Energy, Security

From Gold to Grid: Russia’s Foreign Infrastructure Control Playbook

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Russia’s lone veto of a Sudan ceasefire (1-14 UN vote) last week follows a pattern of infrastructure manipulation — one that provides a warning about cryptocurrency’s growing control over American power grids. In Sudan, Russia profits from gold market chaos while blocking peace. In America, crypto operations fight oversight while gaining unprecedented control of power infrastructure. The parallel is clear: using critical infrastructure for political leverage while building shadow financial networks.

From Gold to Grid

Russia’s strategy in Sudan is brutally effective: maintain political chaos to control resource extraction while cynically preaching “sovereignty.” By arming both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in their civil war, Russia secures gold extraction and port access while creating untraceable channels for moving money outside Western oversight. Over 10 million displaced civilians, and research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimating more than 26,000 violent deaths in Khartoum alone between April 2023 and June 2024, show the spiraling human cost of this cruel profit scheme.

Now cryptocurrency’s evolution in America follows the same deadly playbook of undermining safety for profit:

Phase 1: Infrastructure Control

  • ERCOT reports 41 gigawatts of crypto mining capacity requests in Texas – for comparison, this equals roughly half of Texas’s total grid capacity, threatening grid stability for critical services and millions of homes.
  • Current U.S. crypto mining uses 25-91 terawatt-hours annually (equivalent to entire states)
  • Industry actively blocks EIA’s attempts to collect energy consumption data

Phase 2: Shadow Financial Networks

  • Like Russia’s gold trade, or blood diamonds, crypto creates untraceable financial channels
  • Industry fights basic transparency requirements
  • Strategic concentration in vulnerable grid areas for maximum leverage

Phase 3: Political Capture

  • Moving from obstruction to active elimination of oversight
  • Using infrastructure control as political leverage
  • Funding campaigns to dismantle regulatory frameworks

Putin’s Playbook in Action

In Sudan, Russia’s approach exposes their strategy: claim to fight “colonialism” while actually colonizing through chaos. They maintain puppet influence while stirring violence, creating opportunities to undermine local authority through:

  • Resource extraction (gold mines, ports)
  • Secret trade networks (sanctions evasion)
  • Diplomatic leverage (UN veto power)
  • Infrastructure control (both military and economic)

The cryptocurrency industry follows this same pattern domestically. While claiming to fight for “financial freedom,” they’re actually building concentrated control over critical infrastructure. In Texas alone, their 41 GW of mining requests represents unprecedented leverage over the power grid – especially concerning given crypto industry’s millions in political donations to state officials overseeing grid policy.

National Security Implications

Energy Secretary Granholm has expressed that projected 15% increases in electricity demand by 2050 “literally” keep her up at night. But the immediate threat isn’t just about capacity — it’s about control and who profits from chaos.

The industry’s progression from resisting oversight to actively funding its elimination mirrors Russia’s approach: create crisis, build parallel financial networks, and convert infrastructure control into political power.

Infrastructure as Political Weapon

Like Russia’s exploitation of Sudan’s gold, cryptocurrency operations are transforming American infrastructure into a political weapon. Their concentrated control in vulnerable grid areas combined with active resistance to transparency creates both direct infrastructure leverage and political influence. The goal isn’t profit — it’s power.

The EIA’s estimate of 0.6-2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption deliberately understates their true leverage, given their strategic positioning and successful obstruction of data collection. Like Russia hiding gold trades, crypto hides its true footprint.

Warning Signals

When Russia vetoes peace in Sudan while profiting directly from gun violence and limited government, they expose how infrastructure capture really works. Create chaos, promise freedom, seize control. The cryptocurrency industry uses identical tactics especially in Texas: fight “government overreach” while building unprecedented private control over American infrastructure.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Just as Russia’s “anti-colonial” rhetoric in Sudan masks deadly exploitation, cryptocurrency’s “financial freedom” claims hide a systematic effort for unaccountable elites to seize America’s critical infrastructure. Sudan today shows us America’s tomorrow if we continue allowing private interests following an authoritarian playbook to drive the political narratives.

Sources:
EIA Today in Energy
Utility Dive Report
Reuters on Russia’s Restrictions
The Heatmap

Food, Security

U.S. Food So Weakly Regulated That 99% of New Chemicals Added Since 2000 Avoided Safety Tests

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Unsurprising to me how the lessons from The Jungle have been completely forgotten in America.

Who remembers The Jungle at all? It was such bad exposure for industrial misconduct (e.g. grinding up rodents and even workers into the sausage making machines) that it led to the establishment of American food and drug administration (FDA). Or so the story goes…

A tragic example of how this system can go wrong occurred two years ago, when nearly 400 people got sick after eating a ground beef substitute – called French Leek and Lentil Crumbles – sold by Daily Harvest, the popular food subscription service. More than 130 of the people who got sick were hospitalized with gastrointestinal distress, liver injuries and other symptoms, and at least 39 people had to have their gallbladders removed.

Investigators determined that the most likely cause of the sickness was a new ingredient in the crumbles called tara flour – a high-protein flour made from the seeds of a tree grown in South America. Even though there were no published toxicological studies of tara flour and the FDA had not evaluated its safety, a company that imported tara flour from Peru had claimed that it was [exempt from regulations] and supplied the ingredient to distributors in the United States.

Loopholes in American food regulation are now so big it’s hard to find examples of things that are being tested for safety.

An analysis published in 2022 by the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, found that 98.7 percent of the roughly 766 new food chemicals introduced to the food supply since 2000 were not approved by the FDA.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the FDA acknowledged that under federal law, food companies do not have to get premarket approval from the agency to use ingredients in their products…

No approval necessary? Well then, no wonder people are getting sick.

Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic have found that consuming xylitol and erythritol increases the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes. Their studies indicate that these low-calorie sweeteners promote the formation of blood clots.

Who will write the book on xylitol?

Security

Digital McCarthyism: Elon Musk Flings His Poo at Federal Workers

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As Elon Musk hurls digital debris (X-crement) at federal employees from his X-Twitter-platform treehouse, we might ask the same question Joseph Welch famously posed to Senator McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency?” Though perhaps with less formality, given the rhetorical present situation.

Recently appointed as redundant co-lead of the Department of Government (DOG) redundancy advisory group, Musk has begun singling out individual federal employees for public criticism before his audience of hundreds of millions of followers on X Twitter.

The aspiration, let alone parallels, to McCarthy’s tactics are striking.

The redundant DOG redundancy co-lead’s behavior bears an unsettling resemblance to a primate displaying dominance through chaos, flinging accusations at federal workers from the tall tower of his social media perch while his followers scramble to join the mayhem. Yet unlike actual primates, who typically display such behavior as fear-driven survival mechanism, Musk’s digital tantrums only serve abuse, intimidation and entertainment purposes for his audience.

Consider the recent case of Ashley Thomas, Director of Climate Diversification at the US International Development Finance Corporation. After another user questioned her role, Musk amplified the criticism to his massive following, dismissing it as a “fake job.” It’s not like she’s a redundant co-lead of the DOG redundancy, but Musk thinks he’s untouchable so…

The result? A deluge of targeted mob harassment that forced Thomas to privatize her public presence. This mirrors McCarthy’s practice of publicly naming government employees and subjecting them to widespread scrutiny and harassment.

The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife. While Musk critiques supposedly wasteful government roles, he co-leads the DOG, a currently nonexistent advisory group that itself represents a new unnecessary layer of bureaucracy without any clear mandate or any demonstrated benefit. It’s the definition of governmental bloat masquerading as the opposite, making his attacks on career civil servants especially hypocritical.

The key similarities to McCarthyism are of course troubling to those familiar with basic history:

1. Both men wielded institutional power while simultaneously acting as public influencers
2. Both falsely claimed to be fighting government inefficiency and waste
3. Both rushed to target individual civil servants who had limited means to defend themselves
4. Both used public exposure and humiliation as tools of intimidation
5. Both falsely claimed to be acting in service of American taxpayers

As Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, noted, these posts “are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees.” This statement could have been lifted directly from the McCarthy era, when government workers lived in fear of being named and targeted.

There’s also a serious legal question at play. Deliberately inciting a mob to harass individuals potentially violates several federal laws, including those protecting federal employees from intimidation and harassment. After flagrantly violating public safety laws and labor laws for decades, you have to wonder if American justice willfully ignores Musk. While Musk always argues he’s merely expressing extremist ideas, the predictable and seemingly intended consequence of his actions — unleashing millions of followers on specific individuals — surely puts him across legal lines again, particularly by ruthlessly targeting government employees in their official capacity.

The key difference from McCarthy’s era? While McCarthy had to pull in and rely on newspaper coverage and radio broadcasts, Musk used Russian investors to buy direct access to hundreds of millions of followers through social media, making the potential for harassment even more immediate, intense and… Russian. The velocity and volume of modern social media harassment can destroy careers and lives in hours, not days or weeks.

What’s particularly concerning is that this is happening before the redundant co-lead of the DOG redundancy has even begun any official work (as if it will have any to do). If this is the preview of the poo fling, what might the full feature sewage system look like? Will we see systematic targeting of civil servants who work in programs or departments that don’t align with particular political viewpoints?

Rhetorical, I know.

The lessons of the McCarthy era taught us that public harassment of government employees doesn’t lead to greater efficiency. It leads to fear, dysfunction, and the destruction of institutional knowledge as talented people flee public service. That’s probably Musk’s biggest hope, to remove all function of government.

McCarthy’s downfall began when he went too far in attacking experts in geopolitical risk, leading to the famous hearings where his tactics were finally exposed for what they were: gross fraud by a substance abusing attention addict.

Today’s moment calls for the same courage that Joseph Welch showed in 1954. Someone needs to stand up and ask: In using your massive attention-seeking platform to direct harassment toward individual civil servants, while failing substance abuse tests, have you no sense of decency? Have we learned nothing from our own history?

The answer to inefficiency, if it exists in anything, lies in systematic review, careful analysis, and thoughtful reform, not clueless revolution. Publicly targeting individual civil servants for harassment and humiliation by knowingly inciting a huge mob seems like the sort of thing judges used to frown upon. We’ve seen this show before. We know how it ends. The question is: how much damage will be done before we remember the lessons we learned seven decades ago? And how long before someone in authority questions the legitimacy of redundancy in the DOG redundancy itself, an ironic embodiment of the very bureaucratic waste it claims to aggressively oppose?

Security

CA Tesla Involved in Crash With Police Motorcyle

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Anyone have news of what happened to the August 2024 case of a Tesla running over a Police officer?

Here’s another one, putting a LAPD motorcycle officer in hospital:

Some of the northbound lanes along the 405 Freeway in the Brentwood area were shut down Thursday afternoon following a crash involving an LAPD officer. As the CHP closed two lanes as well as the HOV lane for about an hour, officers investigated the collision between the motorcycle officer and a Tesla and a Mercedes SUV.