Join Us at the 2023 World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida!

? Dates: November 17, 18, and 19 ? Location: Orlando, Florida, USA (or tune in from home with our virtual ticket options)

Are you ready to unlock the future of economics and finance? Prepare for an unforgettable World Economic Conference experience in sunny Orlando, Florida! This premier event is your gateway to insights, networking, and valuable resources that will supercharge your understanding of the global economy.

?️ What’s Included for In-Person Attendees:

1. Event Admission: Enjoy reserved seating assigned based on the order of ticket sales, ensuring you have a prime view of every presentation.
2. Presentation Slides: Gain access to the presentation slides from all speakers, allowing you to delve deeper into the topics discussed.
3. Video Recording: Can’t make it to a session? No worries! You’ll receive access to video recordings of all conference presentations, so you can catch up at your convenience.
4. WEC Event App: Connect with the conference on a whole new level. Access presentation slides, bonus reports, recordings, and more via the official WEC Event App.
5. Bonus Conference Materials: Get a package of bonus conference-related materials, including exclusive bonus reports and videos (as provided by Martin Armstrong).
6. Morning Information Sessions: Don’t miss out on important morning information sessions, screened on-site in the meeting room on Saturday and Sunday.
7. Networking Opportunities: Exclusive access to the Event App Networking Feature allows you to connect with fellow attendees, both in-person and virtual, fostering valuable professional relationships.
8. Culinary Delights: Savor delicious breakfast and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, prepared to keep you energized throughout the day.
9. Cocktail Reception: Kick off the conference in style at our Friday evening cocktail reception. Meet and mingle with fellow attendees while enjoying refreshing drinks.
10. Swag Bag: As a token of our appreciation, each in-person attendee will receive a swag bag filled with goodies, including an Armstrong Economics notebook, pen, and an event collector’s mug!

Unable to travel? We also have two different ticket options for those wishing to attend virtually! 

Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a global gathering of economic and financial minds. Secure your spot at the World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida, and gain the knowledge, connections, and resources you need to thrive in the world of finance and economics.

Space is limited, so act now and reserve your seat! Visit our Events page to register and join us in sunny Orlando this November.

Now available at all major retailers!

The eBook will be available shortly.

The second edition of “The Plot to Seize Russia – The Untold History” is now available for purchase in paperback and hardcover on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The ebook will be available shortly.

Book description:

“Take care of Russia,” Boris Yeltsin said as he departed his presidency in August 1999. These words were directed at current Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin specifically picked Putin as his predecessor to prevent the takeover of Russia.

So, who was Yeltsin warning against? Newly declassified documents from the Clinton Administration prove that there was a plot to rig the Russian election of 2000. These never-before-seen documents confirm numerous attempts to implement pro-Western policies using the Russian oligarchy headed by Boris Berezovsky.

On the other side were the communists who desired a return to the glory days of the Soviet Union. As one of the largest international hedge fund managers, author Martin Armstrong found himself in the middle of perhaps the greatest espionage, or attempt at a regime change for Russia, in modern history.

The Plot to Seize Russia pulls back the curtain to expose the most extraordinary attempt to seize power in modern history, but with the pen rather than armies. These declassified documents reveal a plot that has altered our thinking about the relations between the United States and Russia. The thirst for power comes seething through every line of these papers that alter our perception of reality, change the course of history, and now threaten us with World War III.

They are just making up numbers at this point. Ukraine’s parliamentary Budget Committee chair Roksolana Pidlasa now says that one day of war costs Ukraine $190 million, up from $140 million per day in 2024. They present these figures as if somebody can open a spreadsheet in Kyiv and calculate what this catastrophe costs down to the dollar. The $190 million is essentially a budgetary accounting figure. It does not remotely represent the TRUE cost of this war.

Even Pidlasa admits the number excludes weapons supplied in kind by Ukraine’s foreign partners. That alone should tell you how meaningless it is to call $190 million the “cost” of one day of war. Over the first eight months of 2026, Ukraine reportedly spent nearly $42 billion on national security and defense while raising only about $39 billion from its own revenues and domestic government bonds. The state can no longer finance even the portion of this war that it previously funded itself. Yet the weapons arriving from Europe and elsewhere can sit outside that headline calculation.

Do the elementary arithmetic and $190 million every day becomes roughly $69.4 billion annually. But even THAT is not the cost of the war. The IMF says Ukraine’s fiscal deficit excluding budget support grants is running around 21% of GDP in 2026 and is financeable only because of enormous external donor support. The European Union agreed to a €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-2027, with €45 billion scheduled for 2026 alone, including €28.3 billion for defense procurement and €16.7 billion for budget support. The IMF now calculates Ukraine’s financing gap at $140.3 billion over 2026-2029. We are no longer discussing a nation capable of independently financing the government and the war simultaneously. We are discussing a state being financially sustained from abroad.

Then there is the destruction nobody can accurately price while the bombs are still falling. The World Bank, European Commission, United Nations, and Ukrainian government estimated in February that reconstruction and recovery would require nearly $588 BILLION over the coming decade. That was based on damage measured only through December 31, 2025. Direct physical damage had already surpassed $195 billion. Transport reconstruction needs exceeded $96 billion, energy approached $91 billion, housing nearly $90 billion, commerce and industry exceeded $63 billion, and agriculture surpassed $55 billion. Fourteen percent of Ukraine’s housing stock had already been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than three million households.

And those numbers were obsolete the moment they were published because THE WAR NEVER STOPPED. You cannot continuously destroy a nation’s productive capacity and pretend that yesterday’s reconstruction estimate represents tomorrow’s bill.

Then we come to the cost that these bureaucrats cannot put into their spreadsheets: PEOPLE.

What is the economic value of a 25-year-old man who would have worked, paid taxes, started a company, bought a home, married, and raised children for the next 50 years? What does Ukraine put on the balance sheet when that man is killed? What is the cost when he loses an arm and requires medical care for the rest of his life? What is the cost when his wife leaves Ukraine permanently? What is the cost when their children grow up in Germany or Poland and never return? There is no number.

Ukraine entered this disaster with an already terrible demographic problem. War has magnified it through death, displacement, falling births, emigration, disability, and the mobilization of working-age men. The World Bank itself now identifies labor shortages, displacement, brain drain, returning soldiers who will require retraining, and educational damage to an entire generation as obstacles to reconstruction. That economic loss will continue long after the final artillery shell is fired.

This is what the warmongers NEVER calculate. They calculate tanks. They calculate missiles. They calculate ammunition. They calculate how many billions Congress approved or how many billions Brussels borrowed. Human capital does not fit nicely into their press releases.

Ukraine’s economy remains only about 79% of its 2021 real output according to the IMF. Its current-account deficit reached 16% of GDP in 2025. Donor budget support alone totaled $85.9 billion during 2024 and 2025. That is the economic reality beneath the propaganda. Ukraine is not simply paying $190 million every day to fight Russia. It has sacrificed productive capacity while becoming increasingly dependent upon outside governments to keep the state functioning.

But even $588 billion for reconstruction is STILL not the true cost because this war does not stop at Ukraine’s border. Europe has spent enormous sums supporting Ukraine, expanding defense budgets, subsidizing energy, absorbing refugees, and restructuring economies around a geopolitical confrontation with Russia. Germany destroyed the foundation of its cheap-energy industrial model. European taxpayers will service debt raised to finance these programs long after Zelensky and today’s European leaders are gone. There are opportunity costs everywhere. Every billion directed toward war is capital that cannot simultaneously finance roads, hospitals, pensions, research, businesses, or tax relief.

Then there is Russia. Russia has redirected enormous resources toward military production. Its people have died as well. Its infrastructure is increasingly being targeted. Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries have now become significant enough that President Trump publicly asked Zelensky to stop hitting diesel infrastructure because disruptions are contributing to a global fuel crisis. Diesel in the United States has pushed above $6 per gallon.

There is another cost economists almost never calculate properly: CONFIDENCE. Capital does not invest where it fears war, confiscation, sanctions, destroyed infrastructure, or political instability. Investment that never happens does not appear as a bombed factory because the factory was never built. Businesses that would have existed disappear from the future without ever appearing in the statistics. Young Ukrainians who establish careers abroad may never return. Capital that once moved between Russia and Europe has been redirected elsewhere. Supply chains reorganize. International reserves change. Nations begin building alternative payment systems because they no longer trust the existing geopolitical order. Wars destroy the future as much as they destroy the present.

The World Bank says $588 billion. Ukraine says $190 million per day. The IMF says the financing gap is $140.3 billion through 2029. Brussels has another €90 billion financing package. These numbers are not necessarily false within the narrow accounting categories they measure. The deception comes when politicians pretend any one of them represents the COST OF THE WAR.

Nobody knows the true number. Nobody CAN know it. The final cost will not be known for decades because some of the largest losses have not happened yet. They will appear in the children who were never born, the businesses never created, the Ukrainians who never return, the debt future taxpayers must service, and the investment that quietly found another country. They can manufacture another estimate tomorrow. They cannot manufacture another generation.

Europeans finally get to vote! Brussels has discovered democracy. Do they get to vote on the war in Ukraine? No. Immigration? No. Sanctions on Russia? No. The endless climate regulations coming out of Brussels? No. Do they get a referendum on whether they even WANT the European Union to continue swallowing national sovereignty? Certainly not. But the European Central Bank has graciously decided that the people may express their opinion on what pictures should appear on the next euro banknotes. This is what democracy has been reduced to in Europe. You may not decide the policies that govern your life, but please select your favorite bird.

The ECB is currently allowing the public to rank ten preselected designs for the next generation of euro banknotes. The choices have already been narrowed to two themes: “European culture” and “Rivers and birds.” More than 1,200 designers originally applied, 25 were invited to produce designs, and an independent jury of 21 experts selected the ten finalists. Now the public gets its little moment of participation before the ECB Governing Council makes the FINAL decision around the end of 2026. The ECB itself says public opinion will merely be one of several inputs alongside the jury’s conclusions and a technical assessment. So even when they finally allow you to vote on the appearance of your own money, THEY STILL HAVE THE FINAL SAY.

Christine Lagarde declared that euro banknotes are “one of the most tangible expressions of Europe” and that the new designs will reinforce a “shared identity.” There is the entire problem in two words: shared identity. What identity? Europe is not a nation. It never has been. A Greek is not a Finn. An Italian is not an Estonian. A Spaniard is not a German. Europe contains different languages, histories, cultures, religions, traditions, economies, and national experiences stretching back centuries. Brussels has spent decades attempting to manufacture a single political identity from the top down, and even designing a piece of paper exposes how impossible that project really is.

Look at what they have selected for the “European culture” notes. Maria Callas appears on the €5, Beethoven on the €10, Marie Curie on the €20, Cervantes on the €50, Leonardo da Vinci on the €100, and Bertha von Suttner on the €200. Immediately you encounter the problem Brussels can never solve. Where is YOUR country? Where is YOUR history? Where is the person your nation believes represents its culture? Twenty countries use the euro, and this proposed series has only six denominations. Somebody will be excluded because there is no such thing as a single national European culture that can be represented on six pieces of paper.

They have already stumbled into controversy over something as basic as Marie Curie’s name. Polish MEP Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus objected to the way the ECB identified her and pressed the institution to recognize her Polish heritage and birth name, Skłodowska. Lagarde eventually responded that the ECB would refer to her as “Marie Curie (born Skłodowska)” while it continued considering how names might appear on the notes. There you have it. They cannot even put ONE famous European on a banknote without immediately encountering national identity because national identity actually EXISTS.

This is why the alternative is birds and rivers. The ECB’s own research found that people considered nature “neutral,” “safe,” “borderless,” and unlikely to create controversy. They have been forced toward politically neutral wildlife because depicting actual European civilization exposes the fact that Europe is composed of independent nations.

And even then Brussels cannot resist putting itself on the money. Under the “Rivers and birds” theme, the reverse sides would feature the European Parliament, European Commission, European Central Bank, Court of Justice, European Council, and European Court of Auditors. They apparently could not find enough room for every European nation, but somehow they found room for every EU bureaucracy.

The €10 would carry the European Commission. The €20 would carry the ECB. The €50 would carry the EU Court of Justice. These institutions increasingly exercise enormous power over Europeans who cannot directly remove many of the officials making the decisions. Yet the institutions themselves are being elevated into symbols worthy of appearing on the currency. The nation disappears and the bureaucracy becomes the identity.

The first euro notes avoided this problem deliberately. They depicted imaginary architectural bridges, windows, and gateways rather than actual national monuments because selecting real monuments would have immediately created political arguments over which countries were represented.

This is government by consultation rather than consent. They ask your opinion after deciding the boundaries of what you are permitted to choose. You may select Design A or Design B, but you may not question the institution making the decision. You may vote for Beethoven or a bird, but nobody asks whether the ECB should possess this degree of power in the first place.

The more Brussels attempts to force political uniformity, the stronger the resistance will become. We are watching nationalist and anti-establishment parties rise throughout Europe precisely because people do not want their nations reduced to administrative districts beneath a centralized European government. You cannot erase centuries of national identity with a regulation from Brussels or a portrait on a €20 note.

The most amusing part is that this supposed democratic exercise perfectly demonstrates why the European project is failing. They will let Europeans vote on what their money LOOKS like while the institutions retain control over what that money IS, how it is managed, and ultimately the monetary policies imposed upon every member of the eurozone.

Here is your democracy. Pick a bird.

Giorgia Meloni has finally said what Brussels refuses to understand. Europe does not need MORE centralization. It needs LESS. Speaking about the future of the European Union, Meloni rejected Mario Draghi’s vision of deeper integration and a federal Europe that supersedes the nation-state. She called instead for the “exact opposite”: a confederal Europe where member states retain broad sovereignty and cooperate only where strategic interests genuinely overlap. THAT was what Europe should have been from the beginning.

Meloni said the EU’s current system has proven “inadequate” for dealing with the major challenges confronting Europe. She is absolutely correct. Brussels responds to every failure by demanding more power. Mario Draghi claims Europe can act more like a single political entity because, in this worldview, individual European nations are too small to compete with the United States and China. It sounds wonderful on paper until you ask the obvious question: WHO decides what this European superstate does when Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, France, Greece and Spain do not agree? There is no European nation.

This is the same problem exposed by the ECB’s ridiculous struggle to redesign the euro banknotes. They cannot even find six pictures capable of representing Europe without somebody asking why their nation, history, or culture has been excluded. So they retreat to birds and rivers because birds have no nationality. Yet Brussels somehow believes that while it cannot find a picture everyone agrees represents Europe, it can impose one foreign policy, one monetary policy, one migration policy, one climate policy and increasingly one defense policy upon radically different nations.

Italy has different interests from Germany. Poland’s historical relationship with Russia is nothing like Italy’s. Greece has different economic and geopolitical concerns from Finland. France has nuclear weapons and an enormous agricultural sector. Germany built its industrial economy around manufacturing and cheap energy. Mediterranean countries confront migration pressures that northern European politicians spent years discussing from the comfort of Brussels. Eastern Europe remembers Soviet occupation. Southern Europe remembers what German-imposed austerity looked like during the sovereign debt crisis.

These nations can cooperate. That does not mean they must surrender their sovereignty. Meloni understands the distinction. Her proposal is not to destroy European cooperation. It is to return Europe toward what it should have been: sovereign nations working together where cooperation makes sense. Defense, trade, external borders and strategic infrastructure can involve cooperation without transforming Brussels into the federal capital of a United States of Europe. You can believe in Europe without believing in Brussels.

That distinction has been treated as heresy for years. Anyone who questioned integration was labeled “anti-European.” Meloni addressed that directly, saying that when conservatives previously argued the EU needed a change of direction, they were accused of being against Europe. Now even the establishment admits something is fundamentally wrong. The argument has shifted from whether Europe must change to WHAT that change should be.

Meloni says return sovereignty to the nations. The European Union has repeatedly attempted to force political integration through economics. The euro was perhaps the greatest example. They created one currency without one nation, one treasury, one debt structure or one unified economy. They believed monetary union would force political union. Instead, the sovereign debt crisis exposed precisely the opposite. Greek economic conditions were not German economic conditions. Italian debt was not Finnish debt. Yet every country was trapped beneath the same central bank and the same currency.

Rather than admit the structure was fundamentally flawed, Brussels used each crisis to expand central authority. Now they are doing the same with war. Europe increasingly talks about joint borrowing, common defense procurement and strategic autonomy.

Meloni herself remains firmly supportive of Ukraine, and I disagree with her continued commitment to that policy. She made clear in this same interview that she will not ally herself with political forces that oppose supporting Kyiv’s defense. Fine. That actually demonstrates why her argument for a confederation matters. Italy should be entitled to make that decision for Italy. Hungary should be entitled to reach another conclusion. Slovakia another. France another. You cannot claim nations are sovereign only when they agree with Brussels.

Europe’s strength came from its diversity. The competition between nations produced extraordinary innovation, commerce, art, science and culture. Europe was never powerful because everyone thought alike. It became powerful because dozens of political and economic systems competed against one another.

Centralization destroys that mechanism. When one nation adopts a stupid policy, capital and people can move somewhere better. When Brussels imposes the same stupid policy across the entire continent, there is nowhere inside the system to escape it. A confederal Europe would not mean isolation. Nations could coordinate where their interests align while retaining the right to say NO when they do not.

The European project will either reform itself around the reality of national sovereignty or the political pressure building throughout Europe will eventually reform it by force. You cannot continue stripping authority from elected national governments while pretending voters will never object. You cannot manufacture a European nation through regulations, currency, flags, and bureaucracies.

Consumer prices in the USA rose 0.4% in August, four times July’s 0.1% increase, while annual inflation remained at 3.4%. The politicians will point to that 3.4% number and pretend inflation has somehow stabilized. But look beneath the surface and you see an entirely different economy. Energy rose 2.1% in a single month and 16.3% from a year ago. Gasoline jumped 3.9% in August alone and is now 27.4% higher than a year ago. Other motor fuels, including diesel, surged 9.6% in one month and 44% annually. This is precisely why reducing inflation to one government statistic is absurd.

The August Producer Price Index already rose 0.4% for the month and 5.4% annually, while processed goods for intermediate demand jumped 1.8%. Diesel prices at the producer level surged 24.1% in August. Those costs work their way through the entire economy. Businesses either raise prices, reduce margins, cut workers, or close. There is no fifth option.

Food increased only 0.1% for August and grocery prices were unchanged, but that does not mean Americans suddenly received relief. Food prices remain 2.7% higher than a year ago. Eggs rose another 2.9% during August. Eating at restaurants continues to rise, and households are still paying the snowballing increase from the inflation that already occurred. Government economists speak as though a lower rate of inflation means prices went back down. They did not. If something rises from $100 to $120 and then increases another 3%, you are not recovering purchasing power. You are simply being robbed more slowly.

Shelter increased 0.3% in August and remains 3% higher annually. This is where the Federal Reserve has created its own nightmare. Raise rates to fight inflation and mortgage payments become unaffordable. Lower rates and you risk reigniting asset prices and inflation. Meanwhile, the federal government continues borrowing trillions regardless of where rates stand. There is no monetary policy that can cure fiscal irresponsibility.

Core CPI supposedly looks better because it excludes food and energy, precisely two things people cannot choose to stop buying. Core inflation rose 0.3% in August, stronger than expected, although the annual rate eased from 2.5% to 2.4%. Airline fares rose 2.7%, hotel and motel prices jumped 2.4%, mobile phone costs surged 5.9%, and new and used vehicle prices also increased. So while economists debate whether 2.4% core inflation is encouraging, the person trying to pay the bills sees something entirely different.

Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings declined 0.3% from a year earlier. Real wages have now fallen for five consecutive months. THAT is what people actually feel. It does not matter what Washington tells them about GDP or employment when the paycheck buys less every month. People know inflation from their bank account, not from some economist sitting in Washington manipulating a basket of goods.

This is also why the Fed is trapped. Markets are now overwhelmingly expecting another rate hike. But raising rates will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, produce another barrel of oil, lower diesel prices, or end geopolitical conflict. You cannot cure an energy shortage with interest rates. The Fed will nevertheless raise rates because that is the only tool it has, and then everyone will blame the Fed when mortgages, auto loans, business credit, and government interest expense rise again.

This inflation is increasingly geopolitical and fiscal rather than merely monetary. War drives energy higher. Tariffs alter supply chains. Government borrowing keeps expanding. Defense spending is exploding throughout NATO. Europe is constructing a war economy while sovereign debt continues to rise. Then central banks are expected to somehow neutralize all of this by moving an overnight interest rate up or down 25 basis points.

The CPI is telling us something far more important than whether inflation was 3.3% or 3.4%. The structure of inflation is changing. The easy post-pandemic explanation is finished. We are entering an environment where geopolitical instability, energy, sovereign debt, and declining confidence in government increasingly dictate capital flows and prices.

That is precisely the environment where the old economic theories begin to fail. The Fed cannot control war. It cannot control Congress. It cannot control the national debt. It cannot control global capital flows. Yet everyone will demand that it somehow control the consequences.

For years, anyone who dared question the integrity of the election process was treated as some conspiracy nut. We were told election fraud was virtually nonexistent, that safeguards were more than adequate, and that demanding tighter controls was somehow an attack on democracy. Well, take a walk through Skid Row in Los Angeles and explain this one. Federal prosecutors have now charged three people in an alleged operation that paid people on Skid Row to sign California ballot petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters.

They pulled the identities of actual registered voters from a database, handed those identities to people on the street, paid them to copy the information onto petitions, and had them forge the corresponding signatures. That is precisely the type of manipulation we were repeatedly assured should not concern us.

James Brass, known as “Lord,” has been arrested and charged along with Courtney Price and Jateisha Herron. Prosecutors say the operation ran from February through August 2026. Brass allegedly received approximately $41,600 from coordinators associated with one petition-management company, while false declarations were signed claiming the circulators had personally witnessed the supposed registered voters signing the petitions.

Skid Row contains some of the most vulnerable people in America. Homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction are everywhere. Earlier reporting from undercover investigations described people being offered cash, cigarettes and marijuana for petition signatures.

And this is not even the first federal case to emerge from Skid Row this year. Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong (no relation) agreed to plead guilty after admitting that she paid people, including homeless individuals, to register to vote. She normally received money for petition signatures only when the signer was a registered voter, so prosecutors say she began offering people money to complete voter registration forms as well. Some homeless people had no address, so she supplied her own former Los Angeles address for them to use. California automatically mails ballots to registered voters, meaning ballots associated with some of those registrations potentially could have been sent to an address where those individuals did not live or receive mail. How many warning signs does government require before admitting that vulnerabilities exist?

What particularly infuriates me is the exploitation of the homeless. Politicians parade around pretending they care about these people while Los Angeles has allowed human misery to become part of the landscape. Then along comes a political signature industry where every valid signature has monetary value. Suddenly the homeless person is valuable, not because anybody intends to get him off the street, treat his addiction or restore his dignity, but because his hand can produce a signature worth money. That is how sick politics has become.

There is a financial incentive behind this entire petition business. California requires hundreds of thousands of signatures to qualify statewide initiatives, creating an industry in which petition management companies pay circulators and signatures themselves acquire economic value. Once government creates a system where political access is measured by hundreds of thousands of signatures and each signature can generate money for somebody in the chain, do not act shocked when people attempt to game it.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the defendants allegedly used members of Skid Row’s vulnerable homeless population to “cover up their tracks.” This is why identification and verification should never have become partisan issues. If someone tells me that requiring safeguards somehow “suppresses democracy,” I ask the obvious question: whose democracy are we protecting?

We have created a society where government knows virtually everything about YOU. Flock cameras can track your automobile. Banks report your transactions. Your phone knows where you sleep. The IRS knows what you earn. Government databases know where you live. Yet somehow when it comes to protecting the political process, asking that identity actually be verified becomes controversial. They can track an ordinary citizen across a city with cameras, but ensuring that one human being corresponds to one legitimate political identity is suddenly an unbearable burden.

Enough. We are destroying confidence in our institutions because politicians refuse to acknowledge weaknesses until federal prosecutors put somebody in handcuffs. Nobody should exploit a homeless addict for a political signature. And nobody should be afraid to demand that the system be secured simply because some political hack will call them an “election denier.”

Democracy cannot survive without confidence. Confidence cannot survive without transparency. If these allegations are proven, prosecute everyone involved regardless of party or ideology and follow the money wherever it leads. Stop pretending that fraud cannot happen. The federal government itself is now prosecuting people precisely because it can.

This is completely unacceptable. We have reached the point where you can purchase a television for your own home, pay for the television with your own money, put it in your living room, and discover that the damn thing may be capable of collecting information about you, your network, the devices around you, and what you are watching. An investigation by Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers found LG televisions scanning local networks for phones, smartwatches, computers, and other devices, collecting information about nearby Wi-Fi networks, location and IP information, and using Automatic Content Recognition to identify what appears on the television, including content coming through HDMI. Researchers also reported finding evidence of microphone audio being captured while a television was in standby and stored locally while offline.

LG acknowledges that its televisions can scan for compatible devices on the same network, describing this as ordinary smart-TV functionality, and says its ACR advertising feature is opt-in. Researchers nevertheless demonstrated just how much information modern televisions are technically capable of seeing around the household. LG Ad Solutions boasts of reaching hundreds of millions of “addressable secondary devices,” and LG advertising executives have used phrases such as “we own the glass” when describing the company’s relationship with the television screen. Excuse me? You sold me the glass. YOU DO NOT OWN IT AFTER I BUY IT. That mentality is precisely the problem with the modern technology industry. You think you are purchasing a product. Increasingly, corporations look at the product as a permanent doorway into your life.

I have written extensively about Flock cameras and the government’s expanding surveillance machinery. I have written about commercially available location information, license-plate databases, facial recognition, and the gradual destruction of privacy. Now look around your own house. Your television, refrigerator, doorbell, phone, smart gadgets, laptop, and any other device connected to the internet is capable of watching you.

People need to STOP accepting this as simply the price of modern life. That attitude is how freedom disappears. “Well, that’s just how smart TVs work.” NO! Why should it be? Why should a television need to know what other devices are sitting on my network? Why should an advertising business need to understand the entire “household” rather than simply display the program I selected? Why should I need to dig through privacy agreements and obscure settings to determine whether the screen sitting in my living room is analyzing what I watch? The burden has been reversed. Instead of corporations proving why they absolutely require information, citizens are expected to discover how to stop them from collecting it.

The argument that everyone agreed to this somewhere inside a terms-of-service agreement is equally absurd. Nobody reads 40 pages of legal garbage before turning on a television. That is not meaningful consent. It is a legal shield written by lawyers to protect corporations. If a device is going to monitor viewing behavior, identify devices throughout a household, process voice information, or transmit information for advertising purposes, the consumer should be told in plain English exactly what is happening and should have to deliberately turn those features ON. Privacy should be the default. Surveillance should require permission.

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This becomes infinitely more dangerous when government enters the equation. Data collected for advertising today can become enormously valuable to government tomorrow. We have already seen government agencies purchase commercially available information rather than obtain it through the traditional warrant process. We have seen police departments construct enormous searchable networks of license-plate cameras. We have watched the line between corporate data collection and government surveillance become thinner and thinner. The government does not need to install a microphone in every living room if citizens voluntarily purchase internet-connected microphones themselves.

That is why the argument “I have nothing to hide” is so incredibly foolish. Privacy is not about hiding criminal behavior. Privacy means government and corporations have no inherent right to know everything about you. What books you read, where you drive, who visits your home, what you watch, what websites you visit, what political programs you consume, and what you say inside your own living room are nobody’s damn business.

The frightening part is how quickly people have been conditioned to accept this. Twenty-five years ago, tell someone that their television might scan the devices inside their house, analyze what they watch for advertising, connect that information to other devices, and contain microphones capable of responding while the screen appears off, and people would have called it Orwellian. Today they call it a “smart home.”

Corporations should not be permitted to turn products people purchase into permanent surveillance platforms buried beneath unreadable agreements. Government should not be permitted to obtain information indirectly that the Constitution would require it to justify collecting directly. Privacy protections need to catch up with technology because technological capability is advancing far faster than the laws written to restrain its abuse.

We should not accept a surveillance state as an inevitable fact of modern life. We should not accept that everything must collect data because everything now contains a computer. We should not accept cameras following our cars, phones following our movements, algorithms following our purchases, and televisions monitoring our homes simply because somebody tells us this is the future. If that is the future they are offering, then we have every right to reject it.

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, I find your analysis refreshing. You support everything with facts, and your computer is remarkable. It’s no surprise the CIA wanted your source code. You warned that this Middle East war would spread and would not be over in a few days, contrary to what they told Trump. You warned that the 2020 election would be rigged, but from a global perspective. I believe you said it was COVID that justified the mail-in ballots.

Yet you wrote in your 2024 Middle East report about the rise of war with Israel: “Why is this one different? This is 72 years from the rebirth of Israel. However, this local cycle also aligned with 2020 on the major 172-year Revolutionary Cycle which has inspired the rise of the LEFT.”

I think it is time you update that report since everything has played out as your computer forecast.

CP

PS Maybe you need a cyclical geopolitical assistant. Things do not look like they are calming down.

ANSWER: The Cycle of War on Israel was spot on. Operation Midnight Hammer began on the night of June 21, 2025 (US time), with strikes concluding by June 22. The model turned on May 8, 2025. We do know that it was Jared Kushner who set up and attended meetings with Netanyahu in 2025. He served as an informal, unpaid adviser to President Trump, focusing primarily on Middle East peace negotiations. Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the billionaire NYC real estate developer, met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem to push for a Gaza ceasefire deal.

They were later invited to join an Israeli cabinet meeting to help approve the agreement. Because they are NOT government employees and are off the record from any official government status, they are using the same tactic as Hillary with her private server. The FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) would require the disclosure of everything, but only if they were government employees. Hillary used her private server to circumvent FOIA requirements and then destroyed her emails to cover up her dealings. So we will never know the full story with Netanyahu.

I know that people are claiming the Strait of Hormuz is not really that important and oil will decline. They are ignoring two wild cards. The swift offensive by the Iran-backed Houthis who have positioned themselves to seize control of a vital Middle East waterway on the other side disrupting Saudi Arabia. This presents a significant new challenge for not just President Trump as his conflict with Iran, but will further put a floor on crude. The other lunatic is Zelensky attacking the refineries and attacking Iranian ships to Russia. The real crisis is in refined products and this is showing up as a Panic Cycle for 2027.

The Houthi fighters have pushed south along Yemen’s coastline, capable of disrupting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — the “Gate of Tears” at the entrance to the Red Sea. This is expanding Tehran strategy to bring the West to its knees. They took Perim Island, situated in the center of the strait between Yemen and Africa. This is especially troubling for Saudi Arabia, which has been exporting much of its oil from Red Sea ports.

I will add this to the list of things to get to.

As far as finding a cyclical geopolitical assassitant, that is easier said than done.

QUESTION: Mr. A, do you see any chance of peace between Russia and Ukraine?

RL

ANSWER: War ends in only one of two ways. Either a knockout punch with total defeat, or surrender due to military or economic exhaustion. Trump has effectively cut off the military funding for Ukraine. For perspective, Russia’s military budget was $66 billion. By the end of 2025, $175 billion was wasted in Ukraine with no accountability.

This is where it becomes a coin flip. Any Neocon dream of defeating Russia will be suicidal for the West. So let’s look at the practical side. With aid cut off from the USA, that means NATO and the EU must step up and fund the war. Italy is already screaming. The only deal would be that Russia surrenders regions it has taken in exchange for the regions in the Donbas that Ukraine still holds, and, in reality, the Minsk Agreement is finally executed, and the Russian people in the Donbas are at last free from Zelensky.

But Zelensky won’t hold an election because he knows he will lose. He and the Duma have been stuffing their pockets unbelievably. They have no personal incentive to hold agree to peace for they will be voted out and the West is so indoctrinated to claim they are fighting for democracy when the entire Minsk Agreement was to allow the Donbas to vote. When Crimea voted to join Russia, they claimed the vote was rigges. Yet the people in the Crimea are Russian. The West refuses to tell the truth about anything.

Normally, this war would be over on sheer attrition and exhaustion. But Europe is desperate for war and they have been selling this to their people. My concern is that they will create some false flag to keep this war going and to justify spending money they do not have to retain power in Brussels. If Ukraine takes the peace, Brussels fears they will fall as the state turn inward.

Beware of October. This is coming to a head.