There is a report that President Trump plans to attend the ASEAN summit in Manila. The Philippines should use the meeting to put Chinese coercion front and centre—defending its sovereignty, strengthening partnerships, and making clear that Beijing cannot dictate Manila’s future.

THAT’S A WRAP FOR PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP 2026! A huge thanks to @USNavy Captain Robert Reyes and his team. Their service BUILDS on the legacy of General MacArthur and the HEROES who came before us.

@RobGouveiaEsq time for another show… storage.courtlistener.com/re…

Economists Designed for Power Shortages In growing economies, electric grids are often pressed for generation capacity. This is by design, but not by the responsible engineers running the grid, but by the economists who designed the market. Historically, 20% margin of installed capacity over peak load was the norm. This was so that reliability to the customers was not limited by the ability to feed in kilowatts to the system but by transmission and distribution issues getting it to the loads. The latter disruptions would be localized and not grid-wide as a shortage of generation could be. But the economists changed that. They saw the grid as three separate businesses – generation, transmission, and distribution – and broke up the once vertically integrated utility companies that had been run as accountable, territorial monopolies. Instead, transmission and distribution were still “natural monopolies” but competition for generation would squeeze out the profits from generation as suppliers competed on cost for putting the power into the system. But the ability of a generation company to lower costs are limited by the technology available to make power. An early win was when natural gas prices fell in some areas (the US in particular) and combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) were developed to burn gas at unprecedented thermal efficiencies. These were rapidly installed where there was sufficient gas delivery service. But since then, no new technologies have some forth that can boast of cheaper generation. That has turned generators into “price takers,” much like farmers growing the same crop on the same land with the same seed and fertilizers. Producers can’t compete on buying technology since the manufacturers sell the same stuff to everyone leaving only capital structure, tax breaks, economics of scale of organization, and other secondary cost items. The result is a squeeze on profits. “Great!” proclaim the economists – lower cost power, that was the point. Perfect competition results in an approach to ZERO profits and the lowest possible cost, just as economic theory predicted. The businessman looks at that and asks himself why would he invest in a business where the income approaches his cost of capital, leaving no profit and a lot of risk. The would-be investor now has to find an imperfection in that competition to find profit worth the risk. Too often, that opportunity comes only when demand gets ahead of supply and the price signal of high spot market prices appears. The economists implicitly expected that prices would automatically make cheaper generation technology appear. Engineers knew there’s only so much they can do given the physical laws of the Universe they have to work with. The result has been increased risk of power shortages as margins have dramatically thinned and political pressure has arisen to block industrial development (like data centers) that will need additional generation. Happy now, Dr. Economist PhD?

Secretary of War Hegseth just ordered Cyber Command, NSA, DIA & NGA to secure our elections, which include: - Prioritize intel + cyber so foreign actors can't touch U.S. voting systems. - Collect and produce on foreign election threats. - Work with DHS to smash foreign cyber attacks aimed at the vote. No meddling. No games. Defend the ballot. Period.