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The view that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions is more widespread in the United States today than when Pew Research Center first asked Americans this question in March of 2002, around six months after the catastrophic events of the 9/11 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaeda Islamists.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, in January, 51 percent of surveyed American adults said Islam was more likely to encourage violence, split between 76 percent of Republicans or Republican leaners and 29 percent of Democrats or Democratic leaners.

Shortly after the attacks that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people, these number had still stood at an average of 25 percent, with both Republicans and Democrats answering more similarly.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As soon as Sept. 17, 2001, president at the time, George W. Bush, visited the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. and was quoted saying "Islam is peace", showcasing how different sentiments were at the time, even among Republicans.

But 9/11 was also a watershed moment for the United States and the world as a whole, eroding trust in a stable world order and a positive future.

The number published by Pew could be interpreted so that the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq did more damage to the relationship between the United States and the religion of Islam that 9/11 immediately did. The survey answers over time show how political polarization, affecting many if not most topics, has progressed in the United States in the past decades.

Pew Research Center also found that around 40 percent of U.S. adults said Muslims had a negative impact on the country, while another 40 percent said their impact was neutral and 17 percent thought it was positive.

Between the years 2000 and 2020, the number of mosques in the United States had grown from around 1,200 to 2,800 while the number of Muslims living in the U.S. also more than doubled to 5.5 million.

Authored by José Niño via The Libertarian Institute

On January 22, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld stepped behind the podium at the Foreign Press Center in Washington and, with one answer to a Dutch public television reporter, redrew the map of Europe. The reporter wanted to know why so many Europeans trusted Saddam Hussein more than then-President George W. Bush. The defense secretary fired back with words the Pentagon transcript preserved in full:

"Now, you’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of new members."

Rumsfeld kept going. “Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem.” When the reporter cited public opinion, he refused to budge. “But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe. They’re not with France and Germany on this, they’re with the United States.”

Berlin and Paris erupted in response. The transcript shows Rumsfeld never spoke the words “new Europe,” yet headlines supplied them within hours, and Radio Free Europe conceded that his underlying point about a split continent held up. A year later in Munich, he told reporters he felt too old for regretting his comments at the time.

The Iraq showdown gave the phrase its teeth. France and Germany, backed by Russia, wanted inspectors to keep working, and Paris threatened to veto a second war resolution at the United Nations. On January 30, 2003, the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic answered with the “Letter of Eight,” a joint commentary urging unity against Baghdad. Six days later, foreign ministers from the Vilnius Ten, a bloc stretching from Albania to the Baltics, endorsed what they called Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “compelling evidence” and demanded “a united response from the community of democracies.”

Washington repaid the loyalty. On May 8, 2003, the Senate voted 96 to 0 to admit Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia while their foreign ministers watched from the balcony. The Senate’s own ratification resolution cited their February 5 statement on Iraq. All seven entered NATO in 2004, bringing three former Soviet republics into the alliance for the first time.

Troops trailed the rhetoric. On August 16, 2004, the Bush White House announced a posture overhaul that would bring home “about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed personnel” over a decade and ship heavy Cold War forces out of Germany. Romania signed a defense cooperation agreement in 2005, and Bulgaria followed in 2006, opening Mihail Kogalniceanu, Novo Selo, and Bezmer to rotating American units. At Bucharest in 2008, Bush pressed allies to declare that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Russia later went to war with Georgia that August.

Every president since has pushed the line east. Barack Obama canceled Bush’s Polish interceptor plan in 2009 but substituted a phased shield whose Romanian base at Deveselu went operational in May 2016. After Crimea joined the Russian Federation, NATO stationed four multinational battlegroups in the Baltic states and Poland, with Americans leading the Polish unit. Donald Trump’s first administration quit the INF Treaty in August 2019, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that “Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise.” A 2020 pact with Warsaw produced a forward headquarters for V Corps in Poznan.

President Joe Biden hardened the frontier further. After February 2022, American forces in Europe swelled to roughly 100,000, congressional researchers noted. The Army opened its first permanent garrison in Poland in March 2023, and NATO declared the Aegis Ashore interceptor site at Redzikowo mission ready in July 2024.

Esteemed diplomat George Kennan saw where this road led. Reacting in 1998 to the first round of enlargement, the father of containment told Thomas Friedman, “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else,” as The American Conservative recounted.

Donald Trump’s second term scrambled the script. In October 2025, the Pentagon sent a 101st Airborne brigade home from Romania without a replacement, leaving about 1,000 Americans in the country. U.S. Army Europe and Africa insisted the move was “not an American withdrawal from Europe or a signal of lessened commitment to NATO and Article 5” but “a positive sign of increased European capability and responsibility.” Armed Services Chairmen Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) fired back that the decision “appears uncoordinated and directly at odds with the President’s strategy.”

Then Trump feuded with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war. On May 1, 2026, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced, “The Secretary of War has ordered the withdrawal of approximately 5,000 troops from Germany.” Defense officials told CBS the missile battalion slated for Germany would go elsewhere. Three weeks later, Trump rewarded Warsaw instead. “Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” he wrote. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski suggested the move would simply hold American numbers near previous levels.

Punish old Europe, reward new Europe. Rumsfeld would recognize the playbook.

Ukraine will decide how far that playbook runs. In July 2026, Thomas Graham of the Council on Foreign Relations outlined a plausible settlement built on a ceasefire along the front, Western security ties for Kiev without NATO membership, and an end to further eastward enlargement, terms Moscow could market as victory. Graham warned against assuming the tide favors Kiev. Bloomberg sources reported that Vladimir Putin wants the rest of Donbas before serious talks, and envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner left Moscow in September without a breakthrough.

Suppose Russia keeps its conquests at a ruinous price. A pyrrhic win of that kind would shut NATO’s door to new members, and Washington’s national security class would likely respond as it did in 2003, by pouring money and manpower into the eastern allies it already has. The scaffolding survives every Trump trim. Allies have pledged 5% of GDP on defense by 2035, and a CRS report counted about 86,000 U.S. personnel in European NATO countries as of March 2026, with Congress requiring certification before numbers fall below 76,000.

Once Trump exits, the hawks who blasted his Romania cut will still hold the blueprints and the bases. They may well revive Rumsfeld’s New Europe as a permanent front against Moscow, anchored in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics. Kennan warned that such a posture breeds the hostility it claims to deter. Americans deserve a debate before Washington signs them up for another generation of geopolitical tension with the Russian Bear.

Houthi officials have put Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan on notice amid the ongoing Saudi-Yemen conflict, and as Riyadh urges partners to assist militarily against the Ansar Allah movement. Iran's state Nour News, which is affiliated with the country's Supreme National Security Council, has issued a report saying the three Saudi allies "will likely be targeted in the next stages"
 - per a Houthi official.

The Houthi official warned that "The targeting of Iran by the enemies will not be limited to the country's borders and, according to him, the next efforts will be to target Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan."

Already the Houthis have launched several attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities, also including fuel depots next to Riyadh's international airport. The Houthis subsequently confirmed sending ballistic missiles on the capital, in a first of the war. This happened Friday night into Saturday.

According to more from the Iranian media report:

Referring to the position of these three countries in the Islamic world, he said that their power and influence could be an obstacle to the Zionist regime's plans. The Ansarullah official stated that this plan is based on pushing Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan towards wars and internal conflicts, and that Saudi Arabia plays a role in this process. According to him, such a situation could lead to the erosion of capabilities, weakening, and disintegration of the internal social fabric of these countries

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was just in Cairo meeting with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. The visit came just in the wake of an Iranian-backed militia attack on the key Saudi East-West pipeline, which one US official described as having been launched from Iraq.

A big focus of the MbS-Sisi meeting was regional security. The Saudis have been asking all regional allies for support at a moment the internationally recognized Sanaa government is rapidly losing ground to the Houthis.

Washington has appeared to shrug its shoulders, staying on the sidelines thus far. President Trump was reported ready to pull the trigger against the Houthis but reportedly TACO'd by close of the weekend.

But there's even greater pressure on the Pakistanis and Turks to take action, given the recently signed Mecca Defense Pact. We featured the following commentary last week:

Turkey's new commitments to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca defence pact could increase the risk of Ankara being drawn into a confrontation with Yemen's Houthis, a development that could have significant consequences for Turkish supply lines to the Horn of Africa. Although Turkey has yet to ratify the pact, expected in October, continued Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, and Ankara’s recent participation in the Saudi-led Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance make some form of confrontation possible.

Another big, obvious risk includes the whole thing spinning out into a full-on regional war, which would likely further fuel US-Iran confrontation, and possibly bring in the Israelis.

Bigger conflict would also likely close Red Sea shipping. The Houthis have so far only declared the Bab Al-Mandab Strait off limits to Saudi and Israeli-linked ships. But the fear is that any moment the group could begin assaults on all international shipping, akin to the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.

Even very good reporting on Saudi-Houthi situation often says the Houthis e.g. "reignited" the war this summer, or some such. But this July, Saudi struck airport in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, to block an Iranian plane from landing. Sometimes that's not even mentioned...

— Andrew Day (@AKDay89) September 21, 2026

The Iranians and Houthis know they hold this card, and are likely intentionally slow-playing their leverage, but ready to pull the trigger on the next potential round of escalation with the US-Saudi-Israeli axis.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Revenge is sweet. It tastes all the sweeter the longer one has had to wait for it to arrive, and the deeper the pain of the humiliation that preceded it.

Some may still have the images of the great debt crisis of a decade and a half ago before their eyes: German politicians, led by then-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, traveled to Athens at regular intervals to make sure everything was in order. Greece, the supposed sinner of the debt crisis, had gone off the rails, accumulated too much debt and was quickly made the scapegoat for the financial-market and sovereign-debt crisis. It was convenient - because it diverted attention from Germany’s own failures.

That someone had apparently left a score to settle was made clear by Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis in an interview with Handelsblatt on Monday. When the conversation turned to the debt question, Pierrakakis, who also serves as president of the Eurogroup, noted that reforms in fiscal policy might be painful at first, but would ultimately pay off politically and economically.

The man is right. And Berlin should listen to him, because the debt club around Friedrich Merz is knowingly driving the budget into the wall with new borrowing of more than 5 percent next year.

It really does sound like an open score to settle when the Greek generously praises Germany’s economic potential in flowery language while at the same time noting that the country is not untouchable: “Germany is the industrial locomotive of Europe” — Pierrakakis is mercilessly putting his finger on the wound. For he cannot have failed to notice how rapidly the country is economically destroying itself, how quickly it is deindustrializing in the grip of climate fanaticism and mutating from a nation of tinkerers and engineers into an open-air institution for moralists and degrowth ideologues.

While Germany has embarked on the road to second-class status, Greece is gradually growing out of its permanent crisis. The problem with the local economy remains the euro: The Greeks actually need a significantly devalued currency in order to compete more effectively on international markets. After the introduction of the euro and the cheaper borrowing costs made possible by Germany’s credit anchor, the country slipped into an artificial debt trap — the land of spendthrifts and pleasure-seekers, according to the ugly narrative.

German banks and insurers had invested as much as 45 billion euros in Greek bonds at the time — money for which German taxpayers ultimately had to foot the bill. Distorted interest rates caused by the introduction of the euro and the euro debt club’s highly heterogeneous economies were bound to produce such a disaster — and the next debacle is already taking shape: Debt is rising everywhere, while interest rates are climbing. The bond market is responding by selling government bonds, thereby driving up the cost of servicing debt through higher interest rates.

Were Greece’s efforts toward austerity and thrift ultimately in vain?

Whether the moment of the great debt reckoning has now arrived is rather unlikely — there is still plenty of room to push the sovereign-debt crisis to the point of rupture. Nevertheless, much is reminiscent of the period 15 years ago, when the bond market reacted in a similar way and the U.S. housing crisis spread through the market mechanism to the fragile European sovereign-bond markets. Greece, the EU’s smallest economy with the highest level of government debt, was hit first before the dominoes began to fall.

Schäuble’s Greek counterpart at the time was Giannis Varoufakis: an intellectual, committed socialist who stood up to the Teutons and the Troika of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — until his party Syriza and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras were brought to their knees.

The consequence: austerity policy. Massive pension cuts, hospital closures — the shrinking of the welfare state. The Greeks experienced their social-policy Waterloo and have since managed to reduce their government debt ratio from the peak of the crisis, around 180 percent, to 146 percent.

Chapeau! The Greeks deserve every bit of respect in the face of the lax fiscal policies all around them — whether in Italy, Germany, France or Spain. Athens is staying the course, voting conservatively and struggling through this painful period of adjustment.

In the Handelsblatt interview, Pierrakakis becomes something of a fiscal-policy armchair philosopher: The cost of doing nothing, he says, is ultimately higher for everyone than the cost of reforms. That may be true. But the lesson contains a kernel of truth that will not move the German governing coalition even a millimeter toward the mountain of necessary reforms growing larger by the day.

Because consolidating this year’s 180-billion-euro deficit-ridden chaos budget would imply corresponding spending cuts. Tax increases would strangle the economy — Germany would have to begin with remigration, end development aid, reform the welfare state and seriously consider what to do about the war with Russia and the massive military buildup it entails.

The pain of austerity is still ahead for the Germans. Whether it is brought about through the bond market or through the harsh cuts of a reform government makes no difference.

All in all, it was a memorable interview because it describes Germany’s changing era from the perspective of the underdog. Above all, Pierrakakis’ remark that Germany has economic potential should resonate for a long time in its ironic sharpness. Because the country has overstretched its public finances and now lives on credit — just as the Greeks once did.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a graduate economist, has worked for or over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Amazon.com has blocked Meta’s new AI agent from its retail site after the social media company declined a request to remove the bot, Bloomberg reported.

Meta’s Muse, which was introduced earlier this month and has taken the world by storm, quickly rising to the top of mobile app charts, a sign that the social media company is gaining traction in the increasingly crowded market for consumer AI assistants, and sent the company's stock price soaring, is designed to help people carry out such common online tasks as shopping and booking appointments.

However, since it has its own agentic product, Amazon prohibits other companies from deploying automated tools to shop its site and started blocking Muse on Sunday night, a spokesperson said. Shoppers using Muse see a series of pop-ups saying its use violates Amazon’s terms of use.

“We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate,” Amazon spokesperson Lara Hendrickson said in an emailed statement, adding that an opt-in requirement is standard practice for food delivery apps and online travel agencies. “Agentic third-party applications such as Muse have the same obligations, and we’ve requested that Meta remove Amazon from the experience.”

Amazon builds its own automated shopping tools, but has sought to prevent rivals’ bots from browsing and making purchases from its catalog. The company last year sued Perplexity AI Inc., saying the widely used artificial intelligence startup sought to conceal its shopping agents after Amazon asked Perplexity to remove them. The legal skirmish is widely seen as a high-profile test case that could help determine the rules of the road governing agentic shopping.

So far, consumers are mostly using bots to research products rather than let them make purchases. So Amazon’s move to block shopping agents from accessing its site means the company is unlikely to lose much business. But if consumers start using AI agents to buy stuff, the bots could select other e-commerce sites, costing Amazon sales and advertising revenue.

Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said earlier this year that the agentic shopping experience left much to be desired, and that the bots often flubbed pricing or other data.

“We’re having conversations with all those folks to try and make that better and find something that works for customers and all the companies,” he said in April. 

Perhaps to offset the negative vibes from the angry Amazon response, late on Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he was "teaming up with Shopify to make shopping and checkout easier in Muse. Shoppers find more. Shops sell more. More partnerships like this coming soon."

Teaming up with Shopify to make shopping and checkout easier in Muse. Shoppers find more. Shops sell more. More partnerships like this coming soon. https://t.co/ccak4J7IIb

— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) September 21, 2026

Maybe... but more likely the won't be, since every retailer will want to have their own proprietary agents access to their own content and product offering. 

Hence agent wars. 

Meta's Muse is ranked the No. 1 free app on the US Apple iOS App and Google Play stores as of Monday. The assistant, which is available for people 18 years and older, was downloaded more than 902,000 times in the six days after Meta introduced it on Sept. 8, according to Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower. That’s more than the 773,000 downloads of its predecessor, the Meta AI app, in the same post-launch period. 

According to Goldman, Meta’s Muse (powered by Muse Spark) represents a major leap because it delivers ready-to-use personal agents with simple chat interfaces, including deep WhatsApp integration for Muse, so no coding is required - unlike earlier Claude-style bots.

They actively handle tasks like booking holidays or restaurants, and go further by proactively chasing email follow-ups, flagging inconsistencies or conflicts in your inbox, monitoring threads, and advancing goals in the background even when you’re offline. Classic chatbots like ChatGPT stay reactive: they answer questions or draft text only when prompted, never independently act across your apps or keep working on your behalf. As Goldman's TMT specialist Sean Johnstone writes, "the more I use Instinct the more I like it – its really is like having your own dedicated PA."

The sudden surge of Muse means the frontier models' agentic dominance just got another major competitor. It also means there will be an unprecedented demand for hardware: as Wccftech writes, "If Meta’s Muse Personal Agent Scales To Just 100 Million Users, It Would Require 1.58 Million AMD Ryzen CPUs, 800 Petabyte Of RAM, And 10,000 Petabyte Of SSD Under Ideal Conditions." More: 

If you were wondering why everyone has suddenly turned so bullish on CPUs from Intel, AMD, and Arm, look no further than the underlying compute requirements for serving Meta's Muse personal agent to just 100 million users, assuming minimal sharing, especially as Meta has promised each Muse user a dedicated VM that can work continuously in the background.

Also, Meta is currently allowing up to 100 million free tokens per week, with paid subscription tiers starting around $20 per month for heavy power users.

Every Muse user is supposed to get their own cloud PC.
2 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, 100GB disk.

If Meta actually leaves those boxes on, user growth turns into a chip and memory problem.

that’s what i'm trying to size

a few thoughts on $META and Muse:

Muse is 13 days old and US only… https://t.co/57wvCNGsIj

— dylan ? (@demian_ai) September 21, 2026

Of course, the agentic fee will only cover a tiny fraction of the hardware required to run the compute the agents will soak up, which means that - if successful in getting more people to use it - Zuckerberg is about to take Meta's capex into hyperdrive. Which, for the company formerly known as Facebook before it changed its name to Meta after a catastrophic foray into the metaverse which cost it nearly $100 billion in wasted funds, won't be the first time it has aggressively chased an overhyped concept only to crash and burn. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet in Washington on Thursday. UBS analysts quoted chief China economist Yu Song as saying the meeting between the leaders of the two global superpowers is largely about strategic stability and modest progress on tariffs, rare earths, and AI safety.

Political risk analyst Marcus Bischoff expects no major breakthrough but says the most realistic outcome is continuity in US-China relations as the most likely outcome. He sees cautious grounds for higher expectations following discussions between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.

Over the weekend, a Reuters report said that Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were set to discuss advanced AI bots and the global adoption of the technology, as well as rare earths.

As Christian Keller, Barclays' global head of economics research, recently described, China's near-total control of more than 95% of critical material refining has been used as leverage against the US. Whether magnets, tungsten, germanium, gallium, or other critical materials, China has restricted their flows over the last year and a half, forcing the US into a mad sprint to secure conflict-free supplies.

Bloomberg reported the latest details on China's resource nationalism and the weaponization of critical material supply chains overnight, citing customs data released Sunday that showed rare earth shipments from China to the US plunged sharply in August.

Shipments dropped 21% from July to 512 tons, according to the new trade data. The decline leaves US supplies of components used in cars, consumer goods, and weapons as a key talking point, whether in discussions between Bessent and his Chinese counterparts or between Trump and Xi.

Bloomberg Economics' Chris Kennedy said, "Washington needs stability with Beijing to keep these critical inputs moving," adding, "Yet periods of calm that restore access to lower-cost Chinese material weaken the urgency for the US to break its dependence on China."

The latest trade data shows China's quasi-monopolistic control of critical materials can be used as geopolitical leverage.

One major problem for the US is that Barclays' Keller shows Beijing will control mineral mining and global refining of these materials through at least 2030.

Breaking Beijing's quasi-monopolistic grip has been an emerging theme of ours that includes finding producing miners with conflict-free supply chains that can deliver to the West. Those miners will be the early winners because these critical materials are the building blocks of the West's pursuit of reindustrialization, the AI data center buildout, power grid upgrades, and, of course, the incoming rearmament cycle.

At long last, the memory bubble may be finally bursting. 

According to Jason Chen, chairman and CEO of Taiwanese PC and IT hardware giant, Acer, prices for memory chips will start reversing in the latter half of next year, dismissing the memory cartel pardon Big 3 claim that chip prices will keep rising well beyond 2027, and bucking the popular narrative which expects no declines in chip prices for the foreseeable future. 

According to United Daily News, Chen said that only high-end DDR5 parts like LPDDR5X-9600 and niche CPUs like Nvidia’s N1 and N1X chips are in short supply. Since supplier pricing lags consumer pricing by about a few months, he added that PC prices will still rise between 5% and 20% towards the end of this year, plateau by the first half of 2027, before finally declining after years of AI-drive hikes.

The AI boom has driven shortages for various PC components, beginning with GPUs in late 2022, before expanding to memory chips by late 2025. This made memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, although the increases have finally cooled as consumers refuse to absorb further hikes.

Some memory companies like SK Hynix are saying that the shortage will be worse next year and that it won’t be until 2030 before pricing will start to normalize. The Adata chief even said that the DRAM shortage would last another 10 years. This is plausibly true, especially as HBM demand from AI hyperscalers remains strong, and the various memory chip fabs under construction aren’t expected to come online until the 2030s.

However, Chen disagreed with this take. He said that the major memory suppliers naturally want to keep their margins as high as possible for longer, and the reason memory makers keep coming out and saying "the price uptrend will continue into 2027" is that antitrust rules prevent them from coordinating prices directly, so they use public statements to send a kind of "signal" to one another “so they keep putting out the message: let me tell you, prices won’t come down until the year 20-whatever.”

The Acer chairperson argued that there’s already ample memory and SSD supplies, while the purported CPU shortage is now limited to specific models: "No. How could it stay short forever? Chinese capacity keeps coming onto the market. The supply shortage problem has already completely disappeared."

Chen also expects the cost of the SSDs and memory Acer holds in 2027 to be lower than this year. If that gets reflected in end product prices, he sees a possibility that prices at least stop rising and stabilize in the second half of next year. The Acer CEO said prices could be raised further in Q1 27 as well. But since this is a period of pricing chaos, he expects the size of the increases to gradually shrink. He estimates component prices could peak around the middle of 2027, when the capacity that chipmakers have added is expected to start running in earnest.

After that, prices would stabilize, and whether they can actually come down in the second half remains to be seen. He admitted, though, that nobody can know the exact timing of the reversal. Chen said PC selling prices coming back down is strictly "a hope."

He also added that Chinese memory makers churning out cheaper alternatives would disrupt the market - something that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won feared. In fact, Acer, alongside HP and Asus, has started using CXMT chips in some of its products, while some Lenovo models sold in Germany were found to have YMTC SSDs.

Nevertheless, he said that price increases are becoming their own trend, saying that SSDs, PCBs, and fiberglass cloth used in motherboards are seeing their own hikes. “A lot of people come and tell us they want to raise prices, and we find it a bit baffling — this needs to go up, too?” Chen said to the reporters.

He wrapped up by saying this chain of price hikes creates inflation (according to Goldman, rising memory prices will push core PCE higher by 0.5%) which in turn pushes central banks to raise rates, and that "this is not a normal phenomenon."

As Tom's Hardware summarizes, the overall tenor from Chen is good news for long-suffering PC enthusiasts if computer manufacturers could finally lower prices after years of shortages and expensive parts.

Certainly happy to take advantage of the soaring profit margins, China's best IPO of the decade, DRAM chipmaker CXMT, said on ?Sunday its fifth-generation technology platform had entered mass production, a claimed breakthrough that could help China build a stronger competitor to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology in the global market for memory chips. 

The new platform is ?designed to make more powerful memory chips at lower cost and with less power ?use, Reuters reported. CXMT, which earlier this year listed on Shanghai's STAR Market, said it would give electronics makers an additional ?source of supply for chips used in smartphones and other devices. The company is currently the 4th largest DRAM maker in the world - but rapidly growing - after the Big-3 cartel of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.

CXMT, China's leading producer of DRAM, said the ?new platform packs the tiny structures that store data closer together, allowing more memory to fit on each chip and more individual chips to be made from each silicon wafer.

The Hefei-based memory-chip maker said it had reduced the spacing of key features ?in the part of the chip that stores data to 11.95 nanometres, or about 12 billionths of a ?metre.

It achieved this using "quadruple patterning," a process that repeats several manufacturing steps to produce finer circuit patterns.
"Our process capability is now ?on ?par with the most advanced mass-produced nodes out there in the industry," Luo Xiaodong, CXMT's vice president and head of its marketing centre, said at the 2026 World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei.

CXMT also unveiled two 24-gigabit LPDDR5X products made on the new platform. LPDDR5X is a power-saving type of DRAM used mainly ?in smartphones and other portable ?electronics. The products each hold ?50% more data than CXMT's previous equivalent products and are already in mass production, the company said. They are offered in two package formats for different smartphone ?and portable-device designs.

CXMT said the platform can produce at least 50% more gross chip ?dies per ?wafer than its fourth-generation platform, using an 8-gigabit-chip baseline. That measures the potential number of chips made from a wafer before defective units are excluded, rather than the proportion that pass final testing.

CXMT said it developed the platform using computer ?simulations ?and joint work with Chinese chip-equipment makers on critical production steps.

The ?advance comes as Beijing seeks to reduce reliance on foreign semiconductor technology and US export controls since 2022 have restricted China's access to ?certain advanced chipmaking equipment and related software.

Meteorologists on X are tracking a potential nor'easter that could form off the East Coast late this week. 

A powerful nor’easter could lash the East Coast this week — a rarity for September.

Only around 1 percent of nor’easters have historically occurred during September.

They are most common from November to April. pic.twitter.com/t9LNEgAeqD

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) September 21, 2026

A late-September nor'easter is rare for this time of year, and it comes as El Niño has curbed hurricane development so far this season. 

Is it nor’easter season already?! Things are getting started early this year!

The East Coast will be on watch for a potentially powerful early-season nor’easter later this week — with rain, wind and waves whose severity depends on the exact track. pic.twitter.com/A1K5vF2Xhj

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) September 20, 2026

"While not technically a hurricane, the coastal impacts from a powerful Nor'easter will bring "battering waves" and erosion plus very strong winds perhaps gusting to 70-80 mph," meteorologist Ryan Maue wrote on X earlier Monday, adding, "Even without a storm name -- news media should take this "climate-fueled cyclone" very seriously." 

While not technically a hurricane, the coastal impacts from a powerful Nor'easter will bring "battering waves" and erosion plus very strong winds perhaps gusting to 70-80 mph.

Even without a storm name -- news media should take this "climate fueled cyclone" very seriously. pic.twitter.com/E57I2hWeAd

— Ryan Maue (@RyanWeather) September 21, 2026

PIX11 senior meteorologist Mike Masco said, "Some model guidance has hinted at gusts of 60–70 mph from eastern New Jersey to eastern Long Island. That is NOT a forecast at this point, but I’m not dismissing the potential, particularly across eastern Long Island." 

?? NOR’EASTER SEASON TO KICK OFF THIS WEEKEND?

The European model is showing a setup that could produce a long-duration nor’easter potentially with some tropical characteristics.

Here’s what I’m watching at 500 mb, roughly 18,000 feet up: Upper-level energy rotating in from… pic.twitter.com/7Ar2P7oCY5

— Mike Masco (@MikeMasco) September 21, 2026

The good news is that peak hurricane season was on September 10 (11 days ago), without a named storm, because strong wind shear associated with El Niño was tearing apart developing systems in the Atlantic Basin. However, the season runs through November 30.