you’ll find it flowing toward autonomy, software, sensors, counter-drone systems, batteries, rare earths, machine tools, cyber resilience and the old-fashioned industrial base that still wins wars.

Modern war is industrial war, now fought at software speed. Stockpiles matter, but stockpiles run down. Production keeps armed forces in the fight, and logistics keeps production relevant.

So, while we’ve been discussing drones, don’t confuse the shiny moving thing with the whole story. The real story of a drone is the stack beneath it: motor, magnet, battery, chip, sensor, code, secure network, factory, mine and ore in the ground.

This is where the next great defense trade begins: not with an aircraft on a runway or a ship cutting a wake, but with the magnets, batteries, tools and factories that make drone war possible.

That’s all for now. Thank you for subscribing and reading.

The post Your Grandfather’s Military Is Dead appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

AI is changing the world. But not necessarily how you expect.

Like previous investment fevers — from the California Gold Rush to the Dot.com Bubble — it follows a well-trod path. The short version is this: speculators get excited…their early ‘investments’ raise prices…the companies spend money on chips and other ‘picks and shovels’…the spending is mistaken for end demand…and so much money stampedes in that earnings get trampled and can never justify the capital investment.

You can have all the intelligence you want — artificial, organic, instinctive…any kind you want — it’s not likely to change the pattern.

After the discovery of gold at Sutter’s timber mill in 1848, in rushed the miners, speculators, and suppliers. Claims were staked. Miners outfitted. With new money coming right up from California’s earth and streams, prices rose. In today’s dollars, a shovel cost more than $1,000. But then, when the easy surface deposits had been depleted, shovels were soon in over-supply.

And what’s this? Today’s nuggets — pulled from the dirt of our fake money credit market — are not as easy to get as they used to be. CNBC:

The 10-year Treasury note yield rose at the start of the week… The benchmark yield gained more than 4 basis points to 4.701%, while the 30-year Treasury bond traded up more than 3 basis points to 5.242%. The 2-year Treasury note yield rose more than 3 basis points as well to 4.241%.

Is this the beginning of the ‘bust’ phase for the AI Rush?

First, let’s look at the ‘theory’ underlying this massive bubble in AI-related investment.

The dot.com bubble was based on the idea that information could be transferred cheaply and quickly, electronically, thus boosting GDP. And with information so readily available, there was no excuse for people to make so many mistakes. Just search the internet for the right info. The ‘right’ answer was there somewhere. Eliminating bad investments would make the remaining uses of capital much more profitable. Like taking the dumb kids from the third grade…average test scores would go up.

It turned out that while the internet could deliver much more information and entertainment, it was promiscuous. Among the useful intel were millions of pages of drivel, click-bait, fake news, and idle entertainment. GDP growth, post 2000, went down, not up. Stupidity, bad taste and porno went up, not down. And did the internet avoid bad investments?

The worst single use of capital in the Internet Era was the attack on Iraq. Five trillion dollars down the drain. Anyone with an internet connection could have found that there were not likely to be any serious ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq. Nor was Iraq a sponsor of terrorism. Nor did it pose a plausible threat to the US. But even access to 3,000 years of military history — disaster after disaster — did nothing to stop it.

So, now we put the question to AI…did the US have a good reason for its attack on Iraq? Claude:

No. Containment and inspections were working, and the war’s own advocates later conceded the central premises were wrong.

And now, we have a source not just of info, but of judgement — knowledge itself. LLMs (Large Language Models) are clever. They will do your thinking for you. No more ‘mistakes,’ right?

AI can now replace the bottom and middle rungs of ‘knowledge work.’ Those jobs would otherwise be taken by young, aspiring ‘white collar’ strivers, the very people whose earnings were supposed to keep federal debt from spinning out of control.

Also afoot are plans to bring in even more capital…and make AI even more accessible. Here is the summary from Grok:

On or around August 10, 2026, Nvidia announced memorandums of understanding with Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, KKR. The goal is to set up independent financing platforms that aim to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital over time. This capital would help Nvidia’s customers (AI labs, enterprises, hyperscalers, and AI cloud providers) finance GPUs, systems, and data-center buildouts without relying solely on their own balance sheets.

Whatever bone it is given to gnaw on, the value added is the ‘judgement.’ And there you see the fatal flaw.

AI has no divine source of truth. It merely rests, like an old boot on a trash heap, on words compiled over centuries, thoughts discarded by geniuses, lessons learned by con men and saints, visions that came at midnight and vanished by morning.

All human in origin…these judgments are subject to revision, interpretation, contradiction…

…and the boom/bust cycle.

More to come.

The post Vanishing Midnight Visions appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

I read a lot of science-fiction growing up.

And in a strange way, these futuristic novels prepared me for today’s world.

I devoured books by Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson, Michael Crichton, and others.

So when the internet started taking off in the early 1990s, I already had a good idea about just how big (and crazy) it would become.

By that time I’d already read a dozen books about cyberspace, a term coined by William Gibson in his 1984 novel Neuromancer.

In Snow Crash, released in 1992, Neal Stephenson predicted social networks, internet addiction, virtual reality, the gig economy, hacking wars, and much more. The book was a huge hit in Silicon Valley, and inspired countless tech entrepreneurs.

Science-fiction has a long track record of not just predicting, but shaping the future.

The inventor of the modern submarine, Simon Lake, was directly inspired by Jules Verne’s 1870 book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He incorporated ideas from the book, including ballast tanks and a periscope.

Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the modern helicopter, was inspired by Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Clipper of the Clouds, which featured a multi-rotor flying machine.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury described tiny “thimble radios” which fit inside a person’s ears. Sound familiar?

And when Motorola engineer Martin Cooper created the first mobile phone, he credited the communicator from Star Trek for inspiring him.

Sci-Fi on AI

Sci-fi has a strange ability to shape the future. That much is clear.

So what does fiction have to say about AI? It’s a classic theme of the genre.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Blade Runner, many sci-fi stories involve artificial intelligence.

It’s a dark force in many fictional worlds. In one of my favorite books, Dune, released by Frank Herbert in 1965, any form of machine thinking is prohibited. In Herbert’s universe, AI nearly destroyed humanity.

My favorite line from the book is:

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

–Frank Herbert, Dune

As a result, in the Dune universe, one commandment stands above all others: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

It’s crazy to think Herbert wrote that in 1965. This aspect of the book has been on my mind lately. It’s a deep one. And relevant to the present.

Recent advances in agentic AI are straight out of a novel. The progress lately has been disturbing. It appears that we’ve entered an accelerating self-improvement cycle, where each new AI model is better than the last, and it is used to build the next. Bigger, faster, better, more disruptive. Rinse, repeat.

Agents can already build complex software with a single command. And hackers are having a field day with all the new goodies they have in their toolkits.

And it’s not just coding. Soon, agents will dominate all knowledge-work. Legal, medicine, accounting, writing, marketing, mathematics, physics, and just about everything else.

I can see the dangers Dune warned about clearly.

Too Much Power

The companies that win this sector will have unprecedented power. Because in the near future, AI will be used to do… everything.

And governments are already attempting to shape AI to their will. Chinese models won’t talk about Tiananmen Square, for example. And I’ve had American models get squirrely when I try to explore certain subjects, like the Nord Stream pipeline explosions. Every AI model has its own unique biases. Some are intentional, while others are accidental.

Already, special interest groups are publishing vast quantities of content designed to be vacuumed up and incorporated into future AI models.

These are small things for now, but soon they won’t be. The race to control the future of tech is on, and there are only two credible players. The U.S. and China.

We’re going to see some wild developments over the next few years. Chinese AI models, which undercut U.S. prices by ~90%, will likely be banned at some point. China has already banned our leading models.

Agentic AI models have also proven to be extremely capable hackers. This means that in the future, you’ll probably need a digital ID to access top-tier agents. More surveillance incoming.

All sorts of things, both beautiful and terrible, are coming soon.

It’s a sci-fi world, we’re just living in it.

The post Sci-Fi Shapes the Future appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

OpenAI hates you. Yes… That OpenAI… One of the tight-swimsuit glamour-girls of artificial intelligence, a company that sells the future in large language models, while enjoying access to Washington and even the White House. Plus, it now bears an odious aura of a Justice Department settlement for shutting American workers out of jobs.

Bottom Line: OpenAI… Hates… Your… Guts.

And in this note, I’ll explain why…

Whoopsie! No Qualified Americans…

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), OpenAI and subsidiary Statsig recently agreed to a $3.2 million settlement over allegations that they discriminated against U.S. workers during the Permanent Labor Certification process, or PERM.

Don’t dwell on the lowball number; for Silicon Valley, $3.2 million is pocket change. But as a public marker, the settlement speaks volumes: one of America’s most celebrated AI companies was accused of favoring low-cost, imported visa labor over American applicants.

The facts are disgusting, to the point of loathsome. According to DOJ, OpenAI did not advertise a series of PERM jobs on its external careers site. Instead, it sought U.S. workers via late-night, AM-radio ads that required paper applications by snail mail, while ordinary company hiring used modern electronic channels.

And whaddaya know? No Americans showed up. Then the foreign-worker pipeline moved along.

So, are you an American in tech? Did you go to school, “learn to code,” play by the rules and apply online like a normal person? Too. Bad. So. Sad. No. Job. For. You.

OpenAI denied wrongdoing (of course!). Still, it agreed to pay $1.2 million in civil penalties, a pittance, but also a de minimis level set by statute so we can’t exactly blame the DOJ lawyers. Plus, the company will create a $2 million back-pay fund, revise policies, train staff, accept electronic applications and submit to monitoring. More pocket change, really.

Still, though; this gives us a glimpse behind the curtain of widespread visa abuse and rank, pernicious discrimination against U.S. workers in their own country.

Tip of the Visa-Scam Iceberg

The facts of this settlement matter because PERM was never meant to be a paperwork tunnel to move visa workers into permanent U.S. jobs. It was supposed to promote good-faith efforts to recruit ready, willing and able U.S. workers.

But when the process becomes a corrupt Kabuki Theater of late-night notices, paper-only applications and hidden job postings, we’re not looking at a shortage of skills. It is a rigged, wired, anti-American system.

And clearly, OpenAI is not some bootstrap tech wannabe working out of mom’s garage. It rides a mainline track straight into Washington, D.C. It launched OpenAI for Government. It works with U.S. National Labs, the Pentagon, NASA, NIH, the Treasury Department and the General Services Administration; all up to and including highly classified workloads.

And yet… While OpenAI covets the American state, American data, American contract$, American legitimacy and American regulatory accommodation, it overtly discriminates against American workers.

And it’s not me saying it, but the U.S. Department of Justice.

America’s New Moral Equation

Every nation has a labor policy. Rome had slaves. The history book kingdoms of Medieval Europe had serfs and peasants. Imperial Britain had colonies.

Today, America has consultants, contractors, body shop operators, and HR departments whose role, far too often, is to make expensive American workers disappear and replace them with cheap, imported labor.

Never mind that Americans paid for the roads, schools, courts, government grants, power grids and defense budgets that built the platform on which these companies stand. The trick is to privatize the gain and socialize the losses.

Indeed, this recent OpenAI settlement illuminates a key moral point. That happily – and with ill-concealed greed – companies want the benefits of operating in America. They court the government, pitch national-security relevance… yet they treat American workers as one more cog in the wheel, just interchangeable line items in global labor inventory.

The answer ought to be straight out of Politics 101: if the federal government opens lucrative doors, companies must honestly work to recruit U.S. citizens before importing substitutes, if not visa-scabs.

And no, this is not an anti-immigration issue. It’s workforce policy, industrial policy, national security and culture. A nation that will not employ its own engineers, technicians, programmers, machinists and builders is liquidating its future.

The Myth of the “Talent Shortage”

As I’ve discussed before, for over 40 years, Americans were told that companies must import labor because the domestic pool is inadequate. The framing changes; it’s a “skills gap,” or “STEM shortage,” or we need “global talent,” and obviously we all want “the best and brightest.” But the result is the same.

Employers claim scarcity, government loosens the pipeline, and American workers discover that the “shortage” somehow leaves them with stagnant wages, layoffs, age discrimination, and young graduates who can’t get their first job except as a bartender or barista.

In essence, a rotten system incentivizes many firms to game the system and use imported labor as a substitute for hiring and training Americans or retaining experienced employees. But at this stage, when companies say they can’t find talent while refusing to hire young Americans or retain seasoned ones, the public isn’t fooled because – obviously! – the shortage is manufactured; it’s fake.

And this OpenAI outrage is just one example. Consider another company, Cognizant. It’s a major H-1B user and has faced repeated litigation alleging that its workforce practices disadvantage U.S. workers and favor visa-heavy staffing pipelines from India.

In fact, in March 2026, a New York jury awarded former Cognizant executive Jean-Claude Franchitti $8.4 million after finding unlawful retaliation tied to his complaints about discrimination and H-1B hiring practices. While other Cognizant cases have raised similar issues over staffing, promotion and termination patterns. And to be sure, legal details differ by company and case, but the theme is hard to miss: a visa-heavy, Indian-favored labor model has become a mechanism to sideline Americans.

Hollowing Out the Middle

By now, the visa gimmick is clear when you do the pattern recognition. Companies lay off higher-cost Americans and replace them with imported body shop staff based on (often) fake credentials from shady diploma mills. They lean on H-1Bs, outsourcing firms and recruiters. To add insult to injury, they next complain that no qualified Americans are available.

In a saner world, healthy companies depend on a solid middle: experienced employees who know the systems, midcareer people who can train the young, and junior employees who learn by doing. But break that chain and the company looks leaner but has become brittle.

On paper, payrolls fall and margins improve. In reality the business is often just performing an asset strip: it’s burning down the knowledge, judgment, safety habits, customer memory and the informal apprenticeships that keep complex systems alive.

In other words, a business school and management gimmick has become a widespread economic disease. Displaced Americans earn less, spend less and pay less tax. Communities lose good jobs. Families lose ladders upward. National competence weakens because practical knowledge no longer passes cleanly from one generation to the next.

Imported Labor, Bad Business and Local Consequences

The pattern is not limited to OpenAI or Cognizant. Microsoft is another example, with heavy criticism for layoffs while sponsoring thousands of H-1B approvals. Or consider household names like American Express, FedEx, IBM, HomeDepot and other large employers that have appeared in recent reporting over layoffs, outsourcing, visa sponsorship and replacement economics.

Each case has its own facts. But once American workers see layoffs paired with cheaper labor channels, they understand the game.

In communities built around technology, especially, lost jobs change everything: housing, schools, small businesses, tax collections and civic life. In the 1970s, we had the Rust Belt when major industries closed across the heart of the nation. Now, a so-called “tech” company might stick around as a corporate campus, but its economic value is lowered via cheap wages, if not outsourced labor or jobs routed through “temp-worker” channels. One way or another, less of the value-add falls and takes root in jurisdictions where the social costs remain.

And again, don’t view it as hostility toward foreigners. It’s more like pointing out that the obvious duty of a sovereign nation is to protect the economic health and prospects of its own citizens, and certainly its lawful workers. A country that refuses to draw that distinction teaches its people that citizenship has no practical meaning. We’re just one big, wide, free trade zone with no national purpose or meaning. And good luck with that!

Or look at it this way: at some point, Americans must ask what it means for a corporate entity to be an American company. A U.S. headquarters is not enough. Access to American stock and capital markets, courts, infrastructure, consumers, universities, defense contracts and subsidies should come with reciprocal obligations.

An American company should recruit Americans in good faith, train them where skills are scarce and retain them where institutional knowledge matters. It should not manipulate hiring processes to hide jobs from qualified U.S. applicants (like OpenAI and its AM radio ads; seriously?) or take public benefits while treating the U.S. workforce as disposable.

America’s vitality and strength must not be measured by how easily employers can replace citizens with foreign, low-wage workers. It should be measured by whether citizens can build careers and families in the economy their country sustains.

The Policy Response

The OpenAI settlement points toward policy responses. How about just freezing all visas? Don’t laugh it off.

One way or another, penalties must be large enough to change behavior. PERM recruitment should be transparent, digital and auditable. Visa vendors and labor brokers should be audited. Companies claiming shortages should show what they did to recruit, train and retain Americans first.

And definitely, Congress must revisit statutory damages and penalties. If the fine is smaller than the bonus generated by labor savings, the law becomes a dumb, little, nickel & dime toll booth along the economic superhighway. It’s like with U.S. automakers 50 years ago, and their “exploding gas tanks” (look it up); overtly, large firms simply priced gross, criminal misconduct into the business model.

Universities and other schools should face the same truth. It’s dishonest to tell young Americans to take several years and pay big bucks and study engineering, computer science or advanced manufacturing while employers design pathways around them. “Study STEM” becomes a cruel, expensive joke when the first rung of the ladder is removed.

Last Point: Culture Follows Work

Here’s the takeaway: work is not just a paycheck. It teaches discipline, responsibility, teamwork and confidence. It gives young people a place in their own country, if not the world, Plus, older workers have a reason and opportunity to pass along what they know. Remove the foundation of productive, remunerative effort, and the culture weakens.

America is playing with fire, here, with this “EZ-Visa” worker replacement regime. It tells Americans that the country wants their taxes, infrastructure, consumer spending, military protection and political consent… but not them as people.

And not to put too fine a point on things, it tells citizens that the politicians and corporate bubbas disdain them (if not hate them). And no republic can sustain that for long.

The OpenAI settlement is small in dollars but huge in meaning, while Cognizant is another burning road flare on the fuel load of social resentment. Add Microsoft, AmEx, FedEx, IBM, Home Depot and others to the news flow; it reminds us that layoffs followed by cheaper labor channels are not efficiency, only a greedy, chiseling business gimmick with national consequences.

The U.S. cannot bench its own citizens, outsource its memory, import an unacculturated and not-very-middle class, and then expect to remain strong. If America wants American industry, innovation and security, it must demand fair access to jobs:

• Hire Americans.
• Train Americans.
• Retain Americans.
• Promote Americans.

And when companies take the benefits of the American system while blocking Americans from the workplace, the policies, laws and courthouses must make the price high enough that the flinty, greedy, penny-pinching boardroom suits learn a stiff lesson about what citizenship is worth.

That’s all for now. Thank you for subscribing and reading.

The post OpenAI Hates You appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

For decades, America was the undisputed king of drone warfare.

Specifically, the U.S. pioneered MALE drones. MALE = Medium-Altitude, Long-Endurance.

Models like the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper proved highly effective in the Global War on Terror (GWoT).

General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper

They can fly for up to 24 hours, performing reconnaissance, dropping precision bombs or firing missiles when targets are spotted.

MALE drones are slow, cruising at about 250 MPH. But they were still revolutionary. An eye in the sky over hot zones, delivering munitions on enemy targets. All without risking American pilots.

For a long while, the U.S. dominated military drone technology.

But the game has changed. And now the U.S. has catching up to do.

Slow, Expensive, Vulnerable

Against enemies with poor air defenses, drones like the MQ-9 were highly effective. So in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, MALEs worked like a charm.

Yes, they were expensive at more than $30 million a piece, but for a long time, the model worked well.

Our adversaries weren’t idle though. Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea were all tailoring their militaries specifically to counter the superpower hegemon.

Iran developed an anti-air weapon called Missile 358. It was designed specifically to take down slow MALE drones like the MQ-9 Reaper. It can be broken down into sections and carried by a small team.

Source: SCMP

So far this year, Iran has shot down at least 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones. Likely using Missile 358s. That’s nearly $1 billion worth of hardware. Yemen’s Houthis have shot down another ~20 MQ-9s, using Iranian gear.

The problem with MALE drones is that they’re slow and expensive. A combo that no longer works for modern combat.

The new generation of drones can be fast and expensive, or slow and cheap.

But NOT slow and expensive. Not anymore.

The Kamikaze Revolution

Iran knew it couldn’t beat us when it comes to traditional airpower. So they focused on asymmetric warfare. Primarily missiles and drones.

But their drones weren’t like ours. They were one-way kamikaze models, exemplified by the Shahed-136.

A cheap fiberglass body, a moped engine driving a propeller, and 50 kg warhead (110 lbs), and some avionics and navigation gear. The wings store enough fuel for more than 1,000 miles of range. The cost is low, somewhere between $10,000 and $40,000 per unit.

The Wall Street Journal ran the picture below in a piece titled, “Every Nation Wants to Copy Iran’s Deadly Shahed Drone” last fall.

Source: WSJ

Iran licensed the Shahed-136 tech to Russia, and Putin’s military has used the design extensively. They’ve upgraded almost every aspect of it, and now have jet-powered models which fly much faster.

Around the world, every country with a respectable defense sector is working on similar platforms. The U.S. has the LUCAS (Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System), which reportedly performed well in Iran.

America’s LUCAS drone costs around $35,000. So for the price of 1 MQ-9 Reaper, you could buy around 857 LUCAS drones.

Taiwan just announced a target to produce 100,000 drones per month by 2030, with the goal of making the island a “hellscape” during a hypothetical Chinese invasion.

Russia is launching an estimated 270 long-range drones per day at Ukrainian targets. Ukraine is launching volleys of up to 700 in a single night, designed to overwhelm Russian defenses (but with such large volumes, breaks are required to rebuild stocks).

We’re on the cusp of something major.

A Rare Moment

Revolutionary. Game-changer.

These words get thrown around a lot. They usually don’t mean much.

But right now such language is fully justified.

We’re in the midst of a true paradigm shift. The future of warfare is clearly unmanned systems.

Our military has received the message, and the wheels of change are turning. Spending on drones is set to soar by thousands of percent.

But it still won’t be enough. Even with proposed spending hikes, one-way attack drones still represent less than 1% of total military spending.

In Ukraine, General Wesley Clark says that 90% of Russian casualties are caused by drones. That’s modern warfare in a nutshell.

So even though spending will soar over the next year, it’s going to soar again after that. Then again, until drones reach 50% or more of total spending. That’s my target, and it’s going to happen fast.

The old American defense giants are not well prepared for this new world. Too slow, stuck in their ways. Handcuffed by bureaucracy.

A new class of nimble, fast-moving companies is laser-focused on drones. They’re gaining real-world experience in Ukraine and Iran. Rapidly iterating to beat counter-drone systems.

We’re still early in this drone story, and there are incredible opportunities out there.

The post The Evolution of Hunter-Killers appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Here is an unpopular opinion… I think the data center buildout will fall far short of expectations. And I’m not the only skeptic.

Giant investment bank Goldman Sachs expects companies to complete only about 50% to 60% of data center capacity. That’s due to delays and cancellations.

Data centers are incredibly unpopular. Ask anybody.

According to Gallup’s March 2026 poll, 71% of Americans oppose data centers in their area. Half of those polled are strongly against them. The big reasons are:

• Resource Usage (water and electricity): 50%
• Quality of Life (traffic and congestion): 22%
• Effect on Costs (tax increases): 20%
• Pollution (noise, light, and water): 16%
• Negative View of AI: 27%

Meanwhile, data centers get special treatment from politicians. For example, in Texas, Meta (the parent company of Facebook) spent $1.3 million on the Texas primary elections. Elon Musk put $500,000 into state senator candidates.

People smell a rat. You can’t escape the rising cost of electricity.

According to Dr. Ben Green, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information and School of Public Policy, tech companies are right to be concerned about public disdain for data centers. In a recent interview with The Harvard Gazette, he laid out the worries of everyday Americans:

The public is concerned about rising electricity rates caused by data centers. They are concerned about the enormous water use that data centers require. They’re concerned about public handouts in the form of tax breaks that are going to data center developers, and they’re also aware that data centers don’t bring meaningful economic development, especially in the form of jobs.

The problem is that our power grid is old. It needs a lot of investment to bring it into good working order. It can’t handle a massive surge of demand as it stands. Data centers add massive new load to that grid. They currently use 4.4% of all electricity generated in the U.S. That will jump to 12% by 2028, according to research from Harvard Kennedy School.

However, it’s not simply the unpopularity of data centers that will get them canceled. It’s mainly the supply chain for all the stuff that they need. The biggest issue regarding supply is connection to the power grid.

Utility connection can take more than five years, according to Hanwha Data Centers. They found four factors that create the largest delays:

• Utility study backlogs
• Transmission upgrade requirements
• Permitting complexity
• Equipment lead times

These problems tie back to our aging grid. It can’t handle this kind of demand growth. At the end of 2023, eleven thousand, six hundred projects waited to connect to the grid. Those projects represented 2,600 gigawatts of generation and energy storage. At the time, the U.S. grid’s entire energy generation capacity was only 1,280 gigawatts.

It’s a huge problem, but it isn’t new.

Only 13% of the new power requests submitted from 2000 to 2019 were in operation by 2024. That’s not good. Less than one in five got through. Looking ahead, that could mean even fewer data centers.

All of this is important because some folks see data centers as a lynch pin for commodity investments (particularly metals). So, I posed this question for research this week:

“What is the investment case for copper without data centers?”

Here’s the thing – it’s still great. You know I’m a copper bull. It’s my favorite metal. It’s the key that unlocks the electricity we need for the future. It’s the railroad that makes all this AI data work.

And it’s not just AI. EVs, renewable power, batteries, etc. are all incredibly copper intensive. Updating and expanding power grids all over the world, not just here in the U.S., requires billions of pounds of copper.

On the other side of the equation, we’re dealing with an aging fleet of mines that require more ore moved to produce the same amount of copper. And there is currently a lack of new copper mines coming online.

Make no mistake, data centers are not the only reason metal prices soared. And because a few won’t get built doesn’t derail the bull market case for both aluminum and copper…let alone the suite of critical minerals.

Even without data center demand, there will be a “structural deficit” of copper by the end of the decade. That’s the next few years. According to S&P Global’s recent forecast, copper mining will peak in 2030 at 27 million metric tons. That study shows current copper demand at 28 million metric tons today, rising 50% to 42 million metric tons by 2040.

We have not yet discovered enough mines to meet that demand, let alone those under construction.

Short of another massive global recession, sustained higher copper prices are inevitable. We do not have the supply we need to meet forecast demand. That’s why everyone should own copper stocks. The easiest way to do that is to buy the Global X Copper Miners ETF (NYSE: COPX).

Make no mistake, if even half of the data centers get built, it’s a massive increase in copper demand. And we need copper more than ever to continue the mass migration to an electric world. Invest accordingly!

The post AI is Just Gravy for Copper appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Last week Senator Rand Paul dragged Anthony Fauci, kicking and screaming, to testify in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

This is the man who likely created COVID-19 by funding gain-of-function research at a biolab in Wuhan, China.

The man who said anyone criticizing him was anti-science. That he himself was Science.

The man who told us we’d die if we didn’t take the mRNA vaccines. That they were 100% effective, with no side effects. Who tried to force us to take them via mandates. Who encouraged lockdowns, the effects of which are still wreaking havoc on the economy.

The man who blatantly lied and said natural immunity wasn’t real. That we all needed endless “vaccine” boosters. It makes me angry just thinking about it.

The man who preyed on scared and vulnerable people to increase his prestige, funding, and possibly even his own wealth.

For decades, Fauci has lorded over America’s public health system, creating a corrupt revolving door of cronies who all had their hands in the cookie jar (more on that shortly).

So forgive me if I have a big smile on my face seeing recent pictures of Dr. Mengele Fauci’s mug looking like a sad kid with a dunce cap on.

Source: New York Post

And another of his wife Christine, also a corrupt DC health insider, flipping the bird at photographers.

Contempt of Court

During his testimony, Fauci didn’t answer a single question. He invoked the 5th Amendment 111 times, refusing to answer questions so he wouldn’t incriminate himself.

Senator Paul told Fauci, “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify today.”

As a result, Fauci now faces a federal contempt of court charge. And he could face up to 1 year in prison for this charge alone! (As a reminder, Trump advisors Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon both served 4 months in prison for contempt, due to Biden admin persecution).

So even though Biden pardoned Fauci on his way out of office, that only covers crimes up until that point.

Yesterday, Rand Paul posted the following to X (Twitter), stating “It’s official: letters to prosecute Fauci have been hand delivered to @DOJ”:

Source: X

Glorious.

But will Fauci actually end up in jail? Perhaps. However, just seeing him squirm, and watching all this come out into the open is a relief by itself. He’s 85 years old. If his reputation is forever tarnished, and this leads to reforms in U.S. healthcare, that will be enough.

Senator Paul has now recovered Fauci’s diary and COVID-era phone. There will be many more interesting discoveries to come.

Emails and Diary Expose Fauci

One of the more interesting discoveries from the Senate investigation is that Fauci asked Duke University’s Barton Hayes to nominate him for a major health award.

In the email below, Fauci asks to be nominated for Israel’s $1 million Dan David Prize.

Source: X

And what do you know? Over the years, Hayes’ department has received over $1.2 billion of funding from Fauci’s NIAD to work on HIV/AIDS vaccines.

A chummy little circle of cronies, all rubbing each others’ backs.

And in a diary entry, Fauci revealed the extent of his vanity:

“It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person[s] in the world.”

Rickards’ Take

As I saw the Fauci situation unfolding, I smiled to myself thinking of our friend Jim Rickards’ joyful reaction.

Jim has been one of the most vocal anti-Fauci voices in the country, starting from very early in the pandemic.

First, these so-called vaccines are not really vaccines in the widely understood sense.

A traditional vaccine involves an injection either with a weakened form of the virus you are protecting against or a similar virus. Either one can produce antibodies that remain in the system and fight the actual disease if you get it.

These new vaccines are entirely different.

I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here, but these treatments use experimental genetic modification to inject you with mRNA, which is a partial strand of genetic code.

That mRNA then enters your cells and orders the cells to construct a spike protein similar to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID). This spike protein then precipitates antibodies that can reduce your reaction to SARS-CoV-2 if you get it.

But the “vaccine” does not prevent you from getting COVID, and it does not prevent you from spreading it to others.

This was heresy at the time. Mainstream media was screaming about 100% efficacy back then. But Jim was ahead of the curve, per usual.

Just this week, Jim sent out a text message comparing Fauci to the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (he really doesn’t like Fauci):

Mengele directly ordered the deaths of 400,000 souls. Fauci caused the deaths of millions.

Mengele experimented on several thousand victims. Fauci experimented on hundreds of millions of unwilling victims with his fake vaccines (actually, experimental gene-modification therapy), which were forced on people under the threat of losing their jobs, benefits or military rank.

Mengele was open about what he did, despite how horrific it was. Fauci lied about funding the research that caused the pandemic, lied about the origins of the COVID virus and lied about his role in funding that research — all while he was aware that masking, lockdowns and social-distancing mandates would do little to stop the spread of the virus.

Fauci’s diary entries, in fact, reveal that he was more concerned with receiving cash awards and becoming a media personality than he was with saving lives.

Mengele will forever be reviled by history. Fauci will also be reviled by history. In my view, he caused even more deaths than Mengele, then lied to our faces about his role in what I believe was the greatest medical crime in history.

Explosive.

Note: If you’re interested in joining Jim’s text message list, click here. It’s free, and you’ll get exclusive research, updates, and special offers.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on the Fauci investigation. More soon.

The post Fauci’s Day of Reckoning appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Today’s college graduates are being ejected into the real world and finding a cold, harsh reality.

The job market stinks.

New York Fed data shows that 42% of recent college grads are currently in a job that doesn’t require a degree.

At big tech companies, new graduates now account for just 7% of hires. That’s down more than half since 2019.

Companies across the country are hiring fewer entry-level white-collar workers. Recruiting firm Cadient recently showed that entry level job postings have fallen 73% since 2022 (the same year ChatGPT was released – coincidence?).

If companies aren’t hiring entry-level people, how are young grads supposed to get the experience needed to get more senior jobs?

It’s brutal out there. And stocks are at all-time highs! Imagine what would happen if we got a crash and recession.

The bottom rung of the white-collar career ladder is already breaking. And it’s going to get even more challenging from here.

Blame AI, Immigration, and Outsourcing

Advanced AI agents are playing a big role in this shift. Work that was previously done by new hires and interns is being handed off to ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Claude.

As AI agents become capable of handling increasingly complex tasks, this disturbing trend will only accelerate.

Add in the massive influx of immigrant workers on visas like the H-1B, who are taking up an increasingly large share of desk jobs, and it’s an ugly situation. These workers happily accept lower pay and longer hours (I don’t really blame them. The blame lies with our politicians for letting it happen).

The idea that America needs to import tech workers from the 3rd world is so laughable I can’t believe anyone says it with a straight face. Yet politicians on both sides of the aisle do so on a regular basis.

Big tech/AI is the worst offender when it comes to hiring foreign workers over Americans. OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, was recently fined $3.2 million for discriminating against Americans in favor of foreign workers. According to U.S. law, companies are only supposed to get green cards for workers if they can’t find an American to do the job. But OpenAI wasn’t even trying to place Americans in some jobs. They were allegedly aiming for cheap foreign labor first. This scheme is absolutely rampant in tech.

The job listings are initially hidden, so nobody applies. Then they say “gosh nobody applied for this job we hid, so we have to hire a H-1B…”

The $3.2 million settlement is a start. But if we want this situation to change, the fines need to be a lot bigger. $3.2 million is literally nothing to big tech. Boycotts could also be an interesting tool, one which will certainly come into play eventually.

Then we have old-fashioned outsourcing, where a company fires its domestic team and boots up an operation abroad, often in India. Multiple friends of mine have been laid off due to outsourcing in recent years.

Put it all together, and it’s a rough situation for white-collar workers. Especially young ones.

The Blue-Collar Option

For a long time in this country, it felt like the only route to success was getting a college degree and finding a nice desk job. It was never really true, of course. But it sure felt that way when I was a kid.

But with the rise of AI, mass immigration, and outsourcing, this idea is breaking down.

Fortunately there is another path young people can take. The trades. And it’s going to become a lot more popular going forward.

My 17-year old son is a good example. He recently started working as an electrical apprentice. He’s already making $24 an hour. Not bad.

His senior year of high school will be spent learning the trade, while getting paid for it. It’s part of an apprenticeship program run by an organization called Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC). He’ll still graduate with his class, and even get college credits should he ever choose to pursue a degree.

IEC matched him with a local electrical company, which hired him. The company pays for his required classes, gives him a full set of tools, and offers on-the-job training. Not a bad deal.

By 21 years old, he should be making $65,000+ as a licensed journeyman electrician. And by then he should be able to save up $100,000+ living at home.

Apprenticeship programs like this are available all over the country. Many people just aren’t aware of them. For thousands of years, apprenticeships were the standard for professions. They will be again.

Blue-collar careers certainly have their advantages. No college debt, no uncertainty about AI disruption, and plenty of demand.

There are drawbacks, too, of course. It’s a physically strenuous job. But if I were his age, I’d be doing the exact same thing. I couldn’t be prouder of the path he chose.

To be clear, there are some occupations which still require a university degree. Engineering, architecture, medicine, computer science, math, etc. But AI is already eating into these jobs, and there are major disruptions on the horizon.

Let’s face it. The value of most college degrees is plummeting. Especially liberal arts. The snowball’s rolling down the hill, gathering mass and speed.

Blue-collar pay will hold up far better than most “knowledge” jobs over the next few decades. The introduction of AI practically guarantees it, even before factoring in immigration and outsourcing.

Yet despite all the emerging evidence, far too many kids still believe they need to go to college to make a decent living. This simply isn’t the case today. And it definitely won’t be in the future.

More young people should consider a career in the trades. Plumbers, electricians, welders, and other skilled workers make good money and have a lot more job security than most desk workers.

In an era filled with immigration, AI disruption, and outsourcing, the outlook for skilled blue collar work is bright.

So if there are young people in your life who are struggling with direction, encourage them to consider the trades. I’m convinced it’s the best option for many kids (and adults) today.

The post The Blue-Collar Path appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

In 1493, Pope Alexander VI picked up a pen and drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Everything west of that line belonged to Spain. Everything east belonged to Portugal. Two kingdoms split an entire hemisphere neither of them had ever seen, based on one man’s signature in Rome.

It was the greatest real estate deal in history. No inspection. No survey. No buyer’s remorse allowed.

There was just one problem. A line on a map doesn’t hold ground. Ships and soldiers do.

The Friar Who Called the Bluff

In 1539, a Dominican friar named Francisco de Vitoria stood up in a lecture hall in Salamanca, Spain, and said something dangerous.

He said the Pope’s line was worthless.

Vitoria argued that a pope in Rome had no power to hand out land in the Americas like party favors. He said sovereignty doesn’t come from signatures, but something real.

His lectures, known as De Indis, are considered the founding document of international law. Buried inside them is an idea Vitoria’s successors spent the next 400 years working out in practice, even if they never said it out loud.

Simply put, a piece of paper means nothing without the power to hold what you claim.

What the Right of Conquest Meant

For most of recorded history, nations operated on a simple, unwritten rule. If you conquered a territory and could hold it, the world would eventually recognize it as legitimately yours.

“I respect your conquest, and you respect mine.” And however ugly the process, the map eventually caught up with reality on the ground.

This is how most of the borders you grew up with actually got drawn. While force drew them, time and recognition secured them.

The Rule Still Applies

After World War II, the United Nations Charter banned the use of force to acquire territory. Officially, conquest was over. Allegedly, borders were now untouchable by force.

It sounded wonderful, but wasn’t quite true.

The unwritten rule didn’t disappear. It just stopped being polite company. Nations still take territory by force. They just no longer call it that, while everyone else pretends not to notice… right up until the day they’re forced to deal with it.

For instance, regarding Ukraine, a settlement with the West that leaves Russia holding land it seized by force is a quiet admission the old rule still applies. No bueno.

The Relevance

The Conquest Clause governs nations. And you.

In 2022, the United States and its vassals froze roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves. Keystrokes froze the money, because you don’t need tanks or soldiers to steal anymore.

Moscow held the paper, but the West held the actual power. When push came to shove, the paper lost.

That’s conquest dressed up in a suit. Legal title is a courtesy extended by whoever currently runs the system you’re relying on. It holds up… until it doesn’t. Just ask Venezuela.

Remember, your bank balance is a promise from an institution. Your brokerage account is an entry in someone else’s database. Even your dollars are a claim on a system the Federal Reserve can (and will) dilute whenever it wants. None of these things are wrong to own. But none of them are yours the way a friar in 1539 would have understood the word.

Holding your gold in your hand needs no one’s permission or system. Land you own is yours in the oldest sense there is. A business with real customers and real cash flow answers to you and no one else.

Don’t rush to sell your paper assets. Stocks, bonds, and bank accounts still do the heavy lifting in a portfolio. But know the difference between what you hold and what you’re merely promised. Make sure some of what you own doesn’t require anyone’s permission to stay yours.

Wrap Up

Holding your gold feels different from seeing a number on a screen, even when the number represents more wealth. Vitoria’s lesson is in our DNA. Paper is a courtesy, not a fact.

Nations have always known this, even if they pretend otherwise. The lawyers may write treaties, but the world waits to see who can hold the ground.

When it comes to your wealth, ask what you hold, not just what you’re owed. The gap between the two has a way of revealing itself at the most inopportune time.

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