From Spoiled Sons of Liberty to Surveillance Leviathan: America’s Six Republics and the Myth of Eternal Union

Baghdad's Green Zone Locked Down As Officials Arrested In Corruption Sweep Beyond Sunday's Iranian drone and missile attacks targeting Bahrain and Kuwait, launched in response to earlier U.S. airstrikes, Hormuz shipping traffic remains stable but well below last week's peak, when 57 vessels transited the strait on Wednesday. With maritime flows stable through the critical waterway, attention now shifts to Iraq, where a widening corruption sweep inside Baghdad's Green Zone could become the next area of focus. Iraq's state-run Iraqi News Agency reported that several political figures were arrested in...

Saudi Arabia's $1Tn Wealth Fund Opens Shanghai Office As China Ties Deepen Via The Cradle Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) opened a second office in mainland China earlier this year, establishing a Shanghai branch to expand dealmaking and attract more Chinese investment into the kingdom, Bloomberg reports. The office was registered last year, falls under PIF’s Beijing branch, and is led by Lily Cong, a former chief representative of Fidelity International in China’s capital. Source: Britannica  The Shanghai outpost was reportedly created to strengthen the $1 trillion fund’s ability to pursue outbound deals in China,...

Sam Altman's OpenAI Discusses Handing Trump Admin A 5% Stake The U.S. government's equity portfolio could be expanding again, this time with a potential 5% stake in Sam Altman's OpenAI at an $852 billion valuation, according to a new report. The proposed stake would mark another step toward taking direct financial positions in tech giants. For OpenAI, buy-in from the Trump administration could ease mounting political pressure ahead of an IPO. The Financial Times reports that Altman has floated giving the U.S. government a 5% stake in OpenAI, modeled after...