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Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Years ago, I called the pandemic arguably the greatest case of negligence in the history of torts. However, with millions dead and hundreds of billions expended, it was unlikely that China would ever be truly held accountable for its actions. Those failures include not only the alleged release of the virus from the Wuhan lab but also China’s concealment of the release until it had spread globally. A $24 billion judgment was secured in Missouri earlier this year, but China defied the verdict.

Now, it has countersued, naming former Missouri Attorney General and now Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., among others as defendants. Even by the standards of the Chinese legal system, this action is legally absurd. However, in the CCP-controlled court system, the verdict is little in doubt.

China posted a notice of the lawsuit in Wuhan, naming the state of Missouri and Andrew T. Bailey, in addition to Schmitt. Bailey is listed in the notice as the current Missouri Attorney General, but he recently left that job to become the FBI’s co-deputy director.

After international service under the International Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, the defendants are called to appear before the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhan Municipality of Hubei Province, Jianghan District in Wuhan. They are being sued for $356.4 billion Chinese Yuan, or $50.5 billion — just over twice the amount awarded in Missouri.

The complaint demands “public apologies on New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, YouTube and other American media or internet platforms, and People’s Daily, Xinhuanet and other Chinese media or internet platforms…”

The filing is premised on their bringing a successful action against China in United States courts and effectively defaming Wuhan, Chinese officials, and the government generally. I have taught torts for over 30 years and would be hard pressed to come up with a more meritless claim, but law means little in the Chinese court system.

The Missouri action named the Chinese government, various ministries, the Communist Party of China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences as defendants. They were found to have withheld information about the COVID-19 virus, failed to contain the outbreak, and actively hoarded high-quality personal protective equipment (PPE) while producing and selling lower-quality PPE to the rest of the world.

After securing the largest damage award in that state’s history, the current Attorney General filed with the U.S. State Department for diplomatic provided service to China in November 2025. Once service is confirmed, Missouri can return to the district court to obtain certification of compliance with service and seek to seize Chinese-owned assets, including real property, financial interests, and other holdings tied to the defendants.

That is what clearly prompted this tit-for-tat litigation in Wuhan.

The Chinese lawsuit names the defendants as an economic and reputational threat to the People’s Republic of China. It argues that their actions have had “negative effects on the soft power” of Wuhan and have “belittled the social evaluation” as well as adversely affected the “productivity and commercialization of scientific and technological achievements” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

It cites the defendants as having engaged in “vexatious litigation” that “defamed Plaintiffs’ reputation, resulting in huge economic losses of the Plaintiffs, and deeply endangering sovereignty, security and development interests of China.”

Obviously, this is not vexatious litigation in any actual legal sense. The Missouri litigation was based on long-established legal precedent, even if the judgment itself against a foreign nation was unprecedented in size.

The notion that these allegations constitute defamation is absurd. First, these allegations are well-established by various countries. China enlisted the World Health Organization (WHO) and others to echo its denials about the virus’s origin. Even after the Biden Administration sought to suppress evidence and views implicating China, federal agencies and experts ultimately refuted those denials.

Even under the more demanding standard that applies to public officials and public figures (known as the “actual malice” standard), China would fall short. There is ample and credible evidence to support these statements, including findings from other countries.

There is also a type of group libel element to the Chinese action.

Such lawsuits are very difficult to maintain.  In Neiman-Marcus v. Lait (1952), a New York federal district court addressed a defamation claim arising from the publication of the book “U.S.A. Confidential.” The author wrote that “some” models and “all” saleswomen at the Neiman-Marcus department store in Dallas were “call girls.” It also claimed that “most” of the salesmen in the men’s store were “faggots.” The store had nine models, 382 saleswomen and 25 salesmen. The court found the size of the group of women was too big to satisfy a group libel standard. However, the size of the group of salesmen was viewed as sufficiently small to go to trial.

Here, China is suggesting that not only was the entire Wuhan staff but the entire nation was effectively defamed. That absurd claim was actually tried by a Chinese American group in the United States over Trump’s reference to COVID-19 as Kung Flu. The Chinese American Civil Rights Coalition brought that meritless case, which was quickly dismissed.

China is clearly hoping to engineer a verdict and then somehow use it to counterbalance or negate the Missouri judgment. It will still be tough for Missouri to ever collect on this judgment. However, the verdict was an important effort to secure a judgment on China’s conduct leading to a worldwide pandemic.

One has to assume that the Wuhan court will dutifully render a verdict to counter Missouri.

It will do little beyond confirming in the mind of many that China is as nimble at manipulating the legal system as it is at allegedly manipulating spike proteins.

While the broader stock market has meandered both higher and lower in the subsequent two months, the Mag 7 trade peaked on Oct 31 and has been drifting sideways - and lower - ever since.

What happened on that date? That was the day of the infamous All Things podcast, in which Brad Gerstner (an OpenAi investor) pointed out that the emperor is, indeed, naked and asked Sam Altman how a company with $13BN in revenue can afford $1.4 Trillion in commitments. Altman's non-reply? “Happy to find a buyer for your shares.” Translation: No answer... and how could Sam possibly answer: after all there is no way on earth that OpenAI could ever grow into its future obligations absent a miracle, an act of God... or uncle Sam.

A few days later, Altman delivered a far more troubling answer, and one which connected the mathematical dots for everyone, when it was reported that OpenAI was seeking a government guarantee, which would help "attract the enormous investment needed for AI computing and infrastructure." But far more concerning was the other implication of the report: without a government guarantee, there was no way that OpenAI could satisfy the $1.4 trillion in commitments, which also meant that the entire AI bubble, which was built on circular deals where rehypothecated promises for capex investments among the hyperscalers were contingent on some nebulous future revenue stream, was about to burst.

Also, with OpenAI tacitly conceding the need for a government guarantee, the entire AI sector came under immediate and immense scrutiny, and as a result of analysts finally doing elementary math (which we had done months earlier) and realizing that the AI cycle would need trillions in debt, suddenly the weakest credits in the space like CoreWeave and Oracle (see "Oracle Is First AI Domino To Fall After Barclays Downgrades Its Debt To Sell") saw not only their bond (and stock) prices tumble, but their odds of bankruptcy in just 5 years soar, pushing their CDS to record wides.

AI CDS refresh pic.twitter.com/bmQCFga7G7

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 17, 2025

And yet maybe the market, in its passion to punish the weakest AI links, had gone too far: we suggested as much last night when we showed just how much ORCL CDS has underperformed the company's stock. After all, was it truly realistic that Oracle, one of the biggest tech giants in the world, would go bankrupt in the next 5 years?

ORCL CDS may have gone a bit too far pic.twitter.com/Pt7I7XVMRI

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 17, 2025

Well, if the company continued to lever up massively and invest its cash into dead end capex projects, while OpenAi and its peers failed to provide Oracle with the much needed cash the company needed to keep growing its market share and fund its growth (via capex), the answer apparently was a resounding yes. 

Unless... there was a miracle.

Well, late on Thursday a miracle may have finally arrived. Because in a time when it was increasingly unclear how OpenAI et al, would generate the required revenue to pay their hyperscaler partners for the data centers they needed to impress the world with their chatbot wares, while stable sources of private credit such as Blue Owl had suddenly closed shop when it comes to Oracle, a government guarantee appears to have finally emerged.

Only it wasn't the US (at least not yet), but rather the emirate of Abu Dhabi that may have not only averted the bursting of the AI bubble, but also delivered the 2025 Christmas Rally in the last possible moment.

According to the WSJ, OpenAI - desperate to secure funding for its cash incinerating years which are expected to conclude around 2030 during which time more than $200 billion will be spent - is aiming to raise as much as $100 billion as it seeks to pay for ambitious growth plans in a market that has cooled recently on the artificial-intelligence boom.

The fundraising round could value the company at as much as $830 billion, if it raises the full amount it is targeting. Of course, the implied enterprise value is meaningless: it's just a number; what is all too real, however, is the actual amount of cash Sam Altman would get (in exchange for a sizable chunk of equity, confirming just how problematic using far cheaper debt capital raising has become for OpenAI). And that's a doozy: $100 billion should be more than enough to provide OpenAI with the cash it needs to bridge the period until it is profitable all the while rolling out increasingly more lifelike AI models (especially now that Google's Gemini 3 has taken the lead from OpenAI). More importantly, the cash invested into OpenAI, and promptly spent on compute, will fund such clients as Oracle, Core Weave and others as it percolates across the entire budding AI industry.

Here, the WSJ adds the usual disclaimer, that the startup aims to complete the round by the end of the first quarter at the earliest, and that terms of the deal could still change; it is also unclear whether there will be sufficient investor demand to reach the goal.

The round will present one of the biggest tests the company has faced since the public market’s exuberance for AI spending waned. Chief Executive Sam Altman has already scoured the world to build the pool of OpenAI’s investors and the company is now weighing a potential initial public offering, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Of course, Sam Altman had already found some gullible investors to throw good money after bad, most notably Masa Son's SoftBank, which agreed to invest $30 billion in OpenAI earlier this year and last month sold its Nvidia stake for $5.8 billion to fund the OpenAI bet. OpenAI is expected to secure the remaining $22.5 billion in planned financing from SoftBank by the end of the year. 

But that's not nearly enough: after all, recall that we are talking a whopping $1.4 trillion in commitments in the next five years. 

So who is the next most gullible source of capital after SoftBank these days? Why Gulf cash of course. 

Which brings us to the source of the government guarantee: as we said, it's not the US (just yet); instead it is the United Arab Emirates. 

As the WSJ reports, OpenAI is expected to recruit sovereign-wealth funds to invest in the financing, given the scale. The company has previously secured funding from United Arab Emirates-based MGX; it will likely get even more funding from the UAE because considering how much money has already been sunk into OpenAI, UAE companies don't really have a choice to not keep investing - and risk the collapse of Altman's venture. They have to keep throwing good money after bad; such is the curse of the Too Big To Fail, which was banks in 2008... and now it's AI firms. 

The company has faced skepticism over computing deals it has forged that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and issued a “code red” to beat back a growing threat from Google. While OpenAI is set to burn more than $200 billion in cash through 2030, Google has low levels of debt and robust profits, which could make it easier to invest further in AI. 

And since OpenAI is private, the market has instead turned its attention to such OpenAI partners as Oracle and CoreWeave, who have seen their market values plunge in recent months as shareholders soured on the possibility of capital shortfalls and bold plans for data-center build-outs that appear to face financing headwinds.

But now, the looming $100 billion equity investment from the likes of UAE sovereign wealth funds has changed all that, and with OpenAI set to prefund 2 years (or more) of growth (while materially diluting existing investors) not only are OpenAI's chances to emerge as the ultimate AI victory suddenly much higher, but so are the odds of Oracle and CoreWeave to survive the next few years without filing for bankruptcy. 

Which is why not only has ORCL stock soared after hours...

... but why we expect that tomorrow ORCL CDS will plunge from its 16 year high of ~156bps, since not only will OpenAI have billions in cash to spend around on the likes of Oracle, but the cost of holding on to the negative carrying ORCL CDS will suddenly seem excessive, and we expect a short covering frenzy across all AI-linked credit default swaps.

Over/Under on ORCL CDS tomorrow at -20 https://t.co/erupObw6Zz

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 18, 2025

And now that the biggest risk factor for AI is suddenly no longer a near-term concern - courtesy of all that Abu Dhabi housing bubble cash which just has to be reinvested somewhere - it is possible that the UAE may have just delivered a broad market rally just in time for Santa. 

After less than a year on the job, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced his resignation.

"I will be leaving my position with the FBI in January," he said in a Wednesday post on X. 

"I want to thank President Trump, [Attorney General Pam] Bondi, and [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose," he continued. "Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you." 

"God bless America, and all those who defend Her."

I will be leaving my position with the FBI in January.
I want to thank President Trump, AG Bondi, and Director Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose.
Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you.
God bless America, and…

— Dan Bongino (@FBIDDBongino) December 17, 2025

Hours before the announcement President Donald Trump signaled that Bongino was out.

"Dan did a great job," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland earlier yesterday, adding "I think he wants to go back to his show." 

Bongino, meanwhile, told Fox News "I gave up everything for this. My wife is struggling. I'm not a victim. It's fine. I'm proud I did this. But if you think we're there for tea and crumpets...we're there all day," adding "I stare at these 4 walls all day separated from my wife in DC."

??:#DANBONGINO: "I gave up everything for this. My wife is struggling. I'm not a victim. It's fine. I'm proud I did this. But if you think we're there for tea and crumpets...we're there all day."

"I stare at these 4 walls all day separated from my wife in DC." FAMILY MAN.… pic.twitter.com/YGVAZaLxW8

— Brandon Tatum (@TheOfficerTatum) December 18, 2025

As the Epoch Times notes further, Bongino, who started his career as an officer for the New York Police Department and special agent for the U.S. Secret Service, was most known for being a political commentator on Fox News since 2013 and for hosting The Dan Bongino show on Rumble, before he joined the FBI in February 2025.

Social media users, including current and former Fox News contributors such as Nicole Saphier and Trish Regan, commended Bongino for his work. Regan said she looked forward to seeing him broadcast again.

The Epoch Times contacted Fox News for comment on whether Bongino would return, but did not receive an immediate response.

Bongino did not have prior experience in the FBI before he was tapped for the No. 2 position under Patel.

“Dan is the best partner I could’ve asked for in helping restore this FBI,” Patel posted on X Wednesday night.

“He brought critical reforms to make the organization more efficient, led the successful Summer Heat op, served as the people’s voice for transparency, and delivered major breakthroughs in long unsolved cases like the pipe bomb investigation. And that’s only a small part of the work he went about every single day delivering for America.”

The FBI has not yet named a replacement for the position, which does not require Senate confirmation.

During Bongino’s brief tenure, he clashed with the Justice Department over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files after he spent years on his podcast demanding answers about the financier and sex offender’s 2019 death and high-profile connections.

Despite the reported disagreements over handling of the files, Trump said in July that their relationship remained close in July, calling Bongino “a very good guy.”

Authored by Michael Snyder,

We possess technology that would have been unimaginable to people living 100 years ago, we have access to more entertainment than any other generation in human history, and we have been enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that has been fueled by an unprecedented debt binge for decades. So why are so many of us so miserable? One out of every eight Americans is taking an antidepressant, more than 48 million Americans have a substance use disorder, the suicide rate has been trending in the wrong direction for years, and according to Gallup the percentage of U.S. adults that are currently dealing with depression has nearly doubled since 2015…

The percentage of U.S. adults who report currently having or being treated for depression has exceeded 18% in both 2024 and 2025, up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015. The current rate of 18.3% measured so far in 2025 projects to an estimated 47.8 million Americans suffering from depression.

We like to think that we are smarter than all of the generations that have come before us.

If that is true, then why can’t we figure out how to be happy?

What we are doing now is clearly not working, and this is particularly true for our young people.

One study found that approximately 42 percent of Americans that belong to Generation Z have been diagnosed with “anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD” or some other mental health condition…

In fact, an estimated 42% of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD or other mental health condition, with a staggering 60% reportedly taking medication to manage their mental health, according to a study on the respected Psychiatrist.com website.

Nobody can deny that we have failed our young people, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.

We have never seen a group of young adults that is as unhappy as Generation Z is, and without a doubt they are feeling an enormous amount of pressure from many different directions…

Analysts point to a host of difficult, anxiety-producing issues facing Gen Z, including widespread financial worries – with college costs in the stratosphere, food more expensive than ever, home ownership out of reach for most, and two jobs often needed just to pay the rent.

Then there’s the disconcerting reality that many Gen Zers are not dating or getting married and having families – partly due to economic pressures, high anxiety and insecurity about the future, disillusionment with marriage due to the high level of divorce in their parents’ generation, and widespread reliance on dating apps. But also because they are spending so much time living in a virtual world where they can plug into and commune with every imaginable – and unimaginable – type of individual, cause, “influencer” and community on earth, all recruiting 24/7.

I think that all of the reasons mentioned in the quote above are valid.

But I think that there is another that is more important than any of them.

Over the years, Gallup has found that there is a very close link between loneliness and depression…

Gallup research has shown a strong link between depression and loneliness, as one-third of those who had experienced loneliness the day before were also currently suffering from depression, compared with 13% among those who had not.

After declining from pandemic-era highs of 25% to a range of 17% to 18% through much of 2022 and 2023, reports of individuals experiencing significant loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday” have inched upward again since the latter half of 2024 to 21%.

Even though we are more “connected” to one another through the Internet in this day and age, the truth is that we are more isolated than ever.

As a result, much of the population is desperately lonely.

We were designed to love others and to be loved by others, and if we want to turn our mental health crisis around we need to rediscover the importance of making real human connections.

But instead, many Americans are turning to drugs and alcohol to ease the emotional pain that they are feeling.

A report that was put out two years ago by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that 48.5 million Americans have a substance abuse disorder…

According to a 2023 report by the federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and above have a substance use disorder.

This is a national epidemic that is getting worse every single year.

It has been estimated that substance use disorders are now costing the U.S. economy more than 90 billion dollars annually…

A new study has found that substance use disorders (SUD) cost the U.S. economy just under $93 billion in 2023 from a combination of missed work, reduced work productivity and lost household productivity.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on December 8, was conducted by a team at the Division of Injury Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Needless to say, drugs and alcohol are not the answer.

So a lot of people that go down that road end up giving up completely.

For decades, the suicide rate in this country has been steadily moving higher…

Since the 1950s, the suicide rate in the United States has been significantly higher among men than women. In 2022, the suicide rate among men was almost four times higher than that of women. However, the rate of suicide for both men and women has increased gradually over the past couple of decades.

This breaks my heart.

So many people are needlessly ending their own lives.

According to the CDC, an American now dies by suicide every 11 minutes…

The level of suicides among our young adults is particularly alarming.

It is being reported that the suicide rate for young adults in the 18 to 27-year-old age bracket jumped by almost 20 percent from 2014 to 2024…

The suicide rate for U.S. adults aged 18-27 increased nearly 20% between 2014 and 2024, rising from 13.8 per 100,000 people to 16.4, per a new analysis of CDC data from Stateline, a nonprofit newsroom.

We have failed our young people.

Here we are at what many believe to be “the happiest time of the year”, and yet much of the population is soul-crushingly miserable.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Previous generations of Americans were much happier, and today there are lots of people that are living lives that are absolutely teeming with joy.

So if you are feeling depressed right now, I want you to know that there is hope.

You may not realize it yet, but you are greatly loved.

Once you learn how to respond to God’s love and the love that others have for you, everything will start to change.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

One month after it looked like South Korea was backing off Big Tech with an ongoing shakedown of fines for violating arbitrary laws, the Trump administration just left the chat - canceling a key bilateral trade meeting and signaling that continued regulatory pressure on American technology firms will carry immediate consequences.

Seoul now gets to enjoy life on the outs - as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) this week scrapped a scheduled meeting of the KORUS Joint Committee, the primary forum for managing the U.S.–South Korea free trade agreement, Politico reports. The move reflects a growing determination in Washington to ensure compliance with explicit commitments made under an updated trade framework negotiated earlier this fall.

Administration officials familiar with the decision said the meeting was canceled after it became clear that South Korea was pushing forward with digital regulations the United States views as discriminatory, despite assurances to the contrary during negotiations.

The message was unambiguous: agreements will be enforced, not debated.

Congress Reinforces The Administration’s Position

The USTR decision follows a Tuesday House Judiciary Committee hearing that underscored bipartisan congressional backing for a tougher line. Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) warned that South Korea’s regulatory posture - particularly actions by the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) - had crossed a threshold from competition policy into targeted economic pressure on U.S. firms.

“Chairman Ju Byung-ki of the Korea ‘Fair Trade’ Commission – that's a wonderful title – in his own words, disparages America, takes us down," said Issa. “He says: ‘So, why are many Americans, especially white workers in the Rust Belt in the Midwest, so angry?’ I'll tell you why they're so angry, as somebody born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio – and somebody who happened to work for the Trump administration – because in fact, they believe in free and fair trade. The fact is we now have to take on the status quo of global competitiveness.”

?? MUST WATCH: @repdarrellissa rips countries like South Korea for attacking American businesses and American workers.

Republicans and the Trump administration won't let them get away with it. pic.twitter.com/sf2pR7IAxe

— House Judiciary GOP ???????????? (@JudiciaryGOP) December 16, 2025

Lawmakers framed the issue not as a technical regulatory dispute, but as a matter of fair treatment, reciprocity, and credibility in trade relationships.

Issa criticized KFTC Chairman Ju Byung-ki for advancing enforcement policies while publicly disparaging American workers, arguing that such rhetoric and conduct reflect a deeper disregard for the principles underpinning the bilateral trade relationship.

Fitzgerald - who previously sent a warning letter to the KTFC - pointed to economic research indicating that Korea’s approach could impose hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on the U.S. economy, with higher costs ultimately borne by American consumers.

Woke countries like South Korea are attacking American companies to fulfill their leftist agendas.

President Trump won't let it slide! pic.twitter.com/7WfDidRWCR

— House Judiciary GOP ???????????? (@JudiciaryGOP) December 16, 2025

Watch the entire hearing below:

A Pattern Washington Has Long Tolerated - Until Now

For years, South Korea's KFTC has operated as an aggressive and unpredictable regulator whose enforcement actions fall disproportionately on foreign market leaders. American firms have been subjected to raids, intrusive investigations, and fines that critics say far exceed international norms. 

Now, over 40 members of congress recently sent a letter urging the Trump administration to stop the KFTC's "criminal threats for standard business practices." 

Major U.S. companies including Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Qualcomm, Tesla, and others, have faced repeated penalties and probes tied to app stores, digital advertising, search rankings, privacy rules, and platform operations. Korean “network usage fees” and billing mandates have further tilted the playing field, according to industry groups.

One thing is clear - the Trump administration is over it, and Seoul thinks they can wriggle out of promises they made during Trump's October visit to South Korea - during which the administration secured clear commitments under a revised U.S.–ROK trade framework. Seoul agreed to refrain from discriminatory digital regulations, ensure fair treatment of U.S. companies, and improve procedural safeguards in competition enforcement, including recognition of attorney-client privilege.

In return, Korea received tariff relief and expanded access to the U.S. market, while committing tens of billions of dollars in U.S.-approved investments and defense purchases.

From Washington’s perspective, that bargain is not optional - and recent moves by Korea’s parliament to introduce new digital platform bills - alongside signals that regulators may continue aggressive enforcement - were interpreted by U.S. officials as noncompliance, not negotiation.

The cancellation of the KORUS meeting was the response.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has repeatedly warned South Korean officials that failure to adhere to digital trade commitments could trigger a Section 301 investigation, opening the door to new tariffs and countermeasures, Politico notes further.

Administration officials say the issue is not escalation for its own sake, but enforcement of agreed terms. As one White House official put it, tariffs remain “a stick we carry” - and Seoul understands that.

The administration’s broader posture has been consistent: digital trade rules that single out American companies will be met with consequences, whether in Asia or Europe.

Strategic Alignment Comes With Expectations

The firm stance on trade coincides with deepening U.S.–Korea security cooperation, including Washington’s recent approval for South Korea to pursue nuclear-powered submarine capabilities long denied under previous administrations.

Former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has emphasized that economic fairness and strategic trust are inseparable. Regulatory campaigns that target U.S. firms, he warned, create a “climate of fear” inconsistent with alliance obligations - particularly as the U.S. works to counter China’s growing economic influence in the region.

The Trump administration’s decision to halt talks rather than indulge prolonged dispute marks a shift in tone, as it's now clear that Washington is no longer content to subsidize discriminatory regulation under the banner of alliance politics. Market access, tariff relief, and strategic cooperation now come with enforceable expectations.

Or as Issa put it on Tuesday, the United States is done absorbing regulatory abuse from partners while honoring its own commitments.

Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com,

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, has raised concerns about how a potential AI bubble could affect Bitcoin by 2026.

Ardoino shared his outlook on Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry on Thursday during the Bitcoin Capital podcast, co-hosted by Bitfinex Securities and Blockstream.

The executive said he sees Bitcoin “still too much correlated” to capital markets, thus potentially being impacted by the AI bubble, or a theorized stock market bubble growing amid the current AI boom.

“That is the so-called AI bubble, this concern about the fact that AI companies are spending too much money in AI infrastructure and data centers and trying to build a gazillion gigawatts of power and installing GPUs,” Ardoino said.

Ardoino predicts no sharp BTC corrections as seen in 2022 anymore

In a potential scenario where AI sentiment shifts in 2026, the associated stock market turmoil in the US could affect the price of Bitcoin, Tether CEO predicted.

Apart from AI bubble-associated risks, Ardoino sees no other major risks to Bitcoin performance in 2026 due to growing adoption by pension funds and governments.

Bitcoin (BTC) price chart since 2018. Source: Bloomberg

“So I would imagine that sharp corrections of 80%, like we saw in 2022 or early 2018, might not be the case anymore,” Ardoino predicted.

Ardoino also expressed bullishness on real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, saying that tokenized securities and commodities are “going to be massive.”

“The only downside I see is like. Bitcoin is for Bitcoin, right? You don’t want 99% of Bitcoin being institutionalized,” he said.

Ardoino bearish on Europe and “just treasury companies”

While remaining bullish on Bitcoin and tokenization in 2026, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino expressed a far less optimistic view on crypto adoption in Europe and on certain developments in digital asset treasuries in the year ahead.

“I’m very bearish on Europe,” Ardoino said in the interview, arguing that the region continues to lag behind on innovation.

Source: Bitfinex

“Europe will always remain the last wheel of the cart whenever we talk about innovation. Europe is trying to regulate something that it doesn’t understand yet. That is very sad,” he added.

Ardoino pointed to the implications of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which has intensified debate over centralized versus local oversight in the crypto sector.

Tether has been among the most prominent companies to openly refuse compliance with MiCA, a stance that has led many European crypto asset service providers to delist the Tether USDt stablecoin.

Addressing DATs, Ardoino said he’s “not very bullish” on crypto treasury companies that are “just treasury companies.”

“I think that you want a treasury company to have an amazing operational business,” Ardoino said, adding remarks about the Tether-backed Bitcoin company Twenty One:

“The aim for Twenty One is for Twenty One to be an amazing Bitcoin company that provides Bitcoin services and also has a Bitcoin treasury, a very important, big Bitcoin treasury.”

A New Jersey appellate court on Monday threw out Trevor Milton’s lawsuit against CNBC and short-seller Hindenburg Research, ruling that the case was time-barred and improperly framed.

In a unanimous opinion, the Appellate Division held that Milton’s claims—styled as “trade libel”—were, in substance, ordinary defamation claims subject to New Jersey’s one-year statute of limitations. Because Milton filed suit well after that deadline, the court ordered the case dismissed with prejudice and directed the trial court to award attorneys’ fees and costs to the defendants under the state’s anti-SLAPP law.

The panel rejected Milton’s attempt to recharacterize his allegations as trade libel to avoid dismissal, concluding that the complained-of statements targeted Milton personally and concerned his credibility and conduct, not any product he sold. Since the underlying claim against CNBC failed, the court also dismissed Milton’s related allegation that Hindenburg aided and abetted the network’s reporting. At oral argument, Milton’s counsel conceded that the Hindenburg claim could not survive independently. The court emphasized that New Jersey’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act exists to deter lawsuits aimed at punishing or chilling reporting on matters of public concern.

The lawsuit stemmed from CNBC coverage and Hindenburg Research reports in 2020 that scrutinized Milton and his electric-truck startup Nikola Corp. The reporting alleged that Milton had exaggerated Nikola’s technological capabilities, including claims about proprietary battery systems and a prototype truck that was later shown to have rolled downhill rather than driven under its own power.

Milton argued that the coverage destroyed his reputation and future business prospects, asserting that CNBC knowingly broadcast falsehoods and that Hindenburg coordinated with the network to amplify them.

Both defendants countered that their reporting was accurate, newsworthy, and protected speech. Lower courts initially dismissed portions of Milton’s complaint, and the Appellate Division’s decision effectively ends the case entirely, while opening the door for CNBC and Hindenburg to recover significant legal fees. The ruling marks one of the more forceful recent applications of New Jersey’s anti-SLAPP protections to high-profile media defendants.

The decision arrives as Milton continues efforts to rebuild his business career after his dramatic fall from Nikola, which he founded in 2014 and led until his resignation in the wake of the 2020 allegations. Since then, Milton has publicly promoted new entrepreneurial ventures and investments outside Nikola, positioning himself as an innovator once again despite ongoing controversy surrounding his past claims.

After Hindenburg Research published its September 2020 report, Nikola itself publicly acknowledged that several of Trevor Milton’s prior statements were inaccurate or misleading. The company admitted that a promotional video showing a Nikola One truck “in motion” had been filmed by rolling the vehicle downhill rather than driving it under its own power, contradicting earlier impressions that the truck was fully functional.

Nikola also walked back claims that it had developed proprietary battery technology in-house, conceding that it had relied on third-party suppliers rather than owning breakthrough battery innovations as Milton had suggested. In subsequent disclosures, Nikola stated that Milton had made statements about the company’s technology and readiness that were not always supported by facts, and it emphasized that those statements were not authorized by the company—an acknowledgment that helped cement the core factual basis of the scrutiny triggered by the Hindenburg report.

Milton was indicted by federal prosecutors in 2021 on wire fraud and securities fraud charges, went to trial in 2022, and was convicted for misleading investors about Nikola’s technology and readiness. He was later spared further punishment after receiving a presidential pardon by President Trump, which wiped out the conviction.

Hindenburg Research closed up its shop at the beginning of 2025, and Milton has since moved on to his new venture, SyberJet. You can read the NJ court's opinion here.