China has about 120 days of stockpiles but they are going through them fast. They import about 1/3 of their needs.

Progressives are taking a cue from their European democratic socialists and getting really good at regulating industries they barely have.

True but top officials and contract officers, even brokerage employees are monitored for this type of behavior. Most govt employees and military are not actively monitored because they donâ(TM)t have enough authority to make financial decisions.

We also saw a case recently where someone won $400k betting Maduro would not be in office and itâ(TM)s thought they are likely a DOD or Trump admin insider.

Polymarket and other betting sites have basically become a way for insiders to profiteer on non public information but in a way that endangers states by adding a personal profit motive to govt policy that extends far beyond actual decision makers or those in a position to award govt contracts and now anyone around the water cooler can do it.

Meanwhile Ireland which likes to style itself an independent country is completely dependent on its neighbors for defense against Russia which is now routinely flying sea-launched drones over Irish territorial waters and airspace. The aggression spiked during President Zelensky's recent visit to Ireland where at least 4 military grade suspected Russian drones flew near the President's aircraft.

Ireland pretends it is what Israel actually is, an independent sovereign state participating in the global technology and trade economy without entangling alliances like NATO. In reality, Ireland is effectively protectorate of its own former colonial empire, the UK and the USA and because it is not a member of NATO, the Russians see it as an obvious target of military escalation that Russia could attack but not trigger NATO Article 5.

It's become a pretty common tactic, particularly with Qatari state-run and Hamas supporting media outlet Al-Jazeera to preface everything the state of Israel does with "illegal." Meanwhile Qatar is an absolute monarchy with a citizen population of only about 300k people, of which half are women who have virtually no legal rights, and the state holds about 2M mostly South Asian enslaved workers for most of the low level and domestic labor. Qatari media lecturing Israel on civil rights is beyond absurd.

Israel is a sovereign state. It decides what is legal to do with the data it collects via its intelligence and police services. Now it is fine if cloud providers operating outside of Israel don't want their business but Microsoft and Amazon have contracts with the Israeli govt for a variety of cloud infrastructure projects including an Israeli version of similar government-owned cloud partitions including some hosted physically inside Israel.

The Guardian fails to explain adequately but the court in question is likely the US Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act court (FISA) that approves warrants either for US persons (citizens anywhere or residents domestically) or for foreign assets on US soil like an Israeli partition in AWS. Those court orders often have gag orders attached that prevent service providers from disclosing them to the targets of the warrant.

There is also quite a bit of lawfare going on lately by a group called the Hind Rajab foundation with ties to Hezbollah in Europe that has been abusing courts in several countries by making evidence-free complaints against random Israelis, alleging war crimes without actually specifying any particular crime, mostly just part of their insane hatred of Jews.

That's apparently what this NIMBUS contract was about. The cloud providers would help Israel build out that private cloud on Israeli soil.

Most of the infrastructure in question under this NIMBUS contract, are in an Israeli govt data center operating as a private partition in AWS/Gcloud. This is similar to US Govt contracts with cloud providers. The idea is to use the cloud's interface to build up govt IT worker skill sets so they are more portable and to make hiring out of the private sector easier. The exception apparently is the AI infrastructure which is in high demand and very expensive if you can even get your order filled plus US govt export restrictions like those recently waived for the UAE.

  The Guardian is almost a self-parody when it comes to their conspiratorial tone when writing about Israel. The court orders or other legal processes that might be used to gain Israeli govt data are more likely to be FISA Court orders in the US or similarly in Europe, secret spy courts, basically. Allies do spy on each other. The Guardian uses a conspiratorial framing to seem like there is some World Police out there with the right to violate the sovereignty of one particular country that they don't like.

The Microsoft account is the entire point, which is also where TPM 2.0 comes in. Locking internet services behind Microsoft authentication schemes was always the plan, dating all the way back to the original .Net vision with Passport.Net (what was that, 2001ish?).

I like the part where they think forcing the rich to liquidate their paper holdings to pay a wealth tax is suddenly going to lead to actual wealth for anybody. Nothing new is created in the process except for government issued paper and we've all certainly felt the effects of that in the last few years. F*cking market cap, how does it work?

Literally the only reason I ended up settling on Amazon devices is the ability to side-load Android apps. The ability to run Kodi and RetroArch on my FireTV is a huge value-add, otherwise I can't think of any reason to allow Amazon into my home.

Of course there is: plugin electric hybrids. And if the EV-only people were remotely reasonable, they'd be doing everything in their power to get people into them NOW while the charging infrastructure is built up and the poor performance of Lithium batteries in cold environments is properly addressed. Additionally, that "waste" heat generated by ICE engines is a huge asset in most of the world and heat generation from batteries is hugely inefficient. Not everyone lives in a Mediterranean, Californian coastal environmental.

Fair enough but would you care to elaborate on which of his stated positions (or actions, for that matter) actually deviate further to the right of early-to-mid 90s Democrats? Enlighten me in my gross naivete.

Also, where does supporting NAFTA/essentially unrestricted free trade fall on the left-right spectrum?

Ridiculous take. Trump 2016 was a run-of-the-mill Democrat from the early to mid-90s. Biden 1988 was WAY far to the right of Trump 2016.