Happy New Year.

The discussions this week regarding AI has been interesting. One of the angles not discussed yet is the point of view of a person being replaced by A.I. generated products.

How political analysis became a target of A.I. fakes Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation Dec 29, 2025

A.I. in many aspects is the antithesis of civitas. Prior to the A.I. boom, several layers of the internet had already been distorted into a series of minefields across a large-than-life sewer. A.I. – as controlled by Big Tech – in many aspects had already revealed itself as a fraud. Now it’s a weapon.

There are several channels on YouTube manipulated by A.I., stealing the image and voice by some of us, independent political analysts. A not-extensive list includes as targets John Mearsheimer, Larry Johnson, Richard Wolff, Glenn Diesen, Yanis Varoufakis, economist Paulo Nogueira Batista and myself.

It’s not an accident that all of us are independent geopolitical and geoeconomic analysts, mostly know each other personally, and are guests in roughly the same podcasts.
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In all cases, as far as we, the targets are concerned, all these channels are fake. I repeat: all these channels are fake. They may at least in some cases be set up by “fans” – certainly with an eye for profit via monetization.

Or the whole scam may be part of something way more sinister: a strategy bent of loss of credibility. As in an operation by the usual suspects to sow confusion amongst the – large – audience of several independent thinkers.

Are we seeing the beginning of expanded recognition of working with nature or regulatory capture of the movement? Actually I am hopeful of the trend.

Regenerative Agriculture Finally Has A Seat At The Table At USDA ZeroHedge Dec 29, 2025

During an Uber ride, I received a message from Calley Means, a White House adviser to Secretary Kennedy and a leader within the MAHA movement. “Check your email,” she wrote.

Inside was a preview of a regenerative agriculture framework scheduled for release in the coming weeks.

Over the last year, Means and I have exchanged ideas on how USDA and HHS could work together to encourage soil-health adoption among conventional growers. Those discussions, across meetings, memos, and policy proposals, kept circling back to a principle long championed by Gabe Brown. Incentives only work when they reward real results.

That principle is embedded in this new USDA pilot, and it marks a clear departure from past conservation programs.

Among its distinguishing features:

It explicitly uses the term “Regenerative Agriculture.”
It relies on a single, streamlined application rather than fragmented enrollment.
It allows bundled conservation practices under a whole-farm plan.
It supports multi-year transitions, not short-term experiments.
It establishes baseline soil testing.
It reflects cross-agency coordination beyond a siloed conservation effort.
Continued funding is tied to demonstrated improvements.

The pilot reflects a growing recognition that regenerative agriculture sits at the intersection of farm economics, environmental stewardship, and public health. By helping cover the financial risk of transition, the program offers producers a way off the conventional input treadmill and toward systems that rebuild soil biology and long-term profitability.

This is a shift from paying farmers to comply with practices to paying them for outcomes. Those outcomes include better food, cleaner water, healthier soil and air, and ultimately healthier people.
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From my vantage point, this represents a meaningful cultural shift. For the first time at this level, senior leaders across USDA and NRCS are openly engaging with soil health as a pathway to farmer profitability and nutrient-dense food. I have witnessed growing curiosity and seriousness within federal agencies about regenerative agriculture. That alone is significant.

Before the massive consolidation of pharmaceutical companies in the US and European the method of serendipity was a common method of drug discovery and development. Interestingly China pharmaceutical industry has embraced the methodology.

China’s beautiful biotech chaos vs West’s elegant paralysis Asia Times Dec 29, 2025

Recent analyses have documented what many in the pharmaceutical industry quietly suspected: China’s drug discovery output has achieved parity with the United States, tripling from roughly 30 new medicines in 2013 to over 400 a decade later.

This is remarkable not merely as an economic indicator, but as a live experiment testing competing theories of how breakthroughs actually happen.

The temptation is to treat this as a zero-sum contest between superpowers. Resist it. The more interesting question is what China’s “Cambrian explosion” in biotech reveals about innovation itself.

For decades, Western pharmaceutical development has operated on an engineering premise: identify biological targets, design molecules to hit them, refine through methodical iteration. This approach is intellectually elegant and scientifically rigorous.
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China’s hypercompetitive biotech sector, fueled by government subsidies and a cultural bias toward speed, has inadvertently embraced an alternative logic: serendipity maximization.

If breakthrough discoveries often emerge from unexpected findings rather than linear target-based design, then the optimal strategy may simply be taking more shots on goal. Chinese state-owned enterprises alone now contribute approximately 200 new experimental medicines annually—comparable to all European public and private entities combined.
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The healthiest outcome is not victory for one model, but productive competition that forces both to improve—and occasional collaboration that neither ideology comfortably permits.
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The real question facing both Beijing and Washington is whether their pharmaceutical enterprises serve patients—or merely serve as another arena for great-power rivalry. History suggests that when medicine becomes primarily a vehicle for national prestige, everyone loses.

Why do I have a bad feeling about this story? Are the Russians calling the US bluff of denying the drones were targeting Putin or any pre-knowledge of the event?

Decrypted Data From UAV Shot Down in Novgorod Region Handed Over to US Side Sputnik International Jan 1, 2026

Decrypted data from one of the Ukrainian drones that attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence have been handed over to the US mission in Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
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The obtained data unequivocally confirm that the drones were on their way to attack Putin's residence, the head of the Russian General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, Igor Kostyukov, who delivered the files to the US Embassy, said.
"We believe that this step will remove all questions and will contribute to establishing the truth," Kostyukov added.