March 23, 2026

OOF:

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

BELMONT CLUB: Cracking The Mosaic Defense. “The key concept of Defa-e Mozaiki is to avoid relying on a single vulnerable ‘brain.’ Mosaic, as the term visually suggests, is designed so that decapitation strikes (killing top leaders, bombing Tehran, severing communications) do not collapse the system. It relies on extreme decentralization of command and control to achieve this. Authority is pushed down to roughly 31 semi-autonomous operational zones in Iran. Each of these zones has four ways of continuing a fight, each separate from the other, which can act independently or coordinate when needed.”

Posted at 1:13 pm by Stephen Green

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…:

Posted at 12:57 pm by Stephen Green

VERTICAL INTEGRATION: Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry.

Elon Musk took the stage over the weekend at the defunct Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Texas, to officially unveil TERAFAB, a $20-25 billion joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI that he described as “the most epic chip building exercise in history by far.” The announcement marks the most ambitious infrastructure bet Musk has made since Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, Nevada, and it fuses three of his companies into a single, vertically integrated AI hardware machine for the first time.

TERAFAB is designed to consolidate every stage of semiconductor production under one roof, including chip design, lithography, fabrication, memory production, advanced packaging, and testing. At full capacity, the facility would scale to roughly 70% of the global output from the current world’s largest semiconductor foundry from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Elon Musk’s stated goal is one terawatt of computing power annually, split between Tesla’s AI5 inference chips for vehicles and Optimus robots, and D3 chips built specifically for SpaceXAI’s orbital satellite constellation.

I once showed my wife a video of an Optimus robot in action — just performing household tasks on voice commands — and she immediately said, “We’ll sell one of the cars.”

The point is, there’s no way foundries like TSMC can fulfill SpaceX/xAI’s chip needs — certainly not at a reasonable cost — so in typical fashion, Elon will make his own.

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR:

From the leftist politicians’ point of view, it really was money well spent. As I wrote last year, when the DC streetcar was first announced as being phased out, why didn’t DC simply program a bus route right from the start? Because of the enormous amount of graft that a streetcar system can generate compared to busses: “A transit agency that expands its bus fleet gets the support of the transit operators union. But an agency that builds a rail line gets the support of construction companies, construction unions, banks and bond dealers, railcar manufacturers, electric power companies (if the railcars are electric powered), downtown property owners, and other real estate interests. Rail may be a negative-sum game for the region as a whole, but those concentrated interests stand to gain a lot at a relatively small expense to everyone else.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

HEH:

Posted at 12:26 pm by Stephen Green

WEIRD HOW NO “MAINSTREAM” #JOURNALISTS HAVE TRIED THIS FOR A STORY:

Posted at 12:16 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WHEN A TERRORIST STATE WAGES STATE-LEVEL WARFARE:

More:

🇸🇦 Ras Al-Khair Desalination → LARGEST in the world → millions lose water
🇸🇦 Shuqaiq Power Plant → southern Saudi grid GONE
🇶🇦 Al Kharsaah Power Plant → Qatar grid hit
🇶🇦 Ras Laffan C Power + Water → Qatar’s lifeline GONE
🇦🇪 Taweelah Desalination → one of Gulf’s biggest → UAE water supply hit
🇦🇪 Barakah Power Plant → UAE’s NUCLEAR plant → strike = fallout risk
🇧🇭 Al Dur Power + Water → Bahrain’s PRIMARY water source → 60% dependent
🇰🇼 North Zour Power Plant → Kuwait’s largest → 90% desalination dependent
🇯🇴 Aqaba Thermal → Jordan’s south grid
🇯🇴 Samra Power Plant → 40% of Jordan’s total electricity

💀 12 named facilities
💀 6 countries
💀 ZERO military bases on the list
💀 100% civilian infrastructure — water and power

Every target on this list keeps people alive. Not soldiers. CIVILIANS.

If this is how the IRGC wants to go, I can’t imagine it will go well for them.

UPDATE: “Account Suspended.” Your guess is as good as mine.

Posted at 11:55 am by Stephen Green

FALLOUT:

Posted at 11:26 am by Stephen Green

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN:

Make you wonder if Ritter was coopted long before he got caught.

Posted at 10:53 am by Stephen Green

INFRASTRUCTURE: Natural gas prices in Texas plunge deep into negative territory and producers are burning it off, while the rest of the world braces for shortages.

Over the past week, spot prices at the Waha gas trading hub in the Permian Basin fell as low as -$9.75 per million British thermal units, with expectations that it could hit -$10 when pipeline capacity tightens as operators perform seasonal maintenance later this year, traders told Bloomberg.

That’s because drilling in the prolific Permian Basin yields both oil and natural gas. But while an extensive network of pipelines exists to bring crude to market, there’s less infrastructure to transport natural gas, creating bottlenecks and localized surpluses.

As a result, negative gas prices aren’t that unusual in West Texas, and have been that way more often than not so far this year. But last week saw the lowest weekly average Waha spot price on record.

Since negative prices mean producers have to pay to someone to take the supply off their hands, excess natural gas is often burned off, and so-called flaring events this season are at five-year highs.

What a shame they can’t move the stuff and sell it.

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

DIVERSITY IS THE UK’S STRENGTH:

Yes, but does the UK have Learing Centers?

Posted at 10:22 am by Stephen Green