Things To Come: China’s Social Credit System,

CHINA’S SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM; How It Works – Game of Life – Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Austrian Peter

Explore how China’s Social Credit System operates in 2026, including corporate accountability, blacklists, AI surveillance, privacy risks, and the latest policy reforms shaping its future.

The Financial Jigsaw Part 2 (Episode 86); Examines China’s internal imperialist approach to central government using the latest in AI technology applied to Social Credit systems.  Renewed hostilities in the Middle East marks the decline of the American empire but who will fill the evolving global power vacuum?  

Iain Davis writes: “In the 2014 Chinese State Council Notice concerning Issuance of the Planning Outline for the Establishment of a Social Credit System. The Chinese government laid out its vision for its social mechanism:

• Accelerating the establishment of a social credit system is an important foundation for comprehensively implementing the scientific viewpoint of development.
• 
  
• Accelerating and advancing the establishment of the social credit system is an important precondition for promoting the optimised allocation of resources and an urgent requirement for improving mechanisms for scientific development.

This comes under the heading of: ‘Technocracy’ which is a centralised system of control based upon the distribution and allocation of all resources, right down to the individual level. It gives those who command the whole system absolute behavioural control of the entire population. Technocracy is currently being trialled in China. The Western ruling oligarchs have noticed,which is why they are flooding the West with massive AI data centres.

China’s Social Credit System stands as one of the most ambitious governance experiments in modern history,blending big data, administrative enforcement, and behavioural incentives into a sprawling national framework. By early 2025, the National Credit Information Sharing Platform had collected over 80.7 billion records covering approximately 180 million businesses, making it one of the largest regulatory databases ever constructed.

China’s Social Credit System is a government-led regulatory framework designed to evaluate the trustworthiness of individuals, businesses, and government entities through data collection, blacklists, and administrative enforcement.

 The system connects financial credit data, regulatory compliance records, and behavioural assessments into a policy infrastructure that affects how entities operate within China’s economy, and it remains under active development rather than being a completed, monolithic program

Between 2016 and 2024, China shifted from fragmented local pilots toward a more coordinated national framework managed through centralised platforms.

The National Credit Information Sharing Platform became the core data hub, linking ministries, provincial databases, and regulators into a single information backbone. By 2023 a total of 118 national-level regulations were issued specifically for the Social Credit System, supported by more than 500 detailed regulations at the local level.

The 2025 update formalised this cross-ministry data sharing, creating what amounts to a unified compliance dashboard where a bad score in one category blocks access in others. This interconnected enforcement model represents the system’s most powerful practical feature, because it transforms isolated regulatory violations into system-wide consequences. This is the ‘Clearing House’ model.

Critics argue that this linkage risks compounding punishments beyond what the original infraction would warrant, while supporters contend it eliminates the loopholes that allowed bad actors to evade accountability by shifting between jurisdictions.

 As of 2025, China operates an estimated 600 million surveillance cameras across the country, many equipped with AI-powered facial recognition capabilities developed by companies like SenseTime, Megvii, and CloudWalk. By comparison in 2026, the United States is estimated to host well over a billion active security cameras across all sectors

These cameras serve multiple government functions including public safety, traffic enforcement, and urban management, though their direct connection to social credit scoring varies significantly by locality. AI facial recognition software is used in tandem with these cameras to identify individuals in real-time, track movements across urban spaces, and flag potential infractions. The technology enables government authorities to process behavioural data at a scale that would be impossible through human observation alone.

What makes China’s approach distinct is the explicit government strategy connecting surveillance data,regulatory enforcement, and cross-agency punishment mechanisms into a coordinated system backed by state authority. 

Western credit systems are primarily operated by unaccountable private and public corporations hiding behind limited liability protection, while China’s system is government-led and directly enforces accountability through administrative consequences including travel bans, employment restrictions, and public shaming.

China’s surveillance technology companies have expanded their reach dramatically through partnerships with governments across Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, creating dependencies that extend Chinese technical standards beyond national borders.

More than 18 countries had adopted Chinese surveillance technologies as of 2019, and the number has continued growing. These installations lock recipient countries into Chinese technical ecosystems that are difficult and expensive to replace, a critique that has drawn attention from European and American policymakers concerned about digital sovereignty in the developing world.

China’s Social Credit System is entering a phase of consolidation and formalisation that will define its impact for years to come, moving beyond experimental pilots toward institutionalised infrastructure with legal backing. The most likely trajectory involves continued strengthening of corporate credit enforcement, given that this dimension has the clearest institutional support and generates the least domestic political resistance.

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It Is Impossible to Avoid Surveillance Stalking

It Is IMPOSSIBLE to Avoid Government Surveillance Stalking

Martin Armstrong

(video)

WARNING: The majority of cameras have been updated to include live signal trace technology. Flock instantly integrates your unique Bluetooth identifiers with your personal data profile in a centralized database. What does this mean? Government and private organizations with access to the centralized database no longer need physical surveillance cameras to track you down, as they already have access to every single electronic device you own.

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The Ticking Clock on the Strait of Hormuz

The Ticking Clock on the Strait of Hormuz

Thomas Wright

Back in June, at the closing press conference for the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, Donald Trump explained why he had called a halt to hostilities with Iran. Continued bombing would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and as long as the war went on, commercial ships would stay away while emergency oil supplies dwindled.

We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” he warned, conjuring up images of shortages, bedlam, surging prices, and a market collapse on the scale of 1929. Trump told the press that he had studied presidents, and “the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover.”

Fast-forward to late July. The United States has bombed Iran for nearly two weeks, hitting coastal-surveillance sites and weapons-storage facilities as well as bridges, tunnels, rail lines, airports, and electrical infrastructure. Iran has answered with missiles and drones aimed at American bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar, as well as strikes on oil installations and a desalination plant, and repeated attacks on commercial shipping in and around the strait. Iran also claims to have struck Amazon’s cloud-computing infrastructure in Bahrain, but this has not been independently verified.

Trump resumed the war despite having already explained why military force could not achieve its most pressing objective. He has not resolved this tension. It may be irresoluble. In the meantime, he is betting that Tehran will buckle before economic pressure forces him to do the same.

To understand where we are, consider how the cease-fire collapsed. Each party believed that it had won the war and that the other should accede to its interpretation of the agreement on the strait. Article 5 of the memorandum of understanding stated that Iran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.” The Trump administration took this to mean that Iran was obligated to open the strait without tolls for 60 days. But Tehran read it as permission to manage and control access through the waterway. Consequently, Iran sought to funnel ships through corridors it approved, and attacked or threatened vessels that used other routes.

In doing so, Tehran made a serious error in judgment. If it had laid low, it could have reaped the benefits of economic concessions for 60 days and then gradually introduced a toll. Instead, Trump felt compelled to respond, and the agreement broke down. Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser for energy and investment under President Biden, told me that Iran had thought it could boil the proverbial American frog, but it turned the temperature up too high too fast, and the frog got angry.

Trump is clearly frustrated. Further escalation is likely. He has mused about striking Pickaxe Mountain and is reportedly considering limited ground operations—for example, seizing Kharg Island, which is a hub for Iran’s oil exports. The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States is sending more forces, medics, and weaponry to the Middle East to give Trump additional military options. But such options were ruled out as implausible or reckless during the war, and their viability has not improved with time.

If Trump continues with limited strikes, he will face the very problems that he laid out in France last month. Hochstein posted on X that the current escalation in the Strait of Hormuz could be more economically dangerous than the previous one, because Russia, the U.S., and China can no longer buffer world markets as they did: Russia has reduced its diesel exports, U.S. crude and strategic reserves are unusually low, and China is cutting its oil consumption less deeply than before. In his view, markets are already signaling the inflationary risk, leaving Trump with a narrowing window to make a deal before another disruption produces a sharper fuel-price and financial shock, possibly as soon as mid- to late September.

Iran seems to want to keep the conflict at a simmer. It is striking back against the United States but has avoided direct attacks that would bring Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Israel fully into the war, even as it applies pressure indirectly, most dramatically through the Houthis’ campaign against Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. Reuters reported that Iran had previously asked the Houthis to prepare to close the Red Sea route if the United States struck Iranian power infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Trump seems to be actively working to keep the Gulf states on board as he continues the war. Two weeks ago, his administration significantly loosened restrictions on the export of advanced semiconductor chips to the UAE, something Abu Dhabi has been wanting for years. Then, on Wednesday, he announced that he had approved a civil nuclear-enrichment deal with Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration, in which I served, negotiated a similar arrangement with Riyadh as part of a broader deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That deal, which stalled after October 7, would have provided for U.S. enrichment inside Saudi Arabia rather than giving it the ability to autonomously enrich its own uranium. The technical details of the Trump deal are unknown.

Trump may inflict more pain on Iran, but this is unlikely to compel Tehran to abandon its attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps Iran will agree to put its ambitions on hold for 60 days in the hope that the previous agreement can be revived. But if the two sides remain gridlocked, Trump will have to decide whether to pay the economic price for continuing a low-intensity war indefinitely; escalate, with all of the risks that entails; or walk away.

France and Spain battle wildfires as more than 250,000 people are forced to flee homes

France and Spain battle wildfires as more than 250,000 people are forced to flee homes

MARK CARLSON 

France sent a hulking military cargo plane to dump tons of flame retardants as it battled raging wildfires on Saturday and slashed the final stage of Tour de France to redeploy security personnel to the blazes that forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. 

The latest wildfires in southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people, including some 70,000 people who were evacuated in central Spain. One man died in Manises, the municipality reported on its Facebook page, the first death so far in the blazes. 

In France, the giant A400M transporter swooped in low, its long plume of ochre-colored retardant trailing over drought-hit woodlands in the southwest as fire crews on the ground fought flames that authorities feared could spread toward the wine region city of Bordeaux.

Race organizers and the Paris police department announced a truncated 21st and final stage on Sunday for the three-week Tour, France’s most famous annual sporting event, reflecting the immense strain that two large fires in the southwest are causing for emergency services.

Tour riders will race Sunday inside Paris, rather than starting from Thoiry, west of the capital, on a circuit of 89 kilometers (55 miles) — down by a third from the 133-kilometer (82.5-mile) route that had been planned. Part of the race’s security detail will instead “reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires,” according to the statement announcing the ”exceptional measures made necessary by the situation.”

Shifting winds raise concerns for Bordeaux

With winds expected to shift in a west-to-east direction on Saturday afternoon, potentially driving flames closer to Bordeaux, fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardants and taking other blaze-blocking steps, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, predicting a “long and very difficult” battle.

He said the fire was about 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the city and lost some of its intensity overnight. The prefect of the Gironde region that includes Bordeaux said the blaze grew into “a firestorm” on Friday after igniting earlier this week and cautioned that it “remains dangerous” even though firefighters were making progress.

The government mobilized soldiers to join fire crews and was rushing in 1.5 million face masks to protect against choking smoke.

Authorities ordered people between the fire and Bordeaux to evacuate, including from parts of the city’s western suburbs and other towns and villages.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze became so strong on Friday that it had begun generating its own winds. Firefighting teams were being reinforced with the addition of hundreds of soldiers and breathing masks to filter out potentially noxious smoke particles were being rushed to those exposed, Lecornu said.

In Bordeaux, authorities took in thousands of evacuees, offering them food and shelter in an exhibition center, and the city’s mayor said it could be equipped to welcome as many as 10,000 people if that became necessary. The city’s airport said it remained open but that its bus and tram services were suspended.

Evacuation orders were sent with special alerts to mobile phones, instructing people to leave, Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas said. She said the fire had destroyed about 140 homes in the region.

The magnitude of the wildfires caught authorities off guard 

The French military A400M transport plane, specially converted for fire-fighting, was a heavyweight new tool in the battle. It joined at least 18 other water- and retardant-dropping aircraft and helicopters that Nunez said were deployed in the Gironde region, working in rotation in the smoke-filled skies.

The virulence of the French and Spanish wildfires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities off guard. 

Firefighters in Spain said the blazes spread so fast and violently that they could not be tackled head on. In France, some people even fled by boat when flames swept through touristic towns on the Atlantic coast. 

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Javier Organista, a resident of El Tiemblo, west of Madrid, where fire charred a famed chestnut grove. “When we saw the flames coming into our town, surrounding us, leaving us with practically no way out, all the neighbors joined together to try to stop its advance.” 

“It’s just really sad,” he said.

Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday as he visited a command post west of Madrid.

Trump says US 'locked and loaded' for increased Iran strikes, no final decision made

Trump says US 'locked and loaded' for increased Iran strikes, no final decision made

AARON GLICK

US President Donald Trump said that the United States is "locked and loaded" to increase its strikes on Iran, though he has not yet made a final decision, during a press conference at the White House on Friday.

“We’re locked and loaded and ready to go, but we’re talking to them," said Trump in response to a reporter's question on the subject. "We’ll see what comes of it.”

“I think they are getting more serious as days go by for maybe obvious reasons," he added. "But we are talking to them right now. We’ll see.”

President Trump held a cabinet meeting on the subject later on Friday, according to a New York Times report citing four sources with knowledge of the meeting.

Trump noted that the US had several "exit strategies" for its war with Iran, including a "military exit," which would involve a continuation of its strikes on the Islamic regime, with the potential of a "heavier dose."

He added that there was a "smarter strategy," in which Iran would make a deal. "They want to make a deal," said Trump. "I just don't think they're ready yet."

They want to be the tough guys," Trump continued. "As we speak, we are talking to them."

When asked if targeting Iranian power plants would constitute a war crime, the US president declined to answer.

Trump initially began discussing Iran following a reporter's question on the US-Saudi nuclear deal, which, according to Trump, now hinges on Saudi Arabia joining thr Abraham Accords.

The president said that Iran was a primary reason for Saudi hesitancy to join the Accords, but things would be different now that the "problem" of the regime was "disappearing day by day."

He described Iran as "the bully of the Middle East," saying that they "are not going to be that much of a bully anymore."

Trump added that Iran has "no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft, no radar, no nothing."

President Trump emphasized the significance of the "iron wall" created by the US blockade against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.

He noted the situation as "not very complex," hinging simply on the US demand that Iran "cannot have a nuclear weapon."

"If they have even the thought of a nuclear weapon, we would just continue to go, but at much higher levels," Trump said, noting that he is "not in a hurry."

"We've taken out their first level of leadership," noted Trump. "We've taken out their second level of leadership. We've taken out their third level, and we're negotiating with the rest."

Trump concluded by stressing that Israel "would not be around anymore" if he had not been reelected, saying the Jewish state would have been "hit by a nuclear weapon."

"If I wasn't here, there would be no Israel," he concluded. "And there would probably be no Middle East."