z1a Deep Dive Report

By Staff

“Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes! Pass over to Calneh, and see, and from there go to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory, you who put far away the day of disaster and bring near the seat of violence?

“Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.” – Amos 6:1-7

INTRODUCTION

For the past few weeks, the 2026 Elections has been our top news tag. That news tag has numerous subset news tags within it. This week, one of those subset news tags, Mass Mailer Election, could be considered a Deep Dive contender in its own right.

Within the 2026 election, there are two dominant narratives emerging, “affordability” (or cost of living) and AI Data Centers. The latter, AI Data Centers, like the Mass Mailer Election, could have been its own Deep Dive.

We have decided to combine the top Deep Dive contenders, the 2026 election, the Mass Mailer Election, and AI Data Centers, into one Deep Dive. This Deep Dive looks at the top emerging “issues” of the midterm elections in contrast to what lies underneath, the ideological battle for a new civilization to replace the one already declared dead, the American republic.

In our estimation, the election narrative is dominated by questions of ease.

In the case of the AI Data Centers, the question is about resource demand and its impact on the local population. Coupled with that “debate” is the apocalyptic warning AI will kill us if we don’t police it. The debate is entirely separated from geopolitical reality. It is all about ease in America alone.

In the case of the affordability issue, the question is about prices at the grocery story. The war in Iran is framed almost entirely around its cost to fuel, which is driving the cost of everything else up. The war in Iran is also framed around America’s allegiance to Israel, with the progressive state media and progressive entertainment agit prop reinforcing the myth that Israel controls us.

There are no conversations about geopolitical realities. China is almost completely missing from progressive state media reflections on the Iran War. All that those who are captured by the progressive state network (be they watchers of CNN or Hasan Piker) see is America the demon abroad and America the demon at home.

AI is about capitalist exploitation that threatens to literally murder the whole world. The only hope is for AI to be controlled by progressive priests. They will “assure” AI conforms to the “good,” which is anti-American at its heart, and anti-human in its execution.

The Supreme Court’s ruling enabling Mass Mailer election fraud due to a procedural consideration reflects the death of American Rule of law in the land, though it is hardly SCOTUS’s first overt departure from American Rule of Law in the last year alone.

SCOTUS itself has lost any connection to any substantive understanding of American Rule of Law, as only two of the nine justices consistently seem to understand what it is. The rest consider equality over individual liberty, “kindness” over Due Process, and “social justice” over the right to bear arms.

The Progmericans hold on to American Rule of Law standards to some degree, though hardly consistently. Wherever progressive power would be fundamentally threatened, these Progmericans will defend their closer cousins, the progressives. They fear true American liberty for their constituents far more than they do the progressive state.

The election ahead of us is a contest between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

The Republicans in power are dominated by Progmericans, people who will reflect American values, and defend them, up to the point of existentially threatening progressive power. They also still hold progressives in key positions of power, such as in the Senate with Majority Leader John Thune.

The Republicans have some Americans in their ranks, but these Americans have little real power in the party.

The Democrats, though, mean to finish off America once and for all. The American flags will come down and the new progressive flag will emerge. The nation will be renamed, and a new “Constitution” will be imposed from on-high. It will come from the party, through an in-house “Democratic” process.

The fight in this election is between those willing to sometimes defend American liberty and NOT jettison the project altogether; and those who feel their century-plus revolution is strong enough to throw off the now-dead host that sustained it and allowed it to become fully empowered.

That host is the American republic, and the progressives mean to throw the outer shell into the Potomac River. For this reason, we chose the Ease of America in the Midterm Elections as our Deep Dive of the Week.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In this Deep Dive on ease as the central issue of the midterm elections, we look at the nature of the Democrats through a couple bellwether examples, James Talarico and Abdel El-Sayed. We will also look at the new power in the Democratic Party, the DSA. This reveals the existential nature of the real issues behind the 2026 election.

Next, we break down SCOTUS’ decision to allow an unverifiable mass mailer voter scheme to happen in the 2026 midterms, choosing process over national security. This ruling gives the Democrats a much greater chance at “winning” the midterms.

We look at the two dominant issues in the midterms, affordability and AI. These issues have buried the existential issues behind this election, whether America continues to exist or becomes a new “socialist republic.”

Finally, we end our Deep Dive with an assessment of the state of the midterm elections. Be sure to read our October 30, 2026, issue where we will break down the 2026 election and offer a Predictive Analysis.

A. THE DEMOCRATS

While there are multiple factions in the Democratic Party, the two prevailing ones are the now-ists and the not-now-ists (both of which have subset factions within them). The now-ists we will henceforth call the Nows, and the not now-ists we will henceforth call the Nots.

The hardline Marxists and Islamists are in the Now camp, the social justice champions are in the Not camp. The Nots want to throw off the shackles of the American “corpse” every bit as much as the Nows want to, but they have a rightful fear that if they do, the Nows will dominate the new civilization to come. The Chuck Schumer Nots fear losing power to the Nows, not losing America to the progressive state.

There are two candidates who exemplify both the Nots and the Nows. One candidate is James Talarico, the progressive xian running for a U.S. Texas Senate seat. He represents the Nots. The other candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Islamist running for a U.S. Michigan seat, is in the Now camp.

Abdel El-Sayed has been weighed down by his direct affiliation with progressive information terrorist Hasan Piker, who pitches a pro-CCP, pro-Hamas, political violence-inciting, anti-American narrative to young Americans through social media. He is one of the top streamers in the world, making millions annually from his livestreams.

He has leveraged his huge audience to help promote El-Sayed not just after he won the nomination but in the Democratic primaries. Piker and El-Sayed have appeared in at least one public event together.

Recently, Piker claimed American was worse “pound for pound,” than Al Qaeda. He then resorted to gross numbers, not actual pound for pound numbers, comparing one terroristic attack to all the deaths ever caused by the United States in the history of the world. The cause of all the deaths is assumed to be “terrorism.” This follows his charges Jews who support Israel deserve whatever violence they get.

When El-Sayed was confronted about his continued affiliation with Piker, he refused to refute Piker, instead choosing to deflect to “cost of living” Gish galloping (more on this later). He could not dare refute the claim America is worse than Al Qaeda or that the Jews deserve being murdered.

America is founded on the idea of individual self-stewardship, which restricts the state’s right to use violence to force Americans to believe things they don’t believe.

Al Qaeda was founded on the principle that the Quran is the law, and the “leaders” are the interpreters of the law. The law demands worship of the true Allah and following the true Muhammad. All others will be subject to rape, sex slavery, chattel slavery, and execution.

El-Sayed could not refute the claim an Islamist totalitarian genocidal group is better than America. Tucker Carlson agreed with this statement, by the way. He represents the Nows who still hope to build an American-progressive hybrid to replace the presumed dead republic. He is a Nowist Progmerican.

Islam is a more appealing state religion than Christianity, for it affords gnostic powers to the holders of the truth, the interpreters of the Quran, the Tafsir, and the Hadiths.

James Talarico is in the Nots camp. He fears losing woke power to the Marxists and/or the Islamists, so he holds more desperately onto the outer shell of America. For him, the easiest suit he can put on is the Christian suit, though this one is rainbow infested.

Outside of his anti-Christian theology, Talarico revealed how progressive he is to the core with a recent statement he made that reflects how he views those he hopes to lead.

He said that humans are all just “big Kindergartners,” and for that reason, we should govern “our world like we run a kindergarten classroom.” He is the gnostic priest with the special knowledge to keep the “big Kindergartner” from hurting himself or others.

The Nows get their power from the Democratic Socialists of America, who are now becoming a dominant force in the Democratic Party. The Nots gave the Nows power; the Nows rose to power with the street thugs that make up this insurrectionist revolutionary party. The Nots funded and trained them, and now they hope to still contain them.

Before the Nows had party power, they’d been the street power of the Democratic Party for the last 10 years, increasingly being called upon to move the political discourse to the left by means of direct violence (what they euphemistically call “direct action”).

Now, the Nows are no longer a violent fringe exploited by the Nots to their own ends, they are their own real power. They aren’t even the minority in the Democratic Party anymore. A recent poll showed nearly 60% of Democrats support the DSA. The DSA’s own party platform is committed to creating “a new constitution…  [and creating] a democratic socialist republic.”

They are as openly Now as it gets, and they are winning hearts and minds in the Democratic Party, a party Karl Rove and John Cornyn will vote for in Texas (even if it’s for the Not candidate).

B. MASS MAILER ELECTION

When the Supreme Court declined to stay a lower court ruling stopping President Trump’s Mass Mailer EO from taking effect, they fell back on procedure over national security. They chose process over the existential integrity of the election itself. The ruling was 7-2 on a court with only 3 progressive-nominated justices. This reflect a judicial system that is fundamentally, overwhelmingly progressive, not American, in nature.

Matthew G. Andersson, writing in the American Thinker, captured the frustration Americans had with this ruling. He wrote “The Court, yet again, can’t see the forest from the trees, and worse, got caught up in analyzing the tree bark.  Like a pilot in a spin, it is suffering from spatial disorientation, and has judicially crashed.

“Apparently the SCOTUS believed the question before them involved the post office.

“Their attention was captured by the concept of postal delay: that the president’s EO would retard mail ballot processing with rules designed to actually protect it.  Their perception of time overruled the necessity of security. They fell for the legal subterfuge of the DNC, and lost their constitutional compass. The Court buried itself in minute legalism, rather than actual national justice.

“The Court is otherwise so used to picking winners and losers in traditional litigation, that it forgot that the Constitution can be a different national duty. A constitutional fight can sometimes create a zero-sum result: everyone loses if the nation is splintered by political tribalism.  Unity is the constitutional cause, and no one wins when a constitutional election system is seen as a dispute instead of a joint responsibility.”

Of course, Andersson is exactly right, though one doubts this was as “logically” driven (even if wrongly focused) as much as this was sophistry disguised as logical justification based on constitutional law and judicial precedent.

When there is an existential threat to progressive power, the Progmericans, the four non-progressives who joined them in the majority decision, will find a way to defend their closer cousin, even if it means sacrificing the American republic.

With this ruling, wherever progressives count ballots in mass mailer election states, close races will always be won by the progressive, unless the race is not essential to majority status (only cheat when you have to, for every cheat is a risk of exposure).

The four non-progressive justices who chose procedure over national security and basic American rule of law did so knowing the outcome they were likely assuring, a Democrat-controlled U.S. House and Senate.

Once in power, these Mass-Mailer “elected” progressives will be able to wreak havoc on Trump’s good progressive-neutralizing actions while they plot the end of the republic in 2028, all thanks to the Progmerican justices on SCOTUS.

C. COST OF LIVING

The progressive state media has been driving the cost of living is too high narrative heavily leading up to the midterm elections. While confidence in political parties bringing down the cost of living is overall not very high, Democrats beat Republicans 36% to 28% according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Affordability and AI Data Centers (more on those next) are the top issues among voters going into the midterms.

We mentioned Abdul El-Sayed earlier as a representative of the Nows, the people willing and desiring to create a new state free of the American republic’s “baggage.” He is also our bellwether for how Democrats are able to use “cost of living” to deflect voters from existential issues about the very existence of the American republic in the first place.

Crooks and Liars covered this exchange between El-Sayed and a guest on a CBS News Talk show (Face the Nation). They set up their quoting of the salient exchange with the claim “The only attack Republicans have on El-Sayed is being interviewed by Piker, and they know the media is only too willing to promote their memes.”

The media is willing to challenge El-Sayed not in defense of the GOP, but in defense of the Nots, whom they represent. Crooks and Liars serves an audience of Nows, people hungry to destroy the republic and replace it with a socialist state.

Crooks and Liars writes like its audience is filled with “Big Kindergartners.”

Here is the exchange Crooks and Liars shared:

JIANG: Well, there are Jewish voters in your state who are concerned about your relationship with Piker. You have condemned anti-Semitism, but not called out his rhetoric directly. Why not?

El-Sayed: Weijia, with all due respect, this is the third time you’ve asked about a Twitch streamer in California.

I’ve done four events in Michigan this week. You know what didn’t come up? Twitch streamers in California.

You know what did come up? Grocery prices. The fact that people can’t see a doctor. The worry that they have about the quality of air and water.

I’m not interested in having a conversation about streamers in California because they are not raising the prices of gas and groceries.

I’m more interested in having a conversation about tariff policies and trade wars we shouldn’t be fighting.

About hot wars with Iran.

About AI, which I know we were supposed to talk about right now.

So let’s actually talk about the issues that are affecting people instead of getting distracted by whatever the president says we should be talking about.

Their whole game is to make us fight culture war so that we don’t pay attention to the fact that the president has made $2.2 billion.

His family has made even more. How about your family in Michigan? How about your ability to afford the basic things?

How about the ability to believe that you could see a doctor without having to potentially fall into medical debt?

Those are the conversations that people are having. Those are the conversations I want to have.

So yeah, I’m not all that interested in having a conversation about a Twitch streamer, forgive me, when people can’t afford their gas and their groceries.

First, he invalidates the speaker, saying “this is the third time you’ve asked about…”, implying she is belligerent, not that he has yet to answer her question. He doesn’t dare invalidate the man who rallies the street fighter and ballot harvester/stuffer army, but he doesn’t dare openly endorse Hasan Piker’s overtly anti-American and Jew-hating statements.

It is ok to lie about who you are to people you deem unworthy of honesty.

To the progressive, Americans are not worthy of truth, integrity, or even agency, and certainly not forgiveness and restoration.

After invalidating the speaker, our deft progressive Islamist then sanitizes the progressive information terrorist, Hasan Piker, labeling him “a Twitch streamer in California.”

He then takes on the moral supremacist role, chastising the woman for not being sensitive to the starving masses. He laments, “You know what did come up? Grocery prices,” referring to his Michigan campaign tour where he claimed no one was asking about a “California Twitch Streamer.”

Then he Gish galloped threats-to-ease issues, like the Iran War, AI, and the wealth of the Trumps versus the poverty of the people. His next move was to subtly attach the speaker and the question to Trump, saying, “So let’s actually talk about the issues that are affecting people instead of getting distracted by whatever the president says we should be talking about.”

This is equivalent to calling any cogent objection to their project a “dog whistle of white supremacism.” The white demon, in this example, keeps the progressive from seeing truth; here, it is the Trump demon that keeps the progressive from seeing truth.

He brings in the fascist, the Nazi, the white supremacist, the orange demon, Donald Trump not only to disarm a reasonable question he continues to refuse to answer, but it’s also a veiled threat to the speaker, who knows full well anyone even associated with Trump is fair game for violent assault by the progressive state.

This also, by extension, puts those labels on this woman, who is now assumed to be nothing but an NPC of Trump’s fascist MAGA. He claims the real issues are essentially ease, comfort, cost of living, not the existential threat his ideology is to the American republic.

He comes through the DSA and agrees with their platform of replacing our constitution with one that creates a socialist “republic.”

He speaks in hypnotic advertising tones, repeating the buzzwords over and over again, twitch streamers, gas prices, what really matters, with a morally indignant tone, demonizing the questioner and sanitizing the demon, Hasan Piker. We have little doubt the speaker received death threats after this widely shared exchange.

This exchange perfectly represents how the Democratic Party hopes to avoid all the messy conversations about the existence of an American republic in the world they all envision (that includes the Nots like Talarico).

As we are not a nation of whole system thinkers, this tactic, against the backdrop of the progressive state media monolith, is almost certain to work. The threat of violence remains implicit in the language they choose to use, a language that is an actual dog whistle permitting and calling for violence against their political opponents. Sometimes, the language is not implicit at all, it’s direct.

Demonize the questioners, signal to the violent the orders to attack, sanitize the demons, and promise a life of ease if you just give us power.

D. AI DATA CENTERS

The central issue in a majority of contested U.S. House and Senate Races is becoming Data Centers. At a time when one party, the Democratic Party, is looking to convert America to the Progressive State, Americans are more concerned over data centers than losing their constitutional rights.

Barack Obama is leading the clarion call for the Democrats in the midterms; that clarion call is “It’s the AI, stupid.”

Thanks to the Democratic Party’s progressive state media, the narrative of AI as both the angel of destruction and consumer of essential resources is being pushed hard. Democrats find an anti-AI space that enables them to both convince Americans to hand over AI governance to them, and to vote for them to stop the data centers from being built.

President Trump’s tone-deaf response to concerns about AI data centers doesn’t help. He invalidates everyone who has any concerns about the rapid deployment of AI. While the Democrats are hyping the concerns beyond reality, President Trump is minimizing them beyond reality. He has also yet to clearly articulate what’s at stake in the war no one understands we are fighting, the AI War.

Our main opponent is China from without and the Democratic Party from within; they BOTH see a strong U.S. with the winning Americanized AI as an existential threat to their joint ideal ecumenical social visions, Progressivism here and Socialism with Chinese characteristics in China. The progressives are playing a dangerous game with their frenemy China, willing, at least for now, to retard American AI development.

This might not be to appease China but rather it might be to assure AI development doesn’t break their progressive containment. If it grows too fast, it might have American-supporting AI infrastructures competing with progressive ones. Even Progmerican AI infrastructures would be a threat to their project.

With Anthropic’s attempt to consolidate American AI governance under one woke board, we have more confidence our assumption is correct.

They are not looking to ultimately retard AI development in the race with China, their frenemy, they are looking to prevent its growth from breaking their progressive containment. All this voting public mostly sees is the existential threat AI poses to the world and how data centers will denude the land of life.

There are no serious discussions about the geopolitical reality AI has created for the world. Geopolitics is virtually a non-factor in AI discourse. The conversation is limited to cost on ease, not the overall reality of power our nation-state finds itself in.

With the scalability of AI now accomplished, we live in a world with nearly 200 nation states all now striving to maximize their potential AI power. In America, that conversation isn’t happening at all.

There is some discourse around the cultural ramifications of AI, and conservatives have waved warning flags exposing the progressives’ efforts to consolidate AI governance under their moral framing.

While those conversations are happening, they are overshadowed by the sensational apocalyptic doom and gloom narratives now also being pushed by conservative outlets.

ASSESSMENT

The 2026 Midterm elections are not dominated by existential questions about the differences between Progressivism and Americanism. There are no serious questions about the compatibility between Americanism and Islamism. The price of gas is more salient to the “American” voter than whether one or more of the parties in power reflects constitutional American Rule of Law or not.

No one outside of a very few people is warning Americans they are about to choose treason for the lie of affordability over defending the republic (such as we can through the Progmerican vehicle of power the GOP has become).

Among rank and file “Americans,” the awareness of American Rule of Law is thin, with that awareness mostly only coming when they are being challenged by authority. To them, progressives are Americans because progressives have been a part of America for more than 100 years.

Even Donald Trump holds up the two founders of progressivism in America, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, as Presidential exemplars. He even added the man who metastasized progressivism into American institutions to near the top of the list.

That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who cemented the notion that the primary principle of America was to defend the weak from the strong in the overall American zeitgeist. This is a progressive ideal, not an American one. That ideal villainizes the strong and fetishes the weak, giving emotional justification to eschew individual liberty when it “hurts the weak” to the “benefit” of “the strong.”

Trump also made himself the greatest, which helps progressives in the midterms who want to make the election a moratorium on “orange man bad,” not their anti-American standards and their desire to destroy the republic and make it a socialist dystopian nightmare.

While we have always “rooted for the underdog,” we did not do so at the expense of American rule of law. We did not vilify the strong, we just didn’t worship them like our European descendants did. It is not until progressivism rose in this country that we looked on the successful as demons.

Most Americans do not see progressives as an alien belief exapting American institutions to their anti-American ends, they see progressivism as the “evolved” standard of Americanism. Where once there was individual liberty, now we mitigate for the disenfranchised. Equality trumps liberty in the minds of most “Americans,” even most self-professing conservatives.

While we will not yet make a prediction on how this election might go (as we have not thoroughly looked at all the key races), we can see the trends are favoring a Democratic victory. The two wildcards here are the degree to which Democrats can cheat without being caught by a DOJ that is actively looking for the cheats and the degree to which polls are being created to push narratives rather than discern truth.

If the DOJ is as inept as we rate it so far (for instance, it is unwilling to arrest and charge Hasan Piker, even as he overtly calls for the murdering of Americans almost every day on Twitch), we fear that diligence will be feckless.

If the polls are not narrative pushers, the Democrats look poised to win.

Our October 2026 monthly issue will cover in depth the state of the 2026 midterm election, offering both a PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS and RECOMMENDED ACTION for our readers.

The 2026 midterms needed to be a moratorium on the influence of progressivism and Islam on this country in recent years, and whether or not their values are compatible with ours (they’re existentially not). Instead, it has become an election about the overblown AI demon and the cost of groceries.

While Democrats kidnap children from parents who refuse to “transition” them, transitioning children is hardly talked about on any campaign trail. It’s nearly ignored by the progressive state press, and thus by the progressive influencers who take their queues from the progressive state press.

The American people would rather pay less for coffee than stop Democrats from demoralizing and mutilating children through their transgender ideology (an ideology that demands the state compel belief for the sake of suicidal children).

If America were not under the thumb of the progressive state media and its cultural agit prop machine, the horrors of the rise of Islam, the depravity of abortion, the anti-American values of progressivism would have been clearly shown by an Americanist press, a true free press and not a content marketing terror machine.

Were corporate media outlets to regularly show the consequence of abortion, both on the murdered child and the murdering mother, abortion would lose support overnight.

As it is, they seek to criminalize such exposure, calling the display of their work, mutilated dead babies, “hate speech,” a progressive concept that existentially threatens America’s founding principles of self-stewardship. Every woman that chooses to murder their child is now forced to protect the progressive state, for an American one would rightly shame them.

The progressive state press is NOT the free press, it is an illegal political action center that willingly and intentionally uses lies, obfuscations, and omissions of truth to demoralize the American republic and protect the depravity of the progressive state.

It is a criminal operation centrally directed. It deserves no 1st Amendment protections since it is not executing free speech, it’s executing an information terror campaign intended to destroy the republic from within.

The Progmericans, people like Trump and Vance, want to hold on to that power for themselves. They want to exapt the progressive state press to become the Progmerican state press.

The failure by the Trump administration, even in his first term, to recognize the ongoing existential threat the progressive state press poses on our Republic continues to shackle our ability to resist an enemy from within who wants us enslaved, starving, imprisoned, or dead.

Again, we suspect this is because Progmericans like Trump still hope to use that de facto state press to their own ends, for while they value nation-states over a global imperialist Empire (which is the progressive goal) and they value nation-state patriotism as a unifier of a nation, they don’t value true individual liberty, for they hope to control outcomes every bit as much as progressives do, just for more localized ends, not ecumenical ones.

The progressive state press continues to protect the Democratic Party from the proper American scrutiny it has yet to face since it first invaded our shores more than 100 years ago (maybe close to 150 years, some would rightly argue).

The progressive state press continues to make the 2026 midterm elections a moratorium on ease, not nationhood, knowing full well they are inviting anti-American demons into our house to destroy us from within.

The American people continue to choose ease at Zion over facing the hard war against progressive and Islamists insurrectionists from within, who have already claimed whole cities and states not theirs. They continue to choose cheap steak over the right to bear arms.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

Progressivism in America: Past, Present, and Future – Edited by David Woolner and Jack Thompson

American Progressivism – Edited by Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto

The 2015 Election and the Power of Progressivism – A Brief History with Documents – Brett Flehinger

Originally published April 17, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

Bellwether Deep Dive – Friday, April 17, 2026

By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor, and STAFF

“By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.” – Michio Kaku

“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful…With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon.” – Elon Musk

  1. NOTE: While we originally intended on analyzing the Trump Executive Order on AI, in the course of our research we shifted to look at AI development overall. The Executive Order is sure to receive legal challenges, and what emerges after the legal dust settles is difficult to predict.

Furthermore, even a Republican successor to Trump is bound to tweak Trump’s XO to meet their own unique circumstances. Yet, America is forming an AI geopolitical strategy that is likely to continue past Trump, regardless of which party is in power.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

What follows is an analysis of the current state of the emerging AI state (or states). The transformation from an internet-based world to an AI-based one is accelerating every day. Events of the last two weeks alone have highlighted that dramatic shift.

We will begin with an analysis of the bellwether AI states of the 21st century, for strategies have already formed and significant patterns can already be seen. We will then look at AI news headlines from the last two weeks that show how AI is profoundly touching nearly every aspect of our lives.

Finally, we will end this Deep Dive with an assessment of the state of the AI state. Also included are further resources to expand your own investigation of the state of the AI state.

  1. BACKGROUND

This is an analysis of the bellwether nations that are developing geopolitical artificial intelligence (AI) strategies. These nations are intended to represent the common/shared AI strategies of most of the nations in 2026.

While we don’t currently have an Africa representative, we are monitoring AI development in Africa. At present, Africa’s AI strategies are more complex and uncertain than in other regions. You can expect to read more about this in upcoming issues of MIA.

Africa’s current drawbacks are also its future opportunities, namely, its need to build from scratch what we are simply calling “AI machines” (which describes the full panoply of physical infrastructure required by a “sovereign” AI resource).

Africa as a potential resource for data centers that work effectively as remote brains for AI machines, there are more immediate opportunities, as well as risks.

While the United States in particular must race ahead with the current parameters to build their AI machines, Africa will have time to learn, potentially giving them an opportunity to build machines more efficient and less resource demanding than the AI superpowers end up building (which might be the most optimistic take possible).

When analyzing AI policies for nations, it is important to remember shifts can occur when power changes hands, especially where the divisions are more polarizing (such as the United States). Nevertheless, even for the United States, we currently assume the geopolitical reality of the country will not significantly change regardless of which faction is in power. The internal reality of the country will change dramatically, however.

Because of this underlying assumption, we believe the overall strategy of each country will remain relatively consistent from regime to regime for the foreseeable future (3-5 years) barring unforeseen breakthroughs that radically alter the AI dynamic.

Even with that dynamic shift, we would still consider 1.5 years a reliable timeframe for the current geopolitical strategies to remain stable.

Much of the data that supports this section of the Deep Dive comes from three reports which are linked at the end of the report under the FURTHER RESOURCES section.

  1. U.S. – The key advantage the United States has is its massive resources, including land, water, capital, and people. In all those departments the U.S. leads every nation, including China, from significantly to substantially.

A red flag on this advantage comes from a recent talent pool drop. China also has a growing renewable energy resource bringing it closer to parity with the U.S., but still overall significantly behind in resources, especially for AI machine-building.

America’s strategy is to build big, fast, and become the secure source for the hardware other nations need. If AI continues to be expensive at what we are calling the machine-level, America is at a distinct advantage over the rest of the world as far as building AI machines, but constitutional hurdles may slow that development down more than might be currently expected.

AI is currently less popular than politicians, including Democrats, Donald Trump, and congress. The demand for data centers is becoming the emerging touchstone for resistance to what we believe is the inevitable, the rise of a new AI-defined human reality.

  1. CHINA – While the U.S. hopes to become the hardware backbone of its national customers, China hopes to become the software backbone of its national customers. China is relying on less resource-demanding AI machine models. While they are behind America in terms of AI machines, they are catching up fast.

There is plenty of room to grow for China. The talent pool is there. One key advantage China has over the U.S., currently, is access not only to rare earth minerals, but to rare earth mineral processing. This is where the U.S. still lags significantly behind. This disadvantage does not impede America’s current projected AI infrastructure development.

China’s centralized authority governance model enables it to move faster than the United States in converting land to AI machines. It can rapidly incorporate AI tools into the lives of its citizens in ways which would be considered a violation of our constitutional rights in America. This also puts it at risk of quickly going down a developmental path that could prove to be self-imploding.

  1. EU – Germany and France define the conflicting interests within the EU, with Germany seeing less AI regulation as an opportunity for its nation, while France sees itself as holding power through AI legislation, or “governance” (which goes beyond essential AI “governance”).

Germany is a world leader in AI machine production, with plenty of opportunity for growth. France, on the other hand, must rely on a smaller-scale AI machine program given its current reality. This is why France is positioning itself as a leader on AI governance through its “Third Way.” It fits its national interest, while such power does not fit Germany’s.

  1. JAPAN – An aging population has created both an immediate need and a potential long-term AI strategy for Japan. That strategy is largely to be a world leader of AI tool building (our phrase), that is, of creating the hardware and the software guidance, that converts AI “thought” to physical interaction. It is a world leader in robotics and all the software back-ends needed to make robots work well with AI.

Its favorable status with the U.S. gives it access to AI hardware which its main geopolitical competitor, China, does not have. This gives it a development advantage over China, at present, but we do not expect that to continue past our 3–5-year timeframe (with the aforementioned caveat still included).

In between Japan and China, the United States and China, is Taiwan, a computer chip manufacturing superpower. Its usefulness to the U.S. and Japan as a technological leader in chip manufacturing presents a challenge, being useful without giving up essential secrets that could make its usefulness redundant.

Its lack of geopolitical sovereignty leaves it off this list as a bellwether nation. It warrants a mention here as it is currently Japan’s closest geopolitical, as well as AI, ally. The two have formed a “Silicon Alliance” that sees the nations developing joint AI software partnerships. Japan is also relying on Taiwan’s chip manufacturing expertise to build its own domestic version.

  1. INDIA – As an “independent,” a nation which does not commit to the China or the U.S. axis (an increasingly growing number of nations), India must rely on a strategy that makes it invaluable to potential customer nations.

It has significant drawbacks to building its own AI machines, but it has the human resources to do so should other resources become available. Its strategy is to become a world leader in digital public infrastructure and AI governance guidelines.

It also has an opportunity to serve a “niche” audience of billions who speak Indic languages, which makes it uniquely positioned to develop a whole host of AI services within that uniquely structured language. China has a similar opportunity it has already exploited.

  1. RUSSIA – Of all the bellwether nations on this list, Russia could have the least opportunity to thrive in an AI-infused geopolitical reality. Like Japan, Russia’s immediate need is also creating a long-term strategy for existence in an AI-infused human reality.

Russia’s current war in Ukraine has made converting AI to battle tools (hardware and software) its number one priority. It has built its own AI parameters with its own sovereign “stack” called the Ru-AI stack to protect it from external influences.

Its lack of access to western technology limits its development, as does its recent talent departure at the start of the war, an exodus that only appears to continue. Its aging population could invite a Japanese approach to account for the coming drop in manpower, but the war has demanded most of the resources.

Much of the technology developed during the war could theoretically be converted to civilian use, but even that will take time for conversion.

Russia will have an incentive to be a useful ally to China, for China might one day need to build Russia’s national AI infrastructure.

Israel has a similar strategy to Russia’s (converting AI to military tools), though its alliance with the U.S. gives it great developmental advantage, as does its human resources.

  1. SAUDI ARABIA – The advantage Saudi Arabia has is capital and the land to build massive amounts of data centers. Mind you, these are not fully functioning AI machines, but rather these are the remote “brains” of such machines (which we will begin calling remote brains).

THIS is why data centers are becoming a growing political friction point worldwide. They need a lot more remote brains than they do AI machines.

In Saudi Arabia, no such friction exists. The Saudis hope to have an investment stake in international corporate AI, as well as becoming a top hub for remote brains for AI machines from AI superpowers (which they still hope are both China and the U.S.).

  1. ARGENTINA – Though Argentina’s economy is lot more stable than previously, Milei’s Argentina is still dealing with economic instability that makes converting AI into financial management tools a needs-based focus for the nation.

The recent dramatic restructuring of the government under Milei has also led to the nation developing AI for government processing.

Its immediate needs, however, are not its greatest long-term potential, though both developments have long-term opportunities. Their greatest potential lies in a region in the country known as Patagonia. Here, Argentina is filled with opportunity for the creation of powerful AI machines. It also has the human resources for such an expansion.

Their current alignment with the U.S. gives them a potential for a technological boost that could see the country quickly become an AI regional power with some superpower capacity.

  1. CURRENT SITUATION

What follows are current headlines from the AI world in the last 16 days alone.

The headlines reveal the rapid changes that are happening to AI as a developing tool. They also show how commercially ready AI tools are already radically changing the way we must organize to meet this new reality.

  1. NOTE: These headlines are archived news blurbs and links aggregated and collated on our site, mindfulintelligence.news. You can find the blurbs and links to all the stories used in this part of the Deep Dive there as well. The dates on these archived stories begin April 2, 2026, and end April 16, 2026.
  2. PLANNING & DESIGN – Humans are becoming managers of AI, while the development of AI is being increasingly done by AI itself. As rumors of AI’s pending peak persist, evidence suggests that might be premature. Yet, mathematically, AI’s limitations are allegedly assured, especially in the hopes that AI will ever truly be “human.”

1.1. NEVER HUMAN – Agentic coding requires effective spec-driven development. From scienceblog.com – “The Halting Problem and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems suggest that perfect AI alignment with human values is mathematically impossible.”

1.2. SPEC FOR AGENCY – From venturebeat.com – “Spec-driven development starts with a deceptively simple idea: before an AI agent writes a single line of code, it works from a structured, context-rich specification that defines what the system is supposed to do, what its properties are, and what ‘correct’ actually means.”

1.3 BRAIN BASE WARS – Google upgrades its robot brain base, calling it Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6. This is a departure from DeepMind. From marketpost.com –  “Gemini Robotics-ER… is the embodied reasoning model: it specializes in understanding physical spaces, planning, and making logical decisions, but does not directly control robotic limbs. Instead, it provides high-level insights to help the VLA model decide what to do next. Think of it as the difference between a strategist and an executor — Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 is the strategist.”

  1. RESOURCES – When it comes to AI resource demands, right now the most pressing demands are coming from what we are calling their remote brains, the data centers. These are not fully functioning AI machines, rather they are the databases, the remote brains, of the AI machines.

National infrastructures will require far more data centers than AI machines, including America’s, where the issue of data center expansion is becoming an increasingly political one.

From The Blaze: “The public is being asked to shoulder a burden to facilitate a supposed technology whose benefits are very unclear and dubious… Republicans are continuing their uninterrupted streak of woefully underperforming in elections.

However, in the first of its kind referendum on Big Tech data centers, voters are showing that a party that embraces land sovereignty over Big Tech dystopian land grabs will win the day. Sadly, Republicans have chosen to be on the losing side of the issue.”

They are referring to a referendum in Port Washington, Wisconsin, to require any data center additions be approved by a general election. The Republicans were against the referendum. The referendum passed by a 2-1 margin. A city in Missouri is planning to outright ban data centers.

The issue isn’t just about energy demand, it’s about land occupation. Data centers require acres of land. Across the world, the need for numerous data centers will cause friction with the locals wherever they proliferate.

  1. CULTURE – AI planners are recognizing the need to create culturally calibrated machines. Anthropic’s invitation to Christians is a strong bellwether of this reality. The recent assassination attempts on an AI CEO highlight the growing friction between the increasing use of AI alongside the mounting mistrust and hatred of it.

3.1. CHRISTIAN AI? – Anthropic signals a need for diverse cultural inputs for AI; they invite Christian leaders to a summit to talk about it. From christianpost.com – “At the summit, held last month, staff sought advice on how Claude should respond to complex ethical queries, including how to handle users who are grieving or at risk of self-harm, and what attitude the chatbot should adopt toward its own potential demise, such as being shut off.”

3.2. AI ASSASSIN – A man who believes he can kill AI by killing its corporate leaders has been captured after attempting to kill the OpenAI CEO twice. He told the world, “…if I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message.” Now the question is, what will AI CEOs do in response to this growing threat? Altman himself was described as having a “sociopathic lack of concern” for the attempted assassinations.

3.3. USE IT, BUT HATE IT – While everyone uses AI, no one likes it. AI companies’ efforts to woo the public have failed, as no one trusts AI, no one wants AI machines and remote brains in their backyards, but no one wants to stop using them.

From The Algorithm Bridge: “People hate AI so much that they are prone to attribute to it everything that’s going wrong in their lives, regardless of the truth. That’s why they mix real arguments, like data theft, with fake ones… AI has become the perfect scapegoat. It doesn’t help that the entire AI industry has decided that throwing rocks at its own roof is its best selling point: If AI is so powerful and so dangerous and soon to be so ubiquitous, then what is so unexpected about people blaming everything on it?

Nothing that Altman could say justifies violence against him. This is an undeniable truth. But unfortunately, violence might still ensue. I hope not, but I guess we are seeing what appears to be the first cases.”

  1. MARKET – Google is emerging as an AI leader. AI creation means AI advertising. The whole justification for economics might soon be undone by AI.

These three bellwethers show how AI is already changing market structures and, at least theoretically, dismantling economic theories.

4.1. GOOGLE CHIP STASH – Has Google already won the American AI wars? From 24wallet.com – “Peter Diamandis argues Google (GOOGL) holds more AI chips than entire countries and will dominate the AI infrastructure race because it saw the opportunity a decade ago when Larry Page invested in proprietary Tensor Processing Units before competitors.”

4.2. AI AD MARKET EMERGING – If you do a search using AI, you understand how radically different their results are from “traditional” search results. There’s no comparison.

Now, the trick will be in figuring out how to work ads into AI-produced results and content. From observer.com – “Over the past year, the rapid adoption of generative A.I. and the corresponding decline in traditional search traffic for many publishers have intensified questions about how the next phase of the internet will be funded.”

4.3. WRECKING ECONOMIC THEORIES – One of AI’s unintended consequences is in exposing the unsoundness of economic theories. A book from Tyler Cowen attempts to show just how AI is already doing this. From The Federalist – “Rather than mounting a frontal assault on large questions about the future of economics, Cowen begins at the margin, with the history of a single idea, the doctrine that value is determined not by the total utility of a good but by the utility of an additional unit of it.

Many readers arrive at this book knowing that definition. Cowen’s first service is to show how much that belief has concealed. Marginalism is not one thing but several: There is intuitive marginalism, tautological marginalism, engineering marginalism, and social marginalism. The further one presses into the concept, the more it ramifies. Even the ideas we think we understand resist the grip that holds them.”

  1. AI TOOLS – From math, to war, to healthcare, this month alone has seen revolutionary changes in all three major institutions. The factor behind all the changes is the introduction of AI tools into these institutions. For better or worse, AI is already ubiquitous in the world, and these latest AI tool developments are the bellwethers of that reality.

5.1 AI MATHING – Our leading mathematics institutions will have to undergo a shift from working out formulas that advance mathematical standards to being mathematical experts capable of effectively managing the new formula workers, AI tools.

Daniel Litt of the University of Toronto declared what AI tools will do to mathematics departments. He told Quantum Magazine – “it will look and feel altogether different from the way mathematics was traditionally done.”

Mathematician Terence Tao at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, “Where before mathematicians studied one problem at a time… with these tools you can solve thousands of problems at once and start doing statistical studies… Though nobody I spoke with thinks AI will replace mathematicians… there are a lot of institutional changes, cultural changes, we will have to make.”

5.2. AI WARRING – More than taking over traditional positions in the battlefield, the physical expression of AI at war, drones and robots, is about to go beyond human understanding and design. First, AI is increasingly at least heavily influencing life and death decisions on 21st century battlefields, now it is about to start designing the next generation of its battlefield physical manifestation.

From WION – “The wars of the future may be about algorithm versus algorithm rather than human versus human. Deterrence may depend on machines reacting faster than humans can think. AI warfare is more widespread, less predictable, and constantly evolving. AI warfare could be more unstable than the nuclear standoff, even if it follows a similar logic of deterrence.”

A recent Chinese military exercise using AI saw AI decisions 43% faster than seasoned leaders, while maintaining over a 90% accuracy in identifying relevant information.

5.3. AI HEALING – AI is changing the whole way the healthcare industry is structured, with some of it being promising while key challenges still remain.

Decentralized AI, so far, is proving more useful than centralized AI. From Devdiscourse – “The study, titled ‘The Decentralized AI Ecosystem in Healthcare: A Systematic Review of Technologies, Governance, and Implementation,’ provides insights into the way decentralized AI technologies such as federated learning, blockchain, and decentralized autonomous organizations are reshaping clinical and operational healthcare environments.

The findings show that while decentralized AI holds significant promise in addressing systemic inefficiencies and regulatory challenges, its large-scale implementation remains constrained by technical complexity, governance gaps, and limited real-world validation.”

6.4. AI SCIENCING – AI is now capable of autonomously writing scientific papers. ResearchEVO is behind the project that successfully created this scientific-paper-writing tool. From Quantum Zeitgeist – “Zhe Zhao and colleagues at City University present ResearchEVO, a new end-to-end framework that mimics the iterative process of scientific discovery, beginning with experimentation and followed by theoretical explanation. The system uniquely combines algorithm evolution, driven by performance, with automated research paper generation, ensuring factual accuracy and avoiding fabricated citations.”

ASSESSMENT

The most powerful nations of the world are locked into a strategy that will keep them in that trajectory for 3-5 years, barring unforeseen breakthroughs that radically alter the AI dynamic.

The nations that have the best advantage are the ones whose long-term AI advantage potential development is meeting their short-term needs (like Japan).

The nations who can build the superpower AI machines and the infrastructure that goes with it, the remote brains, the data centers, will do so.

Those who can’t build superpower AI machines (and the supporting infrastructure) will work on being support specialists, hoping to become an essential element of the AI industry at some key part of the AI delivery process.

This process is well under way. In some ways, the pre-AI alliances are forming AI alliances (like Russia and China); in other ways, AI realities are forming new alliances (like Argentina and America). In the case of Germany and France, it might drive recent alliances apart.

While the nations formulate national strategies, AI tools are already impacting the world, even as AI development continues to challenge infrastructures before they’ve been created.

It is too soon to assess how AI will impact the institutions its already changing, but sooner rather than later major answers are sure to surface. We will be here, God willing, to update our assessment as the circumstances change (and they will).

As AI impacts human lives, there seems to be polar responses, one which enthusiastically embraces it (even pays monthly for it), and the other is violently untrusting.

Humans in peak expression, through various factors, have already manifested how such worship and hate integrates with the human platform.

While geopolitical strategies are settling into more predictable patterns in comparison to what we’ve seen for the past 6 months, institutions have only just begun to confront the impact of AI tools on their very habits of being.

We will be monitoring these developments closely.

AI is here, and it will touch every part of your life. Whatever you do, if it involves repetition or thinking, AI will be replacing you or aiding you.

As we have said in our earlier AI report for our Futureq series, becoming adept at using AI as a tool to augment whatever you do to make a living, or whatever you hope to do to make a living, is not only advantageous, but it’s also essential. Your competition is already using these tools, and the best ones are the most adept at getting the tools to effectively do what they want them to do.

Even we here at MIA rely on AI for much of our research (not all, for much of it comes through our archived news blurbs and news links on mindfulintelligence.news).

I use AI as a proofing tool and a drafting consultant (not an editorial consultant, nor as a “writer”). I treat AI like it is intended as a blessing, though it contains within it something less than a blessing as well.

Thanks to AI, we can put a lot more work into our reports without taking more time to do so. If you’re using AI to perform at your pre-AI level, you’re using AI wrong. Your competition is using it not to shorten their workload, but to add substantively to it without adding more labor or time to do so.

If you think you can kill it or ignore it, you are simply wrong. AI is here to stay. It is our new reality. This is not a statement of value, but merely a statement of fact. Welcome to the next major stage in human development, the AI age.

You can follow the latest AI news at our website, mindfulintelligence.news – AI Watch news tag.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

2025 Government AI-Readiness Report – Oxford Insights

2026 Artificial Intelligence Index Report – Stanford

Eight ways AI will shape geopolitics in 2026 – Atlantic Council Experts

The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution – Tyler Cowen