The Upcoming AI Spend Slowdown?

Submitted by Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

We have been attacking this issue orthogonally for the past few weeks.

• Last weekend’s Cheap China Compute brought up several issues facing the AI Spend.
• On Thursday we published Braggawatts (which should probably be BragCompute or something), but the concept is that a lot of the announced deals are missing some, or all of the following:
  • Enough electricity, especially at peak usage times, to fulfill their commitments.
  • Access to water and other resources to function.
  • Getting the various chips on time, connected and installed (hearing China is threatening to restrict exports of fiber-optic cables (another, in a long list of reasons why the U.S. (and others) need to pursue ProSec™).
  • Municipal, State, or even Federal regulatory approval (to the extent they are necessary).

To the extent this is true (and we also see construction cost overruns and delays) this is probably good for credit spreads, but negative for equity valuations.

Indirectly, we have been addressing two issues, for even longer. While these issues have been in the background, they are rising to the forefront more quickly than anticipated:

• Market structure (ETFs, leveraged ETFs, 0DTE options, etc.).
• The need for the AI industry to rapidly adopt far better community outreach! Our somewhat silly, AI-generated, picture of workers (dressed for casual Friday), carrying torches, storming a data center, seems less silly by the day. The AI Revolution is growing faster than we thought and is already influencing state and local politics coming into the midterms.
  • While it might be easy to ignore New York State’s recent “moratorium” (though be careful doing that, as upstate New York is far less “liberal” than New York City), it is more difficult to ignore the change in Texas.
  • Governor Abbott now seems to be discussing a “prohibition in rural neighborhoods.” That goes beyond previous discussions introducing rules around electricity, water, noise, etc. This is a far cry from when the Governor was attempting to make Texas a dominant hub for AI and datacenters!

It is quite possible we won’t see a slowdown in AI spending (that still seems to be what markets are pricing in), but the case that this narrative experiences a serious “hiccup” is growing.

The Market is Always Right

Since I spend half my time trying to fight markets, I’m not sure I agree with that, but it seemed like a good way to highlight 3 important things that happened late this week. Yes, the Philadelphia Semiconductor index bounced back this week (up 1.2%), but the Nasdaq 100 slumped 1.6%.

• INTC earnings seemed great. I don’t attempt to forecast earnings, but when the earnings hit the tape, virtually everyone I trust on social media and traditional media seemed to view them as very positive. Yet INTC dropped about 8% on Friday.
• On Wednesday, Anthropic and AMD announced a deal. Maybe I’m confused, but it seems to me that a month or two ago, that sort of announcement would have been very positive for AMD stock. Yet AMD stock fell 5.4% from Wednesday’s close.
• On Thursday, ORCL announced a $7 billion deal with the Pentagon. Seems impressive (and very much in line with our ProSec thesis). Yet, ORCL hit a 52-week low on Friday, falling on both Thursday and Friday.

At “best” this is telling us that the market is setting a very high bar for further upside.

At “worst” it is telling us that positioning is overly long, and it elevates our market structure concerns.

What Goes Up Must Come Down?

The inflows into the semiconductor space have been quite incredible.

Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P. (SOXX US Equity — iShares Semiconductor ETF)

It is difficult to look at this chart and not see:

• A decent correlation between inflows and performance (momentum and the narrative have worked hand in hand to bolster the market).
• A chart that looks “parabolic” in nature, which is always concerning (at least to me).

SOXX assets under management grew from $20 billion at the end of March to over $47 billion (a combination of price and inflows). Some serious wealth effect.

SOXL hasn’t had the same pace of inflows (it has had outflows since the rally began in April). But this 3X leveraged ETF has assets of $20 billion, representing $60 billion that needs to be rebalanced daily (the bigger the move up, the more it has to buy; conversely, the bigger the move down, the more it has to sell). That daily rebalancing is separate from inflows or outflows.

This combination of ETFs (and other ETFs focused on semis, including a large number of single stock leveraged ETFs) adds to my concern.

Distilling

Not the fun kind of distilling (which you may need after reading this report), but the “distilling” Chinese AI is using to speed their model “training” and make their “training” far cheaper is a real concern. You are seeing the U.S. government examining what can be done about this.

We will get into more detail on this later this week, as I’m having several conversations with Academy’s GIG members on this subject.

Increasingly I’m worried we are seeing a “rinse and repeat” for China:

• Flood the market with cheap “something” (in this case compute).
  • Maybe the “thing” isn’t as good, but it is so darn cheap, it is tempting.
  • Maybe it is cheap due to a variety of factors (unfair government support, loose (if any) enforcement of Intellectual Property protection, etc.).
• Use that pricing power to slow global competition.
• Add in some legitimate advantages China has (no concept of NIMBY, a decade or more of rapid expansion of energy production and their grid, their own legit Intellectual Property, and the production, at scale, of a variety of lower level, but useful chips).

As much emphasis as Academy has placed on ProSec™, I’m fearful that we underestimated the potential for Cheap Chinese Compute to disrupt not just our AI/Data Center Industry, but also at some level, our National Security.

This “Is It Worth It?” Narrative Shift

The media is an incredible source of information. I incredibly value my engagement with media. Not just the brief moments in front of the camera or the microphone, but all the discussions we have. Some on background. Some on views that never get published. That has been incredibly helpful, but one other thing has been of incredible use to me as a strategist:

• Seeing the shift in the media narrative before it plays out.

If you don’t think the media influences markets, you can skip this section.

What I see (and experience) are “cycles” that develop over time.

A few weeks/months ago, the media wasn’t that interested in negative stories on the AI Spend (except maybe to highlight troubles in the bond market).

Then, no strategist or analyst wanted to be involved in negative stories on the space, because it was dead wrong, at least based on stock prices.

But I believe I can “sense” a shift in what is being asked, what is being published, and more importantly, what is going to become the narrative!

This affects everyone from CEOs to strategists. What CEO was going to say they might slow down spending (either on the build-out, or the use side)? Could any CEO really say, “we’ve been seeing our token costs increase, and despite trying to use this stuff (that apparently everyone else is having success with), we are struggling to get a lot of value out of it (we discussed simple Return on Investment as a potential issue in Thursday’s report).

Any CEO who was willing to do that might as well have branded Luddite on their forehead and waited for their stock to crash as “everyone knows you need to be using AI.”

Yet, we’ve mentioned this, but one conference organizer’s comments are worth repeating.

• In 2025 AI sessions were wildly popular and received high scores.
• In 2026, attendees wanted case studies and examples (which I tend to think means that they have been experimenting, with limited success).

Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P. (SDLLMTN Index — Silicon Data LLM Token Expenditure Index)

I will admit that I don’t have a good grasp of how accurate this chart is, but it sounds cool. The token expenditure index has fallen further since the first time we published this. It is possible token use is increasing, only if they are buying cheaper tokens.

The reality is that this chart may support my “trying but frustrated” view, that many people seem to be experiencing (at least anecdotally and in private conversations).

How many people out there are thinking:

• Finally!
• Whew, I’m really happy it isn’t just me!
• I told you so!

None of this means that AI and Data Centers are not useful. They are useful and will continue to see their usage and adoption grow. But…

• Are current growth expectations too high? That seems possible.
• Are valuations susceptible to changes in growth sentiment, coupled with market structure? Seems possible as well.

The voice of those questioning the current utility and cost of that utility, and therefore growth is likely to rise in the coming weeks, which would be a headwind for valuations.

Bottom Line

It is completely valid to have the following thoughts at the same time (at least I hope it is valid, because these are my thoughts):

• AI and Data Center usage will continue to grow.
• The onslaught of Cheap Chinese Compute is not good for profit margins of the providers, or the picks and shovels.
• Plans to build out compute may be far less feasible than previously thought, once again changing the profit margin outlook going forward.
• While useful, the cost to use AI has increased, and it is unclear that there is widespread belief that the cost vs benefit is truly there given today’s technology and prices. Investments in technology based on “Fear of Missing Out” may slow, if companies don’t fear they are missing out.
• The media narrative may shift rapidly too, giving their bears a bigger stage to express their concerns.
• The importance of leveraged ETFs in the AI Spend/Data Center space (add in Nasdaq 100, etc.) certainly helped propel stocks higher (which people seem to ignore), and it will amplify any sell-off (and already has).

From an investment standpoint:

• Buy bonds in the space! Spreads are wide. Given Credit Default Swap activity, one can assume there are decent short positions that have been built (always a nice catalyst if direction reverses). Money managers across the globe are “making room” to absorb the “certain onslaught of new issuance.” All it takes is for someone on the build side to “flinch.” Not even going on the full Debt Diet, but cautioning on how much they will spend how quickly. Maybe it won’t happen, but while we may not be facing a “perfect storm” for the space, there are a lot of risks that don’t seem fully priced in yet.
• Buy “completed projects.” Companies with projects that are completed or nearly completed will have a competitive advantage if we see any slowdown.
• Be cautious on equities in the space. All are great companies. Almost all fit into our ProSec™ narrative. But valuations may be questioned, and as we’ve seen in these markets, prices move fast when they start to move.

Iran is my biggest concern for Treasuries. Not just the energy price inflation, but also the need for countries to spend more on defense. Even in the Middle East, countries that once gobbled up Treasuries are facing their own economic slowdown, while seeing their need to spend increase. I should probably throw in the towel for rate cuts before hikes. But, and this remains a big but, if we do see spending on the AI / Data Centers slow at all, that will help on the inflation front and will put a question mark on jobs, as so much of what has been driving the economy on the positive side is related to the Capex spending in this area! Maybe the market will just put all these questions on hold, until the end of the summer, but it doesn’t have that sort of feeling!

Hope you are all able to get some vacation with friends and family this summer, while only having to keep one eye glued to markets!

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 13:05
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The Upcoming AI Spend Slowdown?

Fauci Files: A Megalomaniacal Egomaniac Milking Covid For Everything It's Worth

Authored by Tom Elliott via Substack,

On May 28, 2021, Anthony Fauci learned that the Department of Health and Human Services would refer EcoHealth Alliance - the New York nonprofit that had routed NIAID money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology - to its inspector general. That night he wrote in his diary:

"I am certain that there will be some deficiencies that the IG will find as is always the case with IG audits. Certainly, whatever they find it will be misconstrued by those who want to make a case for our involvement in the outbreak. I am starting to feel that it is important for me to write an editorial or an opinion piece giving our side of the story." (p. 753)

Our involvement in the outbreak. Followed closely by a plan to get out in front of it.

That instinct - get ahead of it, control the story, decide what the public needs to believe and then saturate every channel with it - is the organizing principle of these documents. It shows up in the origins fight. It shows up in masks, transmissibility, and boosters. It shows up in how he handled the people who disagreed with him. And it shows up, most revealingly, in what he chose to write down.

What was released

On July 24, Senator Rand Paul's committee published two documents that have not been reported in any depth.

The first is Fauci's personal diary, 1,141 pages, running from late 2019 through his retirement in December 2022. It is partly a journal and overwhelmingly a scrapbook: he pasted hundreds of articles about himself into it, frequently in full.

The second is 136 pages of internal email about his awards - nominations, ethics clearances, and the disposition of prize money.

Fauci does not date the composition of his entries, so we cannot always distinguish what was typed the same evening from what was assembled later. Page numbers refer to the released PDFs.

I. What they thought at the start

Page 13 of the diary covers two important events from January 31, 2020.

The first is that Fauci is handed the mic to serve as Covid's point person. He writes:

"White House is now fully convinced that I be the science/health spokesperson for the USG. Bob Redfield just does not come across very weel. He takes forever to say something and it is usually wondering. This drives the WH and HHS comms people crazy and so they are putting me out on all the requests."

The director of the CDC was not sidelined for being wrong, but for being slow on camera. The selection criterion was not who's the most credible scientist, but who performs best on TV.

Redfield's own account of that period, given under oath in 2023, is worth recalling. Asked why he had been excluded from the origins discussions, he pointed to ideological differences: "Because it was told to me that they wanted a single narrative, and that I obviously had a different point of view."

The second thing happens after he gets back to his office. Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust calls, sounding "very concerned," with Kristian Andersen of Scripps conferenced in and Eddie Holmes in the background from Sydney. Fauci writes down what they told him:

"The people on the phone felt that the mutations around the furine cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally since it would require an evolutionary 'jump' that they found nowhere in bat isolates."

Deliberate insertion, they said, followed by release - accidental release being the most likely.

The next day Fauci convened a larger call of twelve experts in epidemiology. His entry characterizing it (p. 14) is the probably the single most consequential paragraph in the whole diary. There was "not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion," he writes. Ron Fouchier was certain it could have arisen naturally and said they shouldn't waste time. Christian Drosten agreed with Fouchier. And then, in Fauci's own words:

"the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible."

Ten of twelve thought it must be manmade. And he admits the person driving the zoonotic theory perspective, Ron Fouchier, was "expected of him since he was the original GOF [gain of function] person with Yoshi Kawaoka."

II. What happened next

Three days later, four of the scientists from that call were circulating a draft arguing the opposite. "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" appeared in Nature Medicine on March 17, concluding that the virus was not a laboratory construct. Andersen told the journal in his cover note that the paper had been prompted by Fauci and Francis Collins. Drafts went to both men before publication. Fauci's reply to Andersen: "Nice job on the paper."

Two months after Proximal Origin published - Fauci's institute approves an $8.9 million grant for Andersen.

On April 16, Collins wrote to Fauci asking whether NIH could help "put down this very destructive conspiracy." The following day, Fauci cited Proximal Origin from the White House briefing room podium - the most watched platform on earth at that moment.

Three weeks after that, on May 4, 2020, he told National Geographic that the evidence was "very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated," citing "a number of very qualified evolutionary biologists."

The doubt referenced in his diary never reached the public.

And his account of that February call has never stopped changing.

A June 7, 2021 diary entry (p. 767), recounting the same meeting: "About half of the people felt that this was possibly a constructed virus and the other half were convinced that this was a natural occurrence."

In a June 3, 2024 sworn opening statement to the House Select Subcommittee, Fauci said he joined a call with about a dozen international virologists, that the discussion was "lively, with arguments for both possibilities," and that after further examination several who had been concerned about lab manipulation became convinced the virus was not deliberately manipulated.

The June 2021 retelling contains another problem: he says "a few weeks later" Andersen and colleagues re-examined the data and concluded natural origin. The draft was circulating on February 4 - three days after the call. The June 2021 entry shows how he's trying to mould history into something different for posterity.

III. Habit becomes routine

Origins is where this pattern is most consequential, but it is not where it started or where it stopped. The diary shows the same strategy applied to every contested question of the pandemic: decide what the public needs to believe, then flood the zone.

Consider masks. Fauci's public reversal in the spring of 2020 is well known, and he has explained it as a response to shortages and to emerging evidence on asymptomatic spread (p. 375). But watch what happens when the question comes back around in February 2021, when he begins pushing double-masking (p. 619):

"CDC starting to do practical things that I have actually been pushing for some time. For example: Wearing 2 masks could be better than just one. They did a dummy study and showed that a cloth mask over a surgical mask actually gives a more complete fit and keeps out aerosols."

Note the order of operations: He had been pushing it "for some time," the evidence arrives afterward, and the evidence is a mannequin. That is the entire evidentiary basis for double-masking in a 1,141-page diary kept by the government's chief spokesman on the subject during the month he was urging 330 million people to adopt it.

We see every time Fauci is turned to for guidance, he makes bold proclamations without feeling burdened to verify any scientific basis. We see it in the numbers.

Across 1,141 pages by the nation's senior infectious disease official during the largest public health event in a century, here is how often certain terms appear.

Never once: "peer review." "Meta-analysis." "Risk-benefit." "Learning loss." "Mental health."

Once: "N95." "Seroprevalence." "Cost-benefit."

Twice: "Cloth mask." "School closure." "Natural immunity."

Against which:

• "Award" - 80
• "Hero" - 49
• "Instagram" - 36
• "Bobblehead" - 23
• "Selfie" - 19
• Entries headed "PRESS:" - 641

The question of whether prior infection conferred meaningful protection - the question underpinning the vaccine mandates that cost people their jobs - is never worked through anywhere in these pages. It appears twice, both times as an attack to be repelled.

IV. The flex

What the diary contains instead of evidentiary reasoning is an extraordinarily detailed record of influence.

March 15, 2020: Fauci records calling Bill de Blasio and convincing him to close New York City's schools, then telling him he should close the bars and restaurants, too - de Blasio "said that he would base this on my recommendation." He records a parallel call with Ann O'Leary, Gavin Newsom's chief of staff, who tells him that based on his television appearances, California will close its schools, bars, and restaurants. He records walking out of the White House to drivers honking their thanks. The next morning, federal guidelines emerge "that reflected my pushing for a more aggressive mitigation 15 day strategy."

So here we have Fauci humble bragging about shutting down the largest city and state in the country, via leverage that was entirely a function of being the man Gov. Newsom & Mayor de Blasio watched on TV.

His impact extended beyond the continental United States. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett requested a Zoom to secure Fauci's "opinion and ultimate support" for Israel's booster program, recorded it for his own Instagram, and asked for Fauci's cell number so he could "intermittently call me for advice"; with State Department approval, Fauci gave it (p. 830). The presidents of Ecuador and Chile called. So did health ministers in Brazil, Gabon, Israel, and Quebec.

The MLB commissioner wanted guidance on spring training; the NHL players' union wanted projections (p. 507). Bill Gates had a standing biweekly slot. Coach K, on a podcast, called him "the point guard for the world," and Fauci wrote it down (p. 83).

Then there is the CDC, which he seemed to be furtively running through his cellphone.

May 13, 2021: Rochelle Walensky calls to say she is changing the mask guidance for vaccinated Americans. Fauci: "She will take my advice ... I'm very pleased that she listened to me." Then the tell - "The radical right-wing maniacs who blamed me for the rigidity of the CDC recommendations will probably not realize at all that it was me that triggered this change" (p. 736).

September 2021: the CDC's independent vaccine advisory committee votes 9-6 against the booster recommendation the White House wants. Fauci, the White House's Jeff Zients, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Leslie Dach - a Democratic operative who founded the advocacy group Protect Our Care - work the phones. Fauci texts Walensky and, in his own words, "begged her to override" the vote. She calls back at 11:25 p.m.; he misses it; they speak at 5:40 a.m. His entry: "Alas! Rochelle listened to me. She overruled the recommendation of the ACIP." He congratulates her on finally showing "clear leadership" (pp. 883-884, 887).

So, Zients had been calling him "multiple times per day asking me to continue to mentor Rochelle such that the CDC/ACIP does not veer too far off the FDA recommendations and our ultimate intent" (p. 880).

We can only guess what their "ultimate intent" is, but recall the context is loosening rules for those who've agreed to be vaccinated.

In January 2021, Zients called Fauci at dinner "asking for a favor" - a Politico reporter was preparing a story that Biden was unhappy with his COVID team, and Zients wanted Fauci to go on background and say otherwise. "I told Jeff that I would of course be happy to do this," Fauci wrote (p. 580). The next day: "I convinced them that the Biden team is a good team." In March, Zients wanted him "comfortable with" the CDC's forthcoming guidance for vaccinated people; Fauci reviewed it, decided the agency had loaded it with qualifiers, and "edited their document some what." Without a hint of irony, Fauci then adds: "Jeff was very sensitive in not having the White House interfere" (p. 642).

Here we have three nominally independent agencies, a White House coordination office, and a party-aligned outside operative, converging by telephone on predetermined outcomes, with the advisory committee that voted the other way treated as an obstacle to be routed around. This is the structure that enabled them to steamroll actual, data-driven scientists.

V. Threats to the structure

Real science requires dissent. But to Fauci, who once infamously likened himself to science itself, treated dissent as a danger to his entire enterprise.

Scott Atlas, the Stanford radiologist Trump brought onto the task force, generated an October 2020 email in which Fauci formally demanded his removal "from the Task Force and quite frankly from the White House itself" (p. 388). Days earlier, Fauci had recorded a meeting between Alex Azar and "Atlas and his 3 stooges" - Drs. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard (p. 390) - a week before those three published the Great Barrington Declaration. After a Good Morning America appearance that month, Fauci, trying to squelch these burgeoning critiques, congratulates himself: "I blew away the Great Barrington Declaration" (p. 406).

Richard Ebright, the Rutgers microbiologist who has been the most persistent scientific critic of NIAID's gain-of-function portfolio, is "truly an asshole" (p. 834); then a man pushing lab-leak because he "wants to be somebody" (p. 888); then "this complete idiot" whom Fauci resolves to handle in his memoir "since he really is a horrible person" (p. 906). In the same passage he writes that he is "terribly disappointed" in virologists Jesse Bloom and David Relman and believes they are "pushing for and even hoping that this was a lab leak."

Then April 2021 (p. 695), David Morens has told Fauci that people are trying to "bring me down." Fauci takes umbrage that these critics have received funds from the agency he was running: "It is my suspicion that some of these so-called NIAID grantees are Imperiale and Rich Ebright."

He notes that both have publicly claimed he would cut their funding for criticizing him, calls that preposterous - then closes the entry: "Let us see if in fact these are the villains."

You can only imagine him as Inspector Gadget gently stroking his cat as he typed those words.

VI. Fauci's colleagues, the press

The most revealing aspect of these pages are how Fauci worked with compliant "journalists" to shape media narratives. On July 26, 2020, while watching Brett Giroir - the assistant secretary for health and a fellow member of the White House task force - be interviewed on CNN's State of the Union, Fauci writes that Giroir was "talking bullshit about testing with Jake pressing him." Then (p. 263): "I gave Jake some questions to ask him."

So, a senior federal official is trying to undermine a rival federal official, using a CNN anchor as his conduit.

The diary records CBS's chief medical correspondent, Jon LaPook, emailing Fauci over a weekend "to prep him for his interview" before going on air, then cited Fauci repeatedly during it (p. 2). LaPook later produced the admiring 60 Minutes profile Fauci credits with driving Trump "over the edge."

Fauci even got stories killed, at least according to his telling: In January 2020, the Washington Post's Lena Sun called to check a tip that Beijing had leaned on the WHO's director-general to delay declaring an emergency; Fauci told her it was nonsense and wrote, "I probably stopped her from writing the story" - noting that Sun had come to him because he is "in all the important meetings" (p. 7).

Members of the corporate media make many embarrassing cameos in these pages: Jake Tapper sends Fauci a text making fun Laura Ingraham's intelligence (p. 113) and twice hosts Fauci for dinner at their family home (p. 420); George Stephanopoulos texts after an interview, "Thank you, Tony. So impressive" (p. 264); Andrea Mitchell calls his cell, apologetic, having assumed he had declined her show rather than been blocked from it (p. 235); Jimmy Kimmel writes his TIME 100 citation in the year he was ranked first among "Leaders," another puff piece he saves for his scrapbook (p. 357).

The pattern becomes easy enough to understand: He supplied access and the guise of expertise, they supplied a platform and a halo, and the arrangement was load-bearing enough that when a reporter got a genuinely hard tip about the WHO and China, she brought it to him before she wrote it.

VII. The scrapbook

Which brings us to what the diary mostly is: 641 entries in these pages are labeled "PRESS:" - lists of the day's media appearances, often a dozen at a time, frequently followed by the articles themselves transcribed in full. A senior scientist's pandemic journal turns out to be, by volume, a clipping service devoted to his favorite subject: himself.

The tone of what he preserved is worth registering. He kept the Washington Post column comparing a Rand Paul cross-examination of him to "watching Albert Einstein being disputed by his dry cleaner." He kept the Joan Baez portrait and her calling him an American hero (p. 292). He kept the cookies from Joe and Jill Biden with the note "You are our hero" (p. 175), and Julia Roberts gasping on an Instagram livestream that he was her personal hero, and Marian Wright Edelman calling him "a true national treasure" (p. 1113), and Beth Cameron of the NSC texting that he was her hero for what he did with Rand Paul (p. 815).

By my count he records someone calling him a hero at least 10 times across three years.

He recorded a standing ovation he could not see because he was attending by Zoom, noting in the same passage that it would be his 58th honorary doctorate and that Holy Cross was naming a science complex after him (p. 951). He recorded a Seattle Mariners crowd's ovation three separate times in one entry - claiming his opening pitch was "perfect" - alongside a complaint that the Washington Examiner had reported some fans booing (p. 1,020). He recorded being "totally mobbed by my colleagues wanting selfies. I must have done at least 100 (no exaggerating!)" (p. 1084). When the Infectious Diseases Society of America established a perpetual Anthony S. Fauci Prize, he transcribed the entire citation (p. 1086).

Anthony Fauci, writing in his diary in March 2020, clearly loving life: "Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole [sic] to

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 25, 2026

And then there is the second document Sen. Paul's office released, which shows that a good deal of this was not happening to him. Our tax dollars were helping arrange it.

In October 2018 - 14 months before any of this - Barton Haynes of Duke nominated Fauci for the Shaw Prize. Fauci wrote back the same day (Awards, p. 2):

"Thanks, Bart. There is another one that looks possible for me if you are willing to do it. As usual, I will supply all of the material. It is the Dan David Prize."

As usual? Four days later he pitched a third and wrote the strategy himself (p. 4): the Heinz Award, category "The Human Condition," using the PEPFAR record - "We obviously will take care of all of that on my end." He coached Haynes through qualifying as a nominator, noting the "minor glitch" that the Heinz people require a CV first "because they do not want just anyone nominating anyone." He tracked prize calendars like a portfolio, telling Haynes to stand down on the Dan David until "medicine/science returns as a theme" (p. 5). He collected it two years later.

The Dan David Prize - $1 million, headquartered at Tel Aviv University - announced Fauci as its 2021 public health laureate on February 15, citing his "courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition." None of the coverage mentioned that the nomination pipeline had been running since 2018 with the laureate supplying the materials.

Every message in the awards file copies NIAID staff, who assembled packages, chased clearances, and eventually arranged a wire transfer. NIH's ethics counsel was described by her own superior as playing "the seminal role in assembling of the award packages" (p. 19). (Which sounds like the opposite thing an ethics counsel should be doing.) That superior was Lawrence Tabak, then NIH's principal deputy director, who personally wrote to HHS General Counsel arguing across several pages that Fauci should be allowed to keep the $40,000 attached to a National Academy of Medicine award - invoking the Academy's 1863 charter, a 1997 amendment to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and a Congressional Research Service report (p. 30). Days earlier Tabak had written to Fauci about the delays: "my goal is to support you in the strongest possible way" (p. 18).

When the Dan David Prize cleared on April 9, 2021, the internal traffic was preserved (pp. 120-121). Arthur Bennett: "At last!!!!!!!" Patricia Conrad, forwarding to Fauci: "Congratulations....you're rich!" Greg Folkers: "I want my 15%."

We know the sum to the penny because Fauci corrected his own financial disclosure the following spring (p. 135): "The Dan David prize that was deposited in my bank account was $899,960.00, not $901,400."

Technically soliciting one's own nomination is not illegal, and in elite science it is not even unusual - most major prizes require a qualified nominator. But here we have some pretty well-scaled machinery: a federal agency's staff and the NIH's chief ethics counsel running a standing campaign, a legal argument built at the deputy-director level so a cash prize could be retained, and roughly $900,000 landing in the personal account of a sitting official who had arranged the nomination that produced it.

The final verdict

These two document dumps go a long way helping us understand how the sausage is made.

The White House needed a face that performed well under lights; governors needed cover for decisions they had half-made and took it from a man whose authority came from TV hits rather than peer-reviewed studies; a press corps needed access and a protagonist and traded a halo for both; a White House coordination office needed a scientist willing to serve as an anonymous source, edit another agency's guidance, and lean on another agency's director when her experts voted wrong. Foreign leaders needed the imprimatur of Official Science on a phone call. NIH's own leadership needed the world's most famous scientist happy, and built him the legal argument to keep his bank account flush.

And Anthony Fauci got the largest edifice of public esteem ever assembled around an American civil servant - much of which, it turns out, he had personally arranged the scaffolding for, starting 14 months before the first case of Covid.

Fauci's blast zone was wide: On a public told that guidance was science when the diary records it as message discipline and mannequin studies; on three highly credentialed academic epidemiologists who found themselves recorded as stooges; on a CDC director cut out of briefings on her own agency's guidelines; on an advisory committee whose 9-6 vote was reversed by telephone before dawn; on international agencies leaning on U.S. officials for guidance, on everyone who lost a job over a mandate ...

The story began with Fauci acknowledging his own panel of experts virtually unanimously agreed Covid was manmade, before shifting to the elaborate effort put into convincing the world otherwise. Throughout it all, we see little discussion or concern about the humanitarian impact of anything they're doing. Instead we see a craven egomaniac milking it for all it's worth.

* * *

Both documents are public at paul.senate.gov: the diary at 1,141 pages, the awards correspondence at 136. Page citations refer to the PDFs as released; word counts are raw string searches of the extracted text and include pasted press. Quotations preserve original spelling. Dr. Fauci's representatives were contacted for comment.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 18:20
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Fauci Files: A Megalomaniacal Egomaniac Milking Covid For Everything It's Worth

Money Issues, Paranoia, And A Hurled Phone: Blistering Reports Detail Ken Martin's Collapsing DNC

The Democratic National Committee is running on fumes, and chairman Ken Martin is headed for a full-blown mental breakdown, according to a pair of blistering reports.

A New York Times report published Sunday revealed that the committee is $2 million in the hole and begging vendors to sit on their invoices until after the midterms.

The DNC quietly put the Southeast Washington building up as collateral last year to land a $15 million line of credit and bankroll off-year races, according to DC deed records not previously reported, according to NOTUS. The party has pawned the property, which it only partially owns, in past cycles. But going back to the well ahead of 2026 for the biggest off-year loan in committee history set off alarms among members who saw it as one more flashing red light.

"Ken gaslighting us about the DNC's finances and not being transparent about the financial situation makes us doubt if he can oversee the DNC during the most important primary of our lifetime," an unnamed DNC member told NOTUS.

The Republican National Committee is sitting on $128.5 million, and President Trump's main super PAC, MAGA Inc., closed out June with roughly $400 million in the bank.

The DNC has downplayed the alarm. Roger Lau, the committee's executive director, told the Times that the request for vendors to hold their invoices was "nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes."

Meanwhile, the pressure mounting on Martin is showing, according to the Times:

In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.'s human resources department.

The fallout from the phone-throwing episode was described by half a dozen people familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal party matters. None of them witnessed the encounter, and there was some dispute over how aggressively the phone was tossed. Mr. Martin was said to have thrown the phone at the desk, rather than at the aide.

Unsurprisingly, the DNC refused to comment on the incident.

To make matters worse, Martin has reportedly developed a "growing sense of paranoia" about a possible push to dump him and is "paralyzed by the idea of leaks."

"It pisses me off when I see leaks out of this building," Martin lamented during a meeting in May. "No more of that shit. No more."

"My success is your success," he added. "So the weaker I am, the weaker all of you are."

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 16:55
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Money Issues, Paranoia, And A Hurled Phone: Blistering Reports Detail Ken Martin's Collapsing DNC

Activists Target WNBA Player After She Takes Stand Against Trans Agenda

The WNBA only has two real stars with any meaningful popular following - Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham.  Both of them built reputations as underdogs in a sport traditionally dominated by minority players espousing far-left politics.  Both of them have been mistreated in the past by a league that tends to play nursemaid to those same players. 

The WNBA has long been a cultural joke, not just because its reputation for low standards of athleticism, but because they are constantly whining about "equal pay", "social justice" and LGBT issues.  The league spends so much energy on activism that they've forgotten about the game and the fans.  No one likes a bunch of crybabies making demands. 

The national interest in Caitlin Clark transcends politics; people like her because she takes the game seriously and plays at a level far above most of her peers.  Her mere presence on the court now often brings in double or even triple the normal WNBA viewership.    

On the other hand, Sophie Cunningham has gained a reputation as an enforcer.  While Caitlin Clark is being persistently battered with flagrant fouls disguised as "accidents", Cunningham has decided to dish out some fouls in return.  The Martial Arts trained player has decided to "sweep the leg" on the league and she's no longer letting the abuse slide.

 

This month she went viral for pointing her finger in the face of a black player (DeWanna Bonner) after multiple fouls against Caitlin Clark without referee intervention.  Bonner flipped out over the gesture and the WNBA was unhappy.  A white girl pointing with condemnation in the face of a black player was viewed by the political left as unacceptable.  The fans loved it. 

This week, Cunningham was in the news again, this time because she took a public position on "trans women" (men) being allowed in women's sports.  Cunningham argued that she doesn't hate trans people, but:

“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that.’ I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

She later doubled down when confronted by the media:

“I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense. And I think I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. And so I’ll stand on what I said, and I’ll always believe that.” 

Rule #1 when dealing with the political left:  Never apologize to the political left.  It won't shut them up.  They will smell blood in the water and attack even more aggressively.  Cunningham seems to understand this rule well.  

In response, the media has gone on the attack, admonishing Cunningham for her comments.  Leftists on social media are calling for her to booted from the league.  Some are burning her jersey in an effort to inspire a boycott of her merchandise.

  

However, as usual, whenever leftist try to boycott someone it ends up backfiring.  If a bunch of mentally ill gender fluid weirdos want to buy her jerseys just to burn them, Cunningham will be happy to take their money.  Beyond that, her willingness to go against the progressive agenda of the WNBA has also earned her a lot of respect.   

Almost overnight, Sophie Cunningham merchandise has sold out online, including her exclusive basketball shoes in women and men's sizes.  Clearly, the public has decided who they think is right on the issue of transgenders in women's sports.  Multiple conservative politicians and the White House have come to her defense on the national stage. 

Like it or not, everything has become political, even women's basketball.  But this is largely due to media and establishment interference.  Progressive journalists are constantly acting as agents of the woke movement, demanding that people with a public platform swear fealty to the cause or be ostracized.  These activists got a little too comfortable with their cancel culture power over the past decade; so much so that they don't realize how quickly it's all disappearing. 

More and more people are refusing to bend the knee, and sports figures like Cunningham working in the midst of these vicious piranhas should be commended for standing by their principles.     

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 15:45
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Activists Target WNBA Player After She Takes Stand Against Trans Agenda

Rand Paul Should Make Fauci Answer For Wuhan And BeagleGate Lies

Authored by Anthony Bellotti via American Greatness,

Fauci no longer faces any realistic risk of criminal exposure for perjury or other past federal offenses covered by the pardon.

Next week, Dr. Anthony Fauci is scheduled to testify before Sen. Rand Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. After years of stonewalling, evasions, carefully parsed denials, and outright lies, this hearing presents a rare opportunity to get answers from America's most notorious mad scientist, who recklessly funded dangerous animal experiments that likely caused COVID-19 and financed beagle torture in labs worldwide.

This time is different.

In one of his final acts in office, in January 2025, President Joe Biden granted Fauci a sweeping pardon that conspicuously covered a decade-long period starting when he first funded the infamous grant that paid the Wuhan lab, which was first exposed by White Coat Waste in early 2020 and cut days later by President Donald Trump.

This means that Fauci no longer faces any realistic risk of criminal exposure for perjury or other past federal offenses covered by the pardon. So, the usual Fifth Amendment justification for refusing to answer questions about potentially self-incriminating conduct is largely off the table.

Paul should press Fauci on three false statements he has repeatedly made to Congress, the press, and the American people about the Wuhan lab and BeagleGate - claims debunked by evidence obtained by White Coat Waste.

First, Fauci needs to finally fess up about funding gain-of-function animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In multiple Senate hearings in 2021, Fauci categorically told Paul and others that "the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." He repeated essentially the same claim during a House Oversight Committee hearing in 2024.

But White Coat Waste has receipts. Our Freedom of Information Act investigations uncovered damning internal government emails from 2016 showing that NIH officials told EcoHealth Alliance that its Fauci-funded animal experiments with the Wuhan lab "appear to involve" gain-of-function research that was banned at the time.

Instead of stopping the experiments, NIH worked with disgraced EcoHealth president Peter Daszak to skirt the ban. Daszak gleefully celebrated the decision, writing, "This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted."

In May 2024, then-acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak finally admitted to the House Oversight Committee that NIH did, in fact, fund gain-of-function in Wuhan.

Paul should ask a simple question: Does Fauci still stand by his testimony, or will he finally acknowledge that his previous statements to Congress were false or misleading?

Second, Fauci should answer for his testimony denying that he used his personal email for official NIH business.

During House testimony in 2024, Fauci declared to Chairman James Comer, "To the best of my recollection and knowledge, I have never conducted official business via my private email."

Yet White Coat Waste's FOIA investigations uncovered official NIH emails showing Fauci telling a Washington Post reporter covering the BeagleGate scandal, "I will send you an email via my Gmail account."

Records have also emerged showing that David Morens, Fauci's longtime advisor who was indicted in April for FOIA violations, told Daszak and others in 2021, "I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail or hand it to him at work. . . He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."

Will Fauci come clean?

Finally, Paul should revisit BeagleGate - the viral dog testing scandal first exposed by White Coat Waste that Fauci and his allies spent years falsely dismissing as a conspiracy.

In a 2021 Washington Post cover story written by the same reporter Fauci said he would contact through his personal Gmail account, he called the dog testing claims "ridiculous accusations and outright lies." In his 2024 memoir, Fauci again dismissed the story as "lies," "lunacy," and "off-the-wall accusations" and defended himself by awkwardly saying, "I am a passionate animal lover, especially of dogs."

But government documents obtained by White Coat Waste prove that Fauci funded countless dog labs, including the infamous experiments in Tunisia, where beagles were drugged and had their heads locked in mesh cages full of biting sand flies. After reviewing these records, even the Washington Post, which had aggressively defended Fauci and smeared White Coat Waste, finally acknowledged in 2024 that it published NIH disinformation, acknowledging that "NIH was not fully transparent as it tried to handle a public-relations nightmare."

Paul was one of the lawmakers who led the charge with White Coat Waste to hold Fauci accountable for funding beagle abuse and lying about it.

Americans deserve answers.

Next week's hearing may be Congress's last meaningful opportunity to confront Anthony Fauci directly and finally set the record straight on Wuhan and BeagleGate. Paul should seize it.

* * * [ZH]: Not everyone is convinced Rand can bring the heat. What say you?

Fuck this guy too. He’s a powerless loser who is essentially a blow off valve for the disaffected pic.twitter.com/XJJb4PUnBo

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) July 23, 2026

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 17:30
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Rand Paul Should Make Fauci Answer For Wuhan And BeagleGate Lies