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Ivy League institutions are renowned worldwide for their academic excellence and long-standing traditions. But how hard is it to get into one of the top universities in the U.S.?

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu details the admission rates and average annual cost for Ivy League schools, as well as the median SAT scores required to be accepted. The data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and was compiled by 24/7 Wall St.

Note that “average annual cost” represents the net price a student pays after subtracting the average value of grants and/or scholarships received.

Harvard is the Most Selective

The SAT is a standardized test commonly used for college admissions in the United States. It’s taken by high school juniors and seniors to assess their readiness for college-level academic work.

When comparing SAT scores, Harvard and Dartmouth are among the most challenging universities to gain admission to. The median SAT scores for their students are 760 for reading and writing and 790 for math. Still, Harvard has half the admission rate (3.2%) compared to Dartmouth (6.4%).

*Costs after receiving federal financial aid.

Additionally, Dartmouth has the highest average annual cost at $33,000. Princeton has the lowest at $11,100.

While student debt has surged in the United States in recent years, hitting $1.73 trillion in 2023, the worth of obtaining a degree from any of the schools listed surpasses mere academics. This is evidenced by the substantial incomes earned by former students.

Harvard grads, for example, have the highest average starting salary in the country, at $91,700.

Ivy League institutions are renowned worldwide for their academic excellence and long-standing traditions. But how hard is it to get into one of the top universities in the U.S.?

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu details the admission rates and average annual cost for Ivy League schools, as well as the median SAT scores required to be accepted. The data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and was compiled by 24/7 Wall St.

Note that “average annual cost” represents the net price a student pays after subtracting the average value of grants and/or scholarships received.

Harvard is the Most Selective

The SAT is a standardized test commonly used for college admissions in the United States. It’s taken by high school juniors and seniors to assess their readiness for college-level academic work.

When comparing SAT scores, Harvard and Dartmouth are among the most challenging universities to gain admission to. The median SAT scores for their students are 760 for reading and writing and 790 for math. Still, Harvard has half the admission rate (3.2%) compared to Dartmouth (6.4%).

*Costs after receiving federal financial aid.

Additionally, Dartmouth has the highest average annual cost at $33,000. Princeton has the lowest at $11,100.

While student debt has surged in the United States in recent years, hitting $1.73 trillion in 2023, the worth of obtaining a degree from any of the schools listed surpasses mere academics. This is evidenced by the substantial incomes earned by former students.

Harvard grads, for example, have the highest average starting salary in the country, at $91,700.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge in Washington D.C. has denied seven motions from a defendant seeking to identify FBI agents in Jan. 6 crowds and gain access to undercover videos shot by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, at least one of whom incited the crowds at the U.S. Capitol.

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo (center) with two possible active FBI special agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

In a 22-page order, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against William Pope on a range of motions filed in his Jan. 6 criminal case since May 2023.

Judge Contreras partially granted a government cross-motion to modify the evidence protective order in the case. “I now have the most restricted discovery access conditions of any Jan 6 defendant,” Mr. Pope wrote on X.

“All I’m asking for is a fair fight in court, but he’s denying me rights to defend myself Pro Se that aren’t denied to attorneys,” Mr. Pope told The Epoch Times in a statement. “Even though some January 6 attorneys have filed highly sensitive materials as public exhibits, or leaked them on social media, I have not released a single sensitive or highly sensitive file governed by the protective order.”

Mr. Pope, 38, publisher of the news website Free State Kansas, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, covering the protest and subsequent violence.

Federal prosecutors charged him with civil disorder, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress or egress in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

He faces a July 22 trial.

Sought FBI Agents

Mr. Pope most recently asked the court to compel federal prosecutors to identify all FBI special agents or other employees who were “material witnesses” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and produce “all photographs, videos, and records related to their presence.”

In that motion, Mr. Pope cited two suspected FBI agents who attended Jan. 6 events at the Capitol with former special agent John Guandolo, who once served as the Bureau’s liaison with U.S. Capitol Police.

Mr. Guandolo “has said in interviews that he was with several active-duty FBI agents on January 6, and that he and those agents have been interviewed by the FBI regarding their observations,” Mr. Pope wrote in his Feb. 12 motion.

One of the men was seen on security video clapping enthusiastically as a large crowd of protesters rushed up the east steps to the Columbus Doors. “Oh, oh, oh man, this is huge,” the man said, heard on Mr. Guandolo’s cell phone video that showed the crowd ascending the steps.

The other suspected agent was seen on Capitol Police security video meeting with an FBI SWAT team shortly after its BearCat tactical vehicle rolled onto the House Plaza at about 2:30 p.m. Twenty minutes later the SWAT team responded to the South Door after the shooting of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

Federal prosecutors argued they have no obligation to investigate the identity or roles of FBI agents on Jan. 6. The judge concurred.

“The Court agrees with the government and finds that defendant has failed to show that the government has an obligation to produce the requested material,” Judge Contreras wrote.

In another motion denied by Judge Contreras, Mr. Pope sought to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to inventory and provide access to all Capitol Police security video it has had in its possession.

Mr. Pope said footage is missing from some of the 1,800 USCP security cameras, and prosecutors have only produced 6,000 hours of security video in discovery. A U.S. House committee that oversees Capitol Police has released 20,000 hours of an expected 40,000 hours it will post publicly.

William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, carries an American flag just inside the Senate Wing Door at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Mr. Pope wrote that the importance of the security video—thousands of hours of which are now available on Rumble—is underscored by an investigation suggesting two Capitol police officers perjured themselves in the first Oath Keepers trial in the fall of 2022.

Video obtained by Blaze Media showed that a supposed confrontation between Officer Harry Dunn and the Oath Keepers could not have occurred as he described under oath. Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus, who testified that he witnessed the confrontation, was in another part of Capitol grounds at the time.

‘Not Beneficial’

“While Pope asserts that the missing camera footage is ‘highly relevant to January 6 cases, including [his] own,’ … he does not explain what he expects the footage to show or why that footage would assist in his defense,” Judge Contreras wrote. “Much of the camera footage that Pope requests depicts areas where Pope never set foot. That footage is therefore not beneficial to Pope’s case.”

The judge also denied Mr. Pope’s Aug. 21, 2023, motion seeking video shot by more than two dozen members of the MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit on Jan. 6. He first requested access to the Electronic Surveillance Unit videos in March 2023.

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo with suspected FBI agents Colleague 1 and Colleague 2, along with an unidentified man labeled in court filings as Colleague 3, on the Southwest Walk of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

The August 2023 motion cites MPD internal affairs investigations of MPD officers Nicholas Tomasula and Lt. Zeb Barcus. Hundreds of pages of documents on Mr. Tomasula were heavily redacted, Mr. Pope said, and “the two reports have led to more questions about misconduct by undercover police.”

Mr. Tomasula was identified as the MPD officer heard on video encouraging protesters on the Northwest Steps to keep going and enter the Capitol. He was heard participating in crowd chants such as, “Whose House? Our House!”

At the foot of the Northwest Steps, as a protester climbed up a makeshift ladder onto the balustrade, Mr. Tomasula shouted: “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that [expletive],” his video showed. Mr. Tomasula got help from a protester climbing onto the balustrade, then shouted to protesters moving up the steps, “C’mon, go, go, go!”

Federal prosecutors admitted in 2023 that Mr. Tomasula acted as a provocateur embedded in the crowd on Jan. 6.

Judge Contreras concluded Electronic Surveillance Unit video is only relevant to the extent Mr. Pope can identify an undercover officer whose path he crossed.

“While evidence of undercover officers instigating the riot on January 6 could—hypothetically—be helpful and material to Pope’s case, Pope’s motion ‘never identifies a single individual he interacted with whom he now suspects to be an undercover actor,’” Judge Contreras wrote.

“Pope does not say that he himself spoke with or was induced by any undercover officer,” the judge wrote. “Therefore, he cannot make an entrapment defense with the evidence he seeks from the government, and the material he seeks is irrelevant and immaterial.”

Mr. Pope complained that prosecutors restricted his access to some of the investigative materials, which he described as “highly explosive” and “exculpatory.”

In previous filings, Mr. Pope described several self-identified Antifa supporters who were intercepted by undercover MPD officers on Jan. 6, including one who was carrying a gun.

Metropolitan Police Department undercover detectives Ricardo Leiva and Michael Callahan were part of a three-man Electronic Surveillance Unit team at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. District Court/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

MPD officers made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula.

“Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Mr. Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly live-streamed part of the police stop to Facebook.”

Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. Grimes—who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie—for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition, according to Mr. Pope. The charges were dropped on Jan. 7, 2021.

In a previous filing, Mr. Pope identified undercover MPD officer Ryan Roe, who encountered a still-unidentified protester seen cutting down green plastic temporary fencing on Capitol grounds. Mr. Roe said to #FenceCutterBulwark, “Appreciate it, brother,” according to his video.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge in Washington D.C. has denied seven motions from a defendant seeking to identify FBI agents in Jan. 6 crowds and gain access to undercover videos shot by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, at least one of whom incited the crowds at the U.S. Capitol.

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo (center) with two possible active FBI special agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

In a 22-page order, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against William Pope on a range of motions filed in his Jan. 6 criminal case since May 2023.

Judge Contreras partially granted a government cross-motion to modify the evidence protective order in the case. “I now have the most restricted discovery access conditions of any Jan 6 defendant,” Mr. Pope wrote on X.

“All I’m asking for is a fair fight in court, but he’s denying me rights to defend myself Pro Se that aren’t denied to attorneys,” Mr. Pope told The Epoch Times in a statement. “Even though some January 6 attorneys have filed highly sensitive materials as public exhibits, or leaked them on social media, I have not released a single sensitive or highly sensitive file governed by the protective order.”

Mr. Pope, 38, publisher of the news website Free State Kansas, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, covering the protest and subsequent violence.

Federal prosecutors charged him with civil disorder, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress or egress in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

He faces a July 22 trial.

Sought FBI Agents

Mr. Pope most recently asked the court to compel federal prosecutors to identify all FBI special agents or other employees who were “material witnesses” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and produce “all photographs, videos, and records related to their presence.”

In that motion, Mr. Pope cited two suspected FBI agents who attended Jan. 6 events at the Capitol with former special agent John Guandolo, who once served as the Bureau’s liaison with U.S. Capitol Police.

Mr. Guandolo “has said in interviews that he was with several active-duty FBI agents on January 6, and that he and those agents have been interviewed by the FBI regarding their observations,” Mr. Pope wrote in his Feb. 12 motion.

One of the men was seen on security video clapping enthusiastically as a large crowd of protesters rushed up the east steps to the Columbus Doors. “Oh, oh, oh man, this is huge,” the man said, heard on Mr. Guandolo’s cell phone video that showed the crowd ascending the steps.

The other suspected agent was seen on Capitol Police security video meeting with an FBI SWAT team shortly after its BearCat tactical vehicle rolled onto the House Plaza at about 2:30 p.m. Twenty minutes later the SWAT team responded to the South Door after the shooting of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

Federal prosecutors argued they have no obligation to investigate the identity or roles of FBI agents on Jan. 6. The judge concurred.

“The Court agrees with the government and finds that defendant has failed to show that the government has an obligation to produce the requested material,” Judge Contreras wrote.

In another motion denied by Judge Contreras, Mr. Pope sought to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to inventory and provide access to all Capitol Police security video it has had in its possession.

Mr. Pope said footage is missing from some of the 1,800 USCP security cameras, and prosecutors have only produced 6,000 hours of security video in discovery. A U.S. House committee that oversees Capitol Police has released 20,000 hours of an expected 40,000 hours it will post publicly.

William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, carries an American flag just inside the Senate Wing Door at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Mr. Pope wrote that the importance of the security video—thousands of hours of which are now available on Rumble—is underscored by an investigation suggesting two Capitol police officers perjured themselves in the first Oath Keepers trial in the fall of 2022.

Video obtained by Blaze Media showed that a supposed confrontation between Officer Harry Dunn and the Oath Keepers could not have occurred as he described under oath. Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus, who testified that he witnessed the confrontation, was in another part of Capitol grounds at the time.

‘Not Beneficial’

“While Pope asserts that the missing camera footage is ‘highly relevant to January 6 cases, including [his] own,’ … he does not explain what he expects the footage to show or why that footage would assist in his defense,” Judge Contreras wrote. “Much of the camera footage that Pope requests depicts areas where Pope never set foot. That footage is therefore not beneficial to Pope’s case.”

The judge also denied Mr. Pope’s Aug. 21, 2023, motion seeking video shot by more than two dozen members of the MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit on Jan. 6. He first requested access to the Electronic Surveillance Unit videos in March 2023.

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo with suspected FBI agents Colleague 1 and Colleague 2, along with an unidentified man labeled in court filings as Colleague 3, on the Southwest Walk of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

The August 2023 motion cites MPD internal affairs investigations of MPD officers Nicholas Tomasula and Lt. Zeb Barcus. Hundreds of pages of documents on Mr. Tomasula were heavily redacted, Mr. Pope said, and “the two reports have led to more questions about misconduct by undercover police.”

Mr. Tomasula was identified as the MPD officer heard on video encouraging protesters on the Northwest Steps to keep going and enter the Capitol. He was heard participating in crowd chants such as, “Whose House? Our House!”

At the foot of the Northwest Steps, as a protester climbed up a makeshift ladder onto the balustrade, Mr. Tomasula shouted: “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that [expletive],” his video showed. Mr. Tomasula got help from a protester climbing onto the balustrade, then shouted to protesters moving up the steps, “C’mon, go, go, go!”

Federal prosecutors admitted in 2023 that Mr. Tomasula acted as a provocateur embedded in the crowd on Jan. 6.

Judge Contreras concluded Electronic Surveillance Unit video is only relevant to the extent Mr. Pope can identify an undercover officer whose path he crossed.

“While evidence of undercover officers instigating the riot on January 6 could—hypothetically—be helpful and material to Pope’s case, Pope’s motion ‘never identifies a single individual he interacted with whom he now suspects to be an undercover actor,’” Judge Contreras wrote.

“Pope does not say that he himself spoke with or was induced by any undercover officer,” the judge wrote. “Therefore, he cannot make an entrapment defense with the evidence he seeks from the government, and the material he seeks is irrelevant and immaterial.”

Mr. Pope complained that prosecutors restricted his access to some of the investigative materials, which he described as “highly explosive” and “exculpatory.”

In previous filings, Mr. Pope described several self-identified Antifa supporters who were intercepted by undercover MPD officers on Jan. 6, including one who was carrying a gun.

Metropolitan Police Department undercover detectives Ricardo Leiva and Michael Callahan were part of a three-man Electronic Surveillance Unit team at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. District Court/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

MPD officers made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula.

“Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Mr. Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly live-streamed part of the police stop to Facebook.”

Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. Grimes—who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie—for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition, according to Mr. Pope. The charges were dropped on Jan. 7, 2021.

In a previous filing, Mr. Pope identified undercover MPD officer Ryan Roe, who encountered a still-unidentified protester seen cutting down green plastic temporary fencing on Capitol grounds. Mr. Roe said to #FenceCutterBulwark, “Appreciate it, brother,” according to his video.

Authored by Giorgio Cafiero via The Cradle

Launched in 2017, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a sprawling high-tech development on the northwestern Red Sea coast, was introduced as the crown jewel of Vision 2030. This futuristic desert megaproject, extending over some Jordanian and Egyptian territory, was cast as a bold leap toward economic diversification under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). But, recent geopolitical setbacks have raised significant concerns about the viability of some of NEOM's components.

Initially celebrated for its revolutionary design, The Line, a linear city within NEOM, was to redefine urban living. Yet, recent reports suggest a dramatic scaling back. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed a massive reduction in the metropolis’ scope – from 105 to 1.5 miles – and a decrease in likely inhabitants from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000 by 2030. Furthermore, funding uncertainties and workforce reductions indicate a project in jeopardy.

While this adjustment does not signify a wholesale failure of Vision 2030, it does prompt a re-evaluation of the project’s most ambitious elements. 

Experts suggest that The Line’s original scale was overly optimistic, lacking the necessary urban infrastructure for such an innovative endeavor. Financial and geopolitical challenges, including regional instability and insufficient foreign direct investment, further complicate NEOM’s future.

Not so straight-forward 

The drastic downsizing of The Line “appears to be a reassessment of timeline feasibility,” Dr Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, tells The Cradle. “There are many experimental, world-first dimensions within the NEOM gigaproject, and some are eventually going to need rightsizing or rethinking.”

Also speaking to The Cradle, Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University, believes the project’s contraction to be a good thing:

Reports that The Line may be scaled back significantly is actually a positive move if it injects greater realism into a project whose initial scale appeared fanciful and difficult to translate into reality. Greater pragmatism in designing and delivering the gigaprojects associated with Vision 2030 is a good thing and means there is a greater likelihood of the projects making it off the drawing board.

Given financial and economic factors, The Line was never feasible as initially presented. Ultimately, the amount of wealth the Saudis generate from oil is not enough to finance the most ambitious of MbS’ Vision 2030 projects. And Riyadh has not been able to lure the levels of foreign direct investment needed to make these extremely expensive vanity projects realizable. 

“The vast scope of [The Line] always struck me and many other observers as aspirational rather than realistic,” explains Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia. 

Some analysts have pushed back against the recent avalanche of negative media coverage...

All the gloating about NEOM getting scaled back misses the point.

NEOM is a “moonshot” that has already succeeded.

It totally shifted the parameters of acceptable ambition in Saudi Arabia and made people see the kingdom within a paradigm of development.https://t.co/UjAX5CSdfM

Speaking to The Cradle, Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, says: 

I’d argue that the goals for The Line were unrealistic from the start, given that there’s virtually no urban infrastructure in the area, and it’s very difficult for cities to be started from scratch like that, regardless of the amount of investment poured in. Even if Saudi Arabia had, for example, done something extreme like declare NEOM to be their new capital city, it would still probably struggle to attract residents as we’ve seen from other historical examples like Brazil’s shift of its capital to Brasília.

Nonetheless, The Line and other singular projects had a purpose that was not necessarily about actually implementing the projects themselves. “The point of The Line, in particular, was to create a raison de parler – for people to actually talk about Saudi Arabia, to create a massive public debate globally where people are saying there’s something amazing happening in the desert,” Dr Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, tells The Cradle. 

It attracts attention. That sort of discourse – positive or negative – creates a buzz. That buzz was supposed to attract investors who wanted to be a part of this, help Saudi Arabia build a city of the future, and try to do something completely outlandish and absolutely unconventional.

Gaza: a wrench in the works

The leadership in Riyadh has understood that the success of Vision 2030 heavily depends on attracting substantial foreign direct investment into the Kingdom. Ultimately, stability in Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region is crucial.

Consequently, Riyadh’s recent foreign policy has been less ideological, focusing instead on maintaining amicable terms with all major players in West Asia to advance Saudi business, commercial, and economic interests. 

Within this context, Riyadh has worked to reach a peace deal with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, made an effort to preserve the Beijing-brokered 2023 Saudi–Iranian détente, restored relations with Qatar and Syria, and mended fences with Turkiye.

Therefore, beyond financial and economic constraints that require a reassessment of the most ambitious Vision 2030 projects, such as The Line, Israel’s brutal six-month war on Gaza and the expansion of that conflict into the Red Sea have created headwinds for Saudi Arabia’s geoeconomic plans.

As Arhama Siddiqa, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, explains to The Cradle:

Given the current instability in the Red Sea region, investors may hesitate to support a large-scale project like NEOM due to perceived risks. Even if the direct security threat to NEOM is minimal, the overall instability in the area can deter investors from committing substantial resources to a long-term venture. Additionally, the broader [West Asia] conflict further complicates the situation, adding another layer of uncertainty. Addressing these security concerns could require Saudi Arabia to allocate more resources to regional security measures, potentially diverting funds from the NEOM project.

There is no denying that Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification agenda is vulnerable to naval operations in the Red Sea. NEOM and other Red Sea projects require vessels to be able to freely travel from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandab and up to Saudi Arabia’s west coast. 

THE LINE, @NEOM ‘s groundbreaking vertical city, reimagines urban living: no roads, cars, or emissions – just 5 minutes to all you need. Powered by the world’s latest tech for sustainability, connectivity, lifestyle. pic.twitter.com/If1mGAM3wV

The Gaza war’s potential spillover into this vital waterway continues to raise concerns for Saudi officials about the impact on the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. These dynamics help explain Riyadh’s frustration with the White House for not leveraging its influence over Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. It has led to Saudi Arabia’s decision to abstain from joining any US-led security initiatives and military operations in the Red Sea and Yemen.

The Israel–NEOM connection 

Israel’s geographic proximity to northwestern Saudi Arabia, its technological advancement, and its vibrant startup culture position the occupation state as a promising partner for Vision 2030 and the NEOM project, particularly in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing. 

Writing in March 2021, Dr Ali Dogan, previously a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, went as far as arguing that “relations with Israel are necessary for Saudi Arabia to complete NEOM.” 

Dr Mohammad Yaghi, a research fellow at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, similarly stated that NEOM “requires peace and coordination with Israel, especially if the city is to have a chance of becoming a tourist attraction.” However, Saudi Arabia’s leadership role in the Islamic world, exemplified by the monarch’s title as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” makes any formal normalization of relations with Tel Aviv highly sensitive. 

Initially, it was thought that while the UAE and Bahrain could establish overt relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia would continue to engage covertly, ensuring essential collaborations like those rumored in the tech sector could progress discreetly. 

An example being in June 2020, when controversy arose over Saudi Arabia’s alleged engagement with an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which the Saudi embassy later denied.

Yet, almost seven months into Israel’s campaign to annihilate Gaza, can Saudi Arabia still look to Tel Aviv as a partner in NEOM? It appears that amid ongoing crises in the region, chiefly the Gaza genocide, Riyadh must be careful to avoid being seen as cooperating with the Israelis in covert ways, and full-fledged normalization seems off the table for the foreseeable future. 

Nonetheless, after the dust settles in Gaza and the Red Sea security crisis calms down, Saudi Arabia will likely maintain its interest in fostering ties with Israel as part of an “economic normalization” between the two countries. This could be important to Vision 2030’s future, particularly in NEOM. But Israel’s unprecedented military campaign in Gaza will likely alter West Asia in many ways for decades to come. Even after the current war in Gaza is over, anger toward Israel and the US will continue.

Without a doubt, the Israeli–NEOM connection will be increasingly sensitive and controversial, both in the Kingdom and the wider region – a factor that the leadership in Riyadh cannot dismiss.

Authored by Giorgio Cafiero via The Cradle

Launched in 2017, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a sprawling high-tech development on the northwestern Red Sea coast, was introduced as the crown jewel of Vision 2030. This futuristic desert megaproject, extending over some Jordanian and Egyptian territory, was cast as a bold leap toward economic diversification under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). But, recent geopolitical setbacks have raised significant concerns about the viability of some of NEOM's components.

Initially celebrated for its revolutionary design, The Line, a linear city within NEOM, was to redefine urban living. Yet, recent reports suggest a dramatic scaling back. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed a massive reduction in the metropolis’ scope – from 105 to 1.5 miles – and a decrease in likely inhabitants from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000 by 2030. Furthermore, funding uncertainties and workforce reductions indicate a project in jeopardy.

While this adjustment does not signify a wholesale failure of Vision 2030, it does prompt a re-evaluation of the project’s most ambitious elements. 

Experts suggest that The Line’s original scale was overly optimistic, lacking the necessary urban infrastructure for such an innovative endeavor. Financial and geopolitical challenges, including regional instability and insufficient foreign direct investment, further complicate NEOM’s future.

Not so straight-forward 

The drastic downsizing of The Line “appears to be a reassessment of timeline feasibility,” Dr Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, tells The Cradle. “There are many experimental, world-first dimensions within the NEOM gigaproject, and some are eventually going to need rightsizing or rethinking.”

Also speaking to The Cradle, Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University, believes the project’s contraction to be a good thing:

Reports that The Line may be scaled back significantly is actually a positive move if it injects greater realism into a project whose initial scale appeared fanciful and difficult to translate into reality. Greater pragmatism in designing and delivering the gigaprojects associated with Vision 2030 is a good thing and means there is a greater likelihood of the projects making it off the drawing board.

Given financial and economic factors, The Line was never feasible as initially presented. Ultimately, the amount of wealth the Saudis generate from oil is not enough to finance the most ambitious of MbS’ Vision 2030 projects. And Riyadh has not been able to lure the levels of foreign direct investment needed to make these extremely expensive vanity projects realizable. 

“The vast scope of [The Line] always struck me and many other observers as aspirational rather than realistic,” explains Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia. 

Some analysts have pushed back against the recent avalanche of negative media coverage...

All the gloating about NEOM getting scaled back misses the point.

NEOM is a “moonshot” that has already succeeded.

It totally shifted the parameters of acceptable ambition in Saudi Arabia and made people see the kingdom within a paradigm of development.https://t.co/UjAX5CSdfM

Speaking to The Cradle, Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, says: 

I’d argue that the goals for The Line were unrealistic from the start, given that there’s virtually no urban infrastructure in the area, and it’s very difficult for cities to be started from scratch like that, regardless of the amount of investment poured in. Even if Saudi Arabia had, for example, done something extreme like declare NEOM to be their new capital city, it would still probably struggle to attract residents as we’ve seen from other historical examples like Brazil’s shift of its capital to Brasília.

Nonetheless, The Line and other singular projects had a purpose that was not necessarily about actually implementing the projects themselves. “The point of The Line, in particular, was to create a raison de parler – for people to actually talk about Saudi Arabia, to create a massive public debate globally where people are saying there’s something amazing happening in the desert,” Dr Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, tells The Cradle. 

It attracts attention. That sort of discourse – positive or negative – creates a buzz. That buzz was supposed to attract investors who wanted to be a part of this, help Saudi Arabia build a city of the future, and try to do something completely outlandish and absolutely unconventional.

Gaza: a wrench in the works

The leadership in Riyadh has understood that the success of Vision 2030 heavily depends on attracting substantial foreign direct investment into the Kingdom. Ultimately, stability in Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region is crucial.

Consequently, Riyadh’s recent foreign policy has been less ideological, focusing instead on maintaining amicable terms with all major players in West Asia to advance Saudi business, commercial, and economic interests. 

Within this context, Riyadh has worked to reach a peace deal with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, made an effort to preserve the Beijing-brokered 2023 Saudi–Iranian détente, restored relations with Qatar and Syria, and mended fences with Turkiye.

Therefore, beyond financial and economic constraints that require a reassessment of the most ambitious Vision 2030 projects, such as The Line, Israel’s brutal six-month war on Gaza and the expansion of that conflict into the Red Sea have created headwinds for Saudi Arabia’s geoeconomic plans.

As Arhama Siddiqa, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, explains to The Cradle:

Given the current instability in the Red Sea region, investors may hesitate to support a large-scale project like NEOM due to perceived risks. Even if the direct security threat to NEOM is minimal, the overall instability in the area can deter investors from committing substantial resources to a long-term venture. Additionally, the broader [West Asia] conflict further complicates the situation, adding another layer of uncertainty. Addressing these security concerns could require Saudi Arabia to allocate more resources to regional security measures, potentially diverting funds from the NEOM project.

There is no denying that Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification agenda is vulnerable to naval operations in the Red Sea. NEOM and other Red Sea projects require vessels to be able to freely travel from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandab and up to Saudi Arabia’s west coast. 

THE LINE, @NEOM ‘s groundbreaking vertical city, reimagines urban living: no roads, cars, or emissions – just 5 minutes to all you need. Powered by the world’s latest tech for sustainability, connectivity, lifestyle. pic.twitter.com/If1mGAM3wV

The Gaza war’s potential spillover into this vital waterway continues to raise concerns for Saudi officials about the impact on the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. These dynamics help explain Riyadh’s frustration with the White House for not leveraging its influence over Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. It has led to Saudi Arabia’s decision to abstain from joining any US-led security initiatives and military operations in the Red Sea and Yemen.

The Israel–NEOM connection 

Israel’s geographic proximity to northwestern Saudi Arabia, its technological advancement, and its vibrant startup culture position the occupation state as a promising partner for Vision 2030 and the NEOM project, particularly in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing. 

Writing in March 2021, Dr Ali Dogan, previously a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, went as far as arguing that “relations with Israel are necessary for Saudi Arabia to complete NEOM.” 

Dr Mohammad Yaghi, a research fellow at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, similarly stated that NEOM “requires peace and coordination with Israel, especially if the city is to have a chance of becoming a tourist attraction.” However, Saudi Arabia’s leadership role in the Islamic world, exemplified by the monarch’s title as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” makes any formal normalization of relations with Tel Aviv highly sensitive. 

Initially, it was thought that while the UAE and Bahrain could establish overt relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia would continue to engage covertly, ensuring essential collaborations like those rumored in the tech sector could progress discreetly. 

An example being in June 2020, when controversy arose over Saudi Arabia’s alleged engagement with an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which the Saudi embassy later denied.

Yet, almost seven months into Israel’s campaign to annihilate Gaza, can Saudi Arabia still look to Tel Aviv as a partner in NEOM? It appears that amid ongoing crises in the region, chiefly the Gaza genocide, Riyadh must be careful to avoid being seen as cooperating with the Israelis in covert ways, and full-fledged normalization seems off the table for the foreseeable future. 

Nonetheless, after the dust settles in Gaza and the Red Sea security crisis calms down, Saudi Arabia will likely maintain its interest in fostering ties with Israel as part of an “economic normalization” between the two countries. This could be important to Vision 2030’s future, particularly in NEOM. But Israel’s unprecedented military campaign in Gaza will likely alter West Asia in many ways for decades to come. Even after the current war in Gaza is over, anger toward Israel and the US will continue.

Without a doubt, the Israeli–NEOM connection will be increasingly sensitive and controversial, both in the Kingdom and the wider region – a factor that the leadership in Riyadh cannot dismiss.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Smart people know to avoid fallacies.

One of them is known as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

It’s Latin for “after this, therefore because of this.”

The classic example concerns the rooster and the sunrise.

Every morning before the sun comes up, the rooster does his crazy crowing routine, waking up everyone around. Shortly after, the light begins to appear on the horizon.

If you knew nothing else, and you watched this happen over and over, you might conclude that the rooster is causing the sun to rise.

Of course, this is testable. You could kill the rooster and see what happens. The sun still comes up. But wait just a moment. Just the fact that this one rooster is dead doesn’t mean that all roosters are gone. Some rooster somewhere is crowing and causing the sun to rise. So your little experiment doesn’t disprove the theory.

What a conundrum, right?

If someone is convinced that a bird is controlling the sun, there is probably no way to convince him otherwise.

We can laugh at this example. How can someone be so dumb? Actually, this basic fallacy affects all science in all times, all places, and all subjects. The presumption that a regular pattern showing something happens and then something else happens with regularity implies causation is baked into human thinking. Now and always.

It’s a fallacy, meaning that it is not necessarily true. It could be true, however, subject to serious investigation. And therein lies the real problem. We need to figure out what causes what. But discerning causal agents from accidental ones is the biggest issue in all thinking.

The need to know is baked into what it means to be a rational creature. We just cannot help ourselves. That’s why this fallacy persists everywhere.

There is also the famous case of malaria. It was once believed that infections were worse at nightfall, so the theory was that it was caused by cold air at night. Not crazy, right? Except that the real reason was that the mosquitoes came out in the evenings. They were the real culprit. But a bad theory based on fallacy prevented many people from seeing it.

My goodness, we were overwhelmed by this during the COVID-19 experience. The fake science was overwhelming.

Day after day, we saw loads of fake science of this sort being dumped on the world.

Look, California’s cases are down and California bans gatherings, therefore coercive measures are controlling virus spread!

Not so fast.

These factors could be completely unrelated. We might not even have good data on infections at all. Those are subject to testing (accurate or not) and might be completely wrong on a population level. Even if the data were correct, the low infections could be caused by weather, prior immunity, or something else that we have not considered.

Early on, I can recall looking at these amazing real-time charts of infections and deaths and believing that I had a window into reality. Several times, I even posted things along the lines of “See, Arizona has achieved herd immunity,” without understanding that the data were wildly inaccurate and subject to testing, reporting, and a host of other factors. Even the data were suspect: Misclassification was rampant.

And here too, the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc bit everyone extremely hard. But most of us went along with it.

So crazy did it all become that people including bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started inventing nutty theories such as that masking protects against virus spread, which science had long proven to be untrue. It became even crazier: You can sit without a mask but walking and standing causes viruses to spread, so that’s when you have to wear a mask!

Absolutely nuts!

It was the same after vaccination.

Countless famous people took to social media to announce they had COVID-19 but it was a mild case thanks to the vaccine. There is simply no way they could know that. They knew for sure that they had the vaccine and they knew for sure that their case of COVID-19 was mild. But believing that one caused the other was simply a matter of faith. It might have been mild regardless. It might have been milder. As time went on, we encountered many studies showing that more vaccination was associated with more infection. Did one cause the other? It’s hard to say.

And yet vast numbers of vaccine studies in the past several years have been affected by this problem. Particularly vexing is the problem of the “healthy user bias,” which is that people who were vaccinated tend to be more compliant and conscientious in other ways too, which meant that initially, it seemed like they had better health outcomes from COVID-19 vaccination, but the results were actually attributable to this bias.

This was revealed in later studies. But the problem of discerning cause and effect from random noise still persists.

The field of medicine has long dealt with this problem. We are mortified that the practice of bleeding patients persisted for centuries even up to the 19th century. How could they have been so stupid? Well, they had a theory that disease was caused by bad humors in the blood so it needed to be drained. Then they observed that the patient got better.

Well, the patient might have gotten better anyway and even faster without bleeding. But it took many centuries to finally realize that. Many non-allopathic medicine people had been screaming about this issue for a long time, but they were ignored as cranks. That’s because bleeding was a conventional practice endorsed by the people with the most professional prestige.

Once you see this fallacy at work, you cannot unsee it. It’s everywhere in medicine but also in economics, health, horticulture, law and sociology, and all the physical world sciences. The gun debate is a good example. There is high crime and there are lots of guns, so people conclude that the guns cause the crime, whereas the presence of guns might simply be a response to crime and a means of protection. Without them, the crime would be far worse.

The fallacy in question drives vast amounts of politics today. There is a tendency to blame any existing president for all existing economic conditions, but the real cause might date further back in time. Still, nearly every debate follows the same lines: This happened; therefore, his actions or inactions caused it. It could be true or it might be the same as the rooster and the sunrise.

We flatter ourselves now that we are beyond such fallacies. They belong only to the superstition-ridden ages of the past. That’s complete nonsense. We are probably more inundated by this fallacy now than ever. Whatever it is that people trust and believe in at any particular time is what people identify as the key to curing whatever malady is around.

Today, people believe in pharmaceuticals. Whatever the issue is, it can be solved by a new lab-created potion. As a result, we are soaked as a society in these, even though the evidence for many of them is scant. The more you look at, for example, the effect of psychiatric drugs, the less it becomes clear whether and to what extent these help or actually may worsen the real problem.

It’s even true with antibiotics. All parents use amoxicillin on childhood ear infections today. But my grandmother swore by putting warm mineral oil in the ear and avoiding conventional meds completely. It took me only a few minutes to discover a 2003 study that randomized whether kids got herbal oils with or without antibiotics. Results: no difference.

The implications are profound. We are so attached to pharma and allopathic strategies that we might be overlooking vast naturopathic and homeopathic methods that work better.

Seizing on one solution and sticking with it prevents the human mind from being creative about other possible and better solutions. Generations can go by in which fallacies rule the day. We can laugh about roosters and sun, bleeding and disease, dances and rain, but how many times do we commit these fallacies in our world today but our dogmatic attachments prevent us from seeing them?

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Smart people know to avoid fallacies.

One of them is known as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

It’s Latin for “after this, therefore because of this.”

The classic example concerns the rooster and the sunrise.

Every morning before the sun comes up, the rooster does his crazy crowing routine, waking up everyone around. Shortly after, the light begins to appear on the horizon.

If you knew nothing else, and you watched this happen over and over, you might conclude that the rooster is causing the sun to rise.

Of course, this is testable. You could kill the rooster and see what happens. The sun still comes up. But wait just a moment. Just the fact that this one rooster is dead doesn’t mean that all roosters are gone. Some rooster somewhere is crowing and causing the sun to rise. So your little experiment doesn’t disprove the theory.

What a conundrum, right?

If someone is convinced that a bird is controlling the sun, there is probably no way to convince him otherwise.

We can laugh at this example. How can someone be so dumb? Actually, this basic fallacy affects all science in all times, all places, and all subjects. The presumption that a regular pattern showing something happens and then something else happens with regularity implies causation is baked into human thinking. Now and always.

It’s a fallacy, meaning that it is not necessarily true. It could be true, however, subject to serious investigation. And therein lies the real problem. We need to figure out what causes what. But discerning causal agents from accidental ones is the biggest issue in all thinking.

The need to know is baked into what it means to be a rational creature. We just cannot help ourselves. That’s why this fallacy persists everywhere.

There is also the famous case of malaria. It was once believed that infections were worse at nightfall, so the theory was that it was caused by cold air at night. Not crazy, right? Except that the real reason was that the mosquitoes came out in the evenings. They were the real culprit. But a bad theory based on fallacy prevented many people from seeing it.

My goodness, we were overwhelmed by this during the COVID-19 experience. The fake science was overwhelming.

Day after day, we saw loads of fake science of this sort being dumped on the world.

Look, California’s cases are down and California bans gatherings, therefore coercive measures are controlling virus spread!

Not so fast.

These factors could be completely unrelated. We might not even have good data on infections at all. Those are subject to testing (accurate or not) and might be completely wrong on a population level. Even if the data were correct, the low infections could be caused by weather, prior immunity, or something else that we have not considered.

Early on, I can recall looking at these amazing real-time charts of infections and deaths and believing that I had a window into reality. Several times, I even posted things along the lines of “See, Arizona has achieved herd immunity,” without understanding that the data were wildly inaccurate and subject to testing, reporting, and a host of other factors. Even the data were suspect: Misclassification was rampant.

And here too, the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc bit everyone extremely hard. But most of us went along with it.

So crazy did it all become that people including bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started inventing nutty theories such as that masking protects against virus spread, which science had long proven to be untrue. It became even crazier: You can sit without a mask but walking and standing causes viruses to spread, so that’s when you have to wear a mask!

Absolutely nuts!

It was the same after vaccination.

Countless famous people took to social media to announce they had COVID-19 but it was a mild case thanks to the vaccine. There is simply no way they could know that. They knew for sure that they had the vaccine and they knew for sure that their case of COVID-19 was mild. But believing that one caused the other was simply a matter of faith. It might have been mild regardless. It might have been milder. As time went on, we encountered many studies showing that more vaccination was associated with more infection. Did one cause the other? It’s hard to say.

And yet vast numbers of vaccine studies in the past several years have been affected by this problem. Particularly vexing is the problem of the “healthy user bias,” which is that people who were vaccinated tend to be more compliant and conscientious in other ways too, which meant that initially, it seemed like they had better health outcomes from COVID-19 vaccination, but the results were actually attributable to this bias.

This was revealed in later studies. But the problem of discerning cause and effect from random noise still persists.

The field of medicine has long dealt with this problem. We are mortified that the practice of bleeding patients persisted for centuries even up to the 19th century. How could they have been so stupid? Well, they had a theory that disease was caused by bad humors in the blood so it needed to be drained. Then they observed that the patient got better.

Well, the patient might have gotten better anyway and even faster without bleeding. But it took many centuries to finally realize that. Many non-allopathic medicine people had been screaming about this issue for a long time, but they were ignored as cranks. That’s because bleeding was a conventional practice endorsed by the people with the most professional prestige.

Once you see this fallacy at work, you cannot unsee it. It’s everywhere in medicine but also in economics, health, horticulture, law and sociology, and all the physical world sciences. The gun debate is a good example. There is high crime and there are lots of guns, so people conclude that the guns cause the crime, whereas the presence of guns might simply be a response to crime and a means of protection. Without them, the crime would be far worse.

The fallacy in question drives vast amounts of politics today. There is a tendency to blame any existing president for all existing economic conditions, but the real cause might date further back in time. Still, nearly every debate follows the same lines: This happened; therefore, his actions or inactions caused it. It could be true or it might be the same as the rooster and the sunrise.

We flatter ourselves now that we are beyond such fallacies. They belong only to the superstition-ridden ages of the past. That’s complete nonsense. We are probably more inundated by this fallacy now than ever. Whatever it is that people trust and believe in at any particular time is what people identify as the key to curing whatever malady is around.

Today, people believe in pharmaceuticals. Whatever the issue is, it can be solved by a new lab-created potion. As a result, we are soaked as a society in these, even though the evidence for many of them is scant. The more you look at, for example, the effect of psychiatric drugs, the less it becomes clear whether and to what extent these help or actually may worsen the real problem.

It’s even true with antibiotics. All parents use amoxicillin on childhood ear infections today. But my grandmother swore by putting warm mineral oil in the ear and avoiding conventional meds completely. It took me only a few minutes to discover a 2003 study that randomized whether kids got herbal oils with or without antibiotics. Results: no difference.

The implications are profound. We are so attached to pharma and allopathic strategies that we might be overlooking vast naturopathic and homeopathic methods that work better.

Seizing on one solution and sticking with it prevents the human mind from being creative about other possible and better solutions. Generations can go by in which fallacies rule the day. We can laugh about roosters and sun, bleeding and disease, dances and rain, but how many times do we commit these fallacies in our world today but our dogmatic attachments prevent us from seeing them?

Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthis have announced new aggressive actions in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea regions, saying late Wednesday that projectiles were launched against more US and Israeli-owned commercial vessels, and that a US warship was also targeted. This follows a period of relative quiet this month.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a video address that an antiship ballistic missile was launched against the Maersk Yorktown cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, resulting in a direct hit.

The US military subsequently confirmed the fresh attack on the "US-flagged, owned, and operated vessel with 18 US and four Greek crew members"; however, the statement indicated no casualties or damage. The projectile may have exploded near the ship without hitting it.

File image, Maritime Executive

"There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition, or commercial ships," US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in the statement, without indicating whether there was any level of an actual direct strike on the ship. Commenting further, Maritime Executive details:

They received a report from a vessel of an explosion in the water approximately 72 nautical miles southeast of the port of Djibouti. The statement only said that there had been an explosion "at a distance," and that the crew and vessel were reported safe. 

CENTCOM further described that within hours of the attack on the Maersk Yorktown, US forces "successfully engaged and destroyed" four drones over Yemen.

The government of Greece this week also said it has been engaged in fresh counter-Houthi actions:

The Greek Ministry of National Defense said on Thursday that one of the country’s military ships serving in the European Union’s naval mission to counter the Houthis in the Red Sea intercepted two drones launched towards a commercial ship from Yemen.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) had earlier confirmed an incident some 72 nautical miles (133km) southeast of the port of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden.

These kind of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and off Yemen's coast have somewhat waned of late, compared with the near daily intensity of the prior months, and some analysts have speculated that the Houthis are running low on their missile and drone arsenal. 

Prior to Wednesday's new incidents, the last significant Houthi attacks prior to that came two weeks ago. This could also be due to the prospect of some kind of Red Sea truce negotiations which have been reported of late.

UKMTO WARNING INCIDENT 065 - ATTACK#MartimeSecurity #MarSechttps://t.co/fX3hWupi7g pic.twitter.com/mQ3nmxwGj7

A Yemeni official has been cited in regional outlet The National as saying, "In response to the Yemeni group's attempts to target Israeli ships, the US has not only resorted to military action but also sought to convey proposals that would incentivize the militants to stop their attacks."

“Messages containing incentives were sent from the Americans to Sanaa in recent weeks. These messages were delivered through envoys and mediators, including western officials, with the Omani capital, Muscat, also playing a significant role," the source added.

It's not just record capital gains taxes that Americans have to look forward to if they choose "4 more years, pause" of the senile occupant in the White House: As Epoch Times' Jeffrey Tucker reports, property taxes are also about to soar.

Below we excerpt from his latest report on where the Biden tax tsunami sill strike next:

Get Ready to Be Hammered by Property Taxes

There have been very few points of financial solace in the past few years apart from rising financial markets. Part of that has been an incredible increase in home valuations. This comes from inflation, yes, but also from shifts in supply and demand for home purchases. Demand is as it always was but realizing it is another matter.

The problem is on the supply side. In most places around the country, homes are not going on the market at the same and predictable pace they once were. This is for reasons of soaring costs of new mortgages. Many homeowners purchased back when interest rates were absurdly low and negative in real terms, perhaps 2 or 3 percent.

Selling now means paying huge capital gains taxes and then applying for a new mortgage at 7.5 percent. The implications of that seemingly small change are actually gigantic, and making it work without paying drastically more in monthly bills means moving to a cheaper area of the country or downsizing the quality and size of the home.

Rather than make that choice, many homeowners are stuck living right where they are even if they would prefer some other job or home elsewhere. They are frozen in place but, hey, at least these people have homes that they own, right?

Not only that but the valuation that you see on Zillow is going up and up. Yay!

Not so fast. In the United States, you pay property taxes on your home. This reality gives rise to the perennial question: do you really own your home if maintaining that title requires paying huge property taxes on the place annually? If you don’t pay, the house is taken over by the state, period. It feels a bit like renting doesn’t it? Indeed, the difference between renting and owning can get a bit blurry.

Property taxes are the way schools are funded in the United States generally speaking and with some exceptions. Taxes are organized according to school districts, the lines of which are extremely strict. The identical home one street from the next can have a big difference in price based entirely on market perceptions of quality of the schools in the relevant district.

This is a major reason why “school choice,” whereby anyone from any district can attend any other, has never made much progress politically in the United States. It means a tremendous scrambling of ownership valuations. No one wants that.

You pay these taxes whether you use the schools or not and whether or not you even have children at all. That’s what makes them public schools. The public shares in the expense but the reality is that it is not the public but just property owners from one district to another, with subsidies added by state governments and the federal government, plus “booster” organizations formed by parents.

If you are living in a district and stuck in a home because you cannot move due to expense, you are still stuck paying taxes regardless. These are assessed annually based not on the price at which you purchased the home but on the value of the home at present market value. That doesn’t seem fair either. Why should you continue to have to pay more and more in taxes based on valuation that you are not actually seeing in any kind of profit?

You are a sitting duck, forced to cough up whatever the assessors and tax collectors decide you have to pay.

This year alone, we are seeing huge increases in market valuations that are reflected in taxes you have to pay whether you use public schools or not. The taxes on many mid-sized homes in Texas, for example, are going up thousands of dollars right now. The fear in Georgia is so large that some activists have put on the ballot an initiative to cap property taxes to insulate them from market pressures.

Adding to the frustration here is the terrible reality of school closures from 2020–2022. Even if you wanted to use the schools, you could not because the authorities said that there were viruses in the schools that the children would spread and bring home. There was never any evidence at all that schools were uniquely guilty of viral spread but the perception was used as the excuse to force everyone into Zoom school, which taught the kids nothing.

We are now faced with years of learning loss that keeps getting worse, not to mention soaring absenteeism. The routines of an entire generation were disrupted and not returned to normal.

Continue reading at Epoch Times

After the prior week's almost unprecedented outflows, total money market fund assets rose last week (admittedly by a modest $9.1BN), but remain below the $6TN level ($5.97TN) as tax-season draws roll off...

Source: Bloomberg

The flows into money-market fund assets through April 24 mainly on the back of inflows by institutional investors, which had led the tax-related decline the prior week. Institutions added $8.9 billion in money-market fund exposure.

Source: Bloomberg

In a breakdown for the week to April 24, government funds - which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt - saw assets rise to $4.84 trillion, a $3.97 billion increase. 

Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets rise to $1.02 trillion, a $3.15 billion increase.

Still, cash is expected to continue piling into money funds as long as the Federal Reserve keeps rates on hold - and this week has seen rate-cut expectations tumble further...

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed balance sheet continued to shrink, falling $32.8BN to its lowest since Jan 2021...

Source: Bloomberg

As The Fed starts discussing tapering QT, usage of The Fed's bank bailout facility (now expired but these are 12 month term loans) continued to decline (though only by a tiny $638MM), basically erasing all the late-period arb-driven inflows, leaving a huge $126BN hole in bank balance sheets still being filled by this...

Source: Bloomberg

This means the 'real' crisis money that banks used to save their souls is yet to really unwind from this bailout fund (and rates are considerably higher now than they were a year ago when the balance sheet holes were stuff with fake Fed paper - i.e. the losses are bigger).

Finally, we note that bank reserves at The Fed plunged last week and while US equity market cap has bounced a little in the last two days, we suspect the trend down (and a painful recoupling) remains a threat...

Source: Bloomberg

While there may be no rate-cuts anytime soon... will The Fed taper QT in a big enough manner to avoid that recoupling?

After the first two Mag7 companies were a study in market paradoxes, when TSLA missed across the board and soared (after guiding much better than expected) and META beat across the board but plunged (after guiding weaker than expected while boosting its spending forecast), moments ago two of the Mag7 giants, GOOGL and MSFT, both reported and this time there was far less drama: both beat, and saw their stock soaring after hours.

Focusing on Google parent Alphabet, Goldman said ahead of earnings that positioning here was not as excessive (at 7/10) which may be why the stock is soaring some 13% after the close on what otherwise appears to be a solid beat. Here are the details:

• EPS $1.89, beating estimate $1.53, and up more than 50% vs the $1.17 a year ago.
   
• Q1 Revenue $80.54 billion, beating the estimate of $79.04 billion, and up 15% YoY
  • Google advertising revenue $61.66 billion, beating the estimate $60.18 billion
  • YouTube ads revenue $8.09 billion, beating the estimate $7.73 billion
  • Google Services revenue $70.40 billion, beating the estimate $69.06 billion
  • Google Cloud revenue $9.57 billion, beating the estimate $9.37 billion
  • Other Bets revenue $495 million, beating estimate $372.4 million
     
• Operating income $25.47 billion, beating estimate $22.4 billion
  • Google Services operating income $27.90 billion, beating the estimate $24.3 billion
  • Google Cloud operating income $900 million, beating the estimate $672.4 million
  • Other Bets operating loss $1.02 billion, beating the estimate loss $1.12 billion

• Operating margin 32%, beating the estimate 28.6%
• Capital expenditure $12.01 billion, beating the estimate $10.32 billion
• Number of employees 180,895, down from 190,711

A quick point on YouTube: it was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion; YouTube now generates $1.65 billion of revenue every 18 days.

The results visually:

While Google's cloud numbers were stellar, with revenue rising from $7.5BN to $9.6BN, and beating estimates of $9.4BN, what investors wanted to hear was more about the company's progress on AI. This is what it had to say:

As announced on April 18, 2024, we are consolidating teams that focus on building artificial intelligence (AI) models across Google Research and Google DeepMind to further accelerate our progress in AI. AI model development teams previously under Google Research in our Google Services segment will be included as part of Google DeepMind, reported within Alphabet-level activities, prospectively beginning in the second quarter of 2024.

Like other Big Tech companies, Alphabet has been plowing money into developing artificial intelligence, a strategy that has helped drive demand for its cloud services, which saw revenue rise 28% in the first quarter. While Google remains a distant third in the cloud computing market, trailing Amazon and Microsoft, the company’s prowess in AI could help it close the gap.

Google has developed much of the underlying technology being used in the AI boom today, and has woven it into products from web search to its suite of enterprise software from Gmail to Google Docs. Yet ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released in late 2022, Google has been battling the perception that it’s lagging behind Microsoft and OpenAI in rolling out new generative AI tools. The arrival of popular chatbots such as ChatGPT  — which answers questions in a conversational tone rather than providing lists of links to other websites — has posed a threat to Google’s two-decade stranglehold on search. The company is struggling to compete in generative AI without cannibalizing its core profit machine.

Google has been scrambling to reassert its early lead in AI, after its early efforts were marred by embarrassing blunders, including a scandal over how its AI model Gemini handled race that forced the company to suspend image generation of people.

Commenting on the results, CFO Ruth Porat said: “Our strong financial results for the first quarter reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base. We delivered revenues of $80.5 billion, up 15% year-on-year, and operating margin expansion.”

It certainly delivered, and just to make sure the market rewarded it, the company not only announced the start of new cash dividend at 20 cents...

Alphabet’s Board of Directors today approved the initiation of a cash dividend program, and declared a cash dividend of $0.20 per share that will be paid on June 17, 2024, to stockholders of record as of June 10, 2024, on each of the company’s Class A, Class B, and Class C shares.

... but also announced a new stock buyback program for $70 billion!

Alphabet’s Board of Directors today authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $70.0 billion of its Class A and Class C shares in a manner deemed in the best interest of the company and its stockholders, taking into account the economic cost and prevailing market conditions, including the relative trading prices and volumes of the Class A and Class C shares.

While investors have shown they are excited about the prospects of AI, they want tech companies to continue to focus on revenue and profit in the meantime. Meta, which competes with Google in AI and also digital advertising, suffered its worst stock decline since October 2022 after reporting that it would spend billions of dollars more this year on AI efforts and projecting weaker revenue for the current quarter. For its part, Google - which does not do forecasts - paid $12BN in capex in the quarter, $1.7 billion more than estimated.

For all the hoopla about AI, search advertising remains the engine of Google’s lucrative business, and the company is facing heightened competition there, too. Meta has been seeding AI tools throughout its advertising business and Snap Inc. has also undergone a total revamp of its ad business to improve ad targeting. The digital ad market is recovering from a post-pandemic slump, buoyed by the Olympics Games this summer, but Google is increasingly vying for those ad dollars with Meta and Snap.

If consumers gravitate from Google search to the new wave of chatbots, that could imperil the company’s search advertising juggernaut, which is expected to generate nearly $200 billion in revenue this year and the bulk of Alphabet’s profit.
Cloud has been a bright spot for Google, after it first became profitable early last year. Many young AI startups are founded by former Google employees, creating a strong pipeline of cloud clients.

For now, however, these concerns were on the backburner, with GOOGL stock exploding about 12% after hours, and trading at a new all time high.

Investors can exhale after META's meltdown as MSFT just reported better-than-expected revenues in Q3 of $61.86 billion (estimate $60.87 billion).

All the business segments also beat expectations:

• Productivity and Business Processes revenue $19.57 billion, estimate $19.54 billion

• More Personal Computing revenue $15.58 billion, estimate $15.07 billion

With the AI-exposed segments strong:

• Microsoft Cloud revenue $35.1 billion, estimate $33.93 billion

• Intelligent Cloud revenue $26.71 billion, estimate $26.25 billion

“This quarter Microsoft Cloud revenue was $35.1 billion, up 23% year-over-year, driven by strong execution by our sales teams and partners,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

Azure revenue gained 31% in the quarter, above an average prediction of 29%, picking up slightly from the 30% growth in the previous period.

“Microsoft Copilot and Copilot stack are orchestrating a new era of AI transformation, driving better business outcomes across every role and industry," said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.

Investors are liking what they are seeing from the earnings so far with MSFT up around 5% after hours, erasing the META-driven losses during the day...

Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast.

Overall, US macro data has suddenly started to disappoint (not the least of which was today's ugly GDP print)...

Source: Bloomberg

But, while 'bad news' for the economy has recently been 'good news' for stocks (enables an easier Fed), today's data 'punched that narrative in the face' with Core PCE price index in Q1 soaring considerably more than expected. And here's the problem - inflation expectations are surging at the same time as growth expectations are sliding - the nemesis of every central banker is upon us: STAGFLATION.

It's been a theme all year but recently has become so much more pronounced that not even the best 'spinners' can ignore...

Source: Bloomberg

And that sent rate-cut expectations plummeting to cycle lows (and took June completely off the table for a cut)(

Source: Bloomberg

Combine the ugly macro data with some ugly micro (META) and Goldman's trading desk noted overall flow was skewed better to sell:

LO’s driving more of the supply here with a -3% sell skew. An outlier is that we are seeing very real demand in AAPL from both HF and L/O community. META seeing very little defense from L/O . Overall activity from the group feels muted.

In the HF community we are slightly better to buy. Very notable that in macro products, short ratios are elevated to 75%. We are seeing cover buying in the Tech.

Overall, the majors were all lower close to close, but well off their knee-jerk lows from the GDP/PCE data... The Dow was the laggard on the day (with IBM & CAT the biggest points drag). The rest of the majors were all equally pummeled (though we do note that Nasdaq is still up over 2% on the week)...

The initial puked slammed The Dow and Nasdaq back below their 100DMAs and the ramp-fest back up to that critical technical level, but that couldn't hold into the close...

As you'd expect, given META's meltdown, the basket of MAG7 stocks was ugly out of the gate - and ended red - but staged a decent comeback during the day...

Source: Bloomberg

And 'most shorted' stocks followed a similar trajectory - squeezing higher after an ugly open...

Source: Bloomberg

Tech stocks overall ended marginally lower, Energy outperformed while Real Estate and Healthcare lagged...

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were clubbed like a baby seal on the macro data and pulled back only modestly during the day with the short-end and belly underperforming the long-end...

Source: Bloomberg

2Y Yields broke above 5.00% AGAIN... but were unable to close above it AGAIN...

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar spiked immediately higher on the GDP data, but as the day wore on, the dollar bled back its gains to end lower on the day...

Source: Bloomberg

Gold prices rallied on the day, shrugging off the vol in the dollar...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin managed gain on the day after overnight weakness...

Source: Bloomberg

Crude prices managed solid gains after early weakness with WTI rallying back up towards $84...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, we are down to the vinegar strokes of the week with GOOGL & MSFT tonight, and PCE tomorrow...

Source: Bloomberg

...and don't forget The Fed next week where no action is expected, but the words may speak even louder this time.

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

Why is the choice between shutting down the border and no controls at all? And what about demographics? Fertility rates?

Immigration Talks We Should Be Having

Eurointelligence discusses the Immigration Talks We Should Be Having.

The ideas also apply to the US.

Last week, the European Commission set out its ambitions to strike a deal with Lebanon, to stop asylum-seekers reaching the EU from there. Giorgia Meloni [Italy’s Pime Minister] now spends so much time in Tunisia, where the EU signed another agreement to limit migration, that she should consider buying a time-share in Bizerte.

Fabio Panetta, the Banca d’Italia’s governor, recently made a welcome intervention on this. He made a point which you do not hear very often: that without more immigration, the EU will sink demographically. That will mean both its economic and fiscal situation becoming unsustainable. According to Panetta, a common EU-level policy is necessary. Migrants, legally or not, come into the EU as a whole. Even if they are legally restricted to one member state, practically speaking there is often little to stop them moving across borders in a border-free Schengen area.

In Panetta’s own home country, the situation is especially bad. Italy’s total fertility rate is now 1.25 as of 2021. This is far below the so-called replacement level of 2.1, which is necessary to keep a country’s population stable. The only thing stopping its population from cratering is the immigration it receives already. Even if the government could stumble on a way to increase the total fertility rate to replacement level, something virtually no developed country has managed, there would still be inertia.

This basic demographic reality is acute in Italy, but not unique to it. The only countries mitigating it so far are those that accept high numbers of immigrants and integrate them into the workforce, like the UK, Spain, and Portugal. Yet it is something politicians skirt around, for fear that their voters are not prepared to hear the truth.

What you end up with is a worst-of-both-worlds situation. Politicians, especially if they act on their own and not on the EU level, cannot get a handle on irregular migration and asylum-seekers, despite repeatedly promising to. All they accomplish is raising the issue’s salience, while driving disillusioned voters to the far-right.

But on the other hand, they dodge the other side of the coin, the need to accept and properly integrate migrants to keep demographic, and fiscal, balances stable. Until governments are prepared to acknowledge these trade-offs, we should be wary of the feasibility of any commitments they make to consolidate public finances in the long term.

US Fertility Rate

The lead image is from MacroTrends.

The following snip is from VOX.

In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.

The US numbers from VOX are a bit low. The lead chart is more current but I like the VOX discussion. Were it not for immigration, the US population would be in decline.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? At what point does increasing population become a Ponzi scheme due to the energy and food needs?

There are a lot of questions and the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that uncontrolled migration is bad. Even Biden admits that, but he is unwilling to do anything about it.

Progressive Irony

Progressives want open borders but they also want guaranteed living wages, clean energy, slave reparations, a right to shelter, a right to free health care, and net zero carbon. The goals are incompatible.

In the next 5 years employment in age groups 60+ will drop by ~12.5 million

On March 21, I commented In the next 5 years employment in age groups 60+ will drop by ~12.5 million

Due to age demographics, I expect employment in age groups 60 and over to decline by about 12.5 million. Let’s go over the math to see how I arrived at that number.

Government + Social Assistance Accounted for Nearly 60% of Job Growth in 2023

On January 5, I noted Government + Social Assistance Accounted for Nearly 60% of Job Growth in 2023

The welfare state is booming along with social assistance for illegal immigrants.

Family Formation

Taking a step back from immigration policy, why is it that family formation is so low? The unfortunate answer is Fed policy and fiscal policy is so inflationary, that young adults have come to expect they will be worse off than their parents.

If so, and that seems accurate, this will be the first time in US history.

Importantly, houses are too expensive. Zoomers and younger millennials are angry over housing costs. And millions of illegal immigrants need a home and services.

Rent is so expensive and anger so high over housing costs that People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election

Finally, a recurring theme: The Fed’s Big Problem, There Are Two Economies But Only One Interest Rate

The Fed is largely responsible for the housing mess and Biden/Congress is responsible for the rest.

Yet Biden refuses to do anything lest he upset the Progressives who want open borders, guaranteed living wages, clean energy, a right to shelter, a right to free health care, and net zero carbon.