The Commoner

Friday, September 18, 2026

Sup, freaks.

I've fallen for the anger served up by social media plenty of times. Today's lead is about the people trying to provoke those reactions, the governments buying the tools to do it, and why I think we all need to get better at stepping back before we let a feed tell us what to think.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN THIS NEWSLETTER

• Marty's Bent: Who benefits from you being angry?
• Signals: Exxon's refinery outage, Hopkinsville's bitcoin mine, Iranian BitBank sanctions, the Bank of Japan and Mistral's denial.
• Freedom Tech Corner: Verify your Sparrow download before installing it.
• Data Snapshot: Bitcoin price, network activity and on-chain metrics.

Marty's Bent

Who Benefits From You Being Angry?

Governments are waging psychological operations on people through social media. You should be aware of that every time you open one of these apps. The ability to put propaganda in front of you, make it look like ordinary people talking, and get you emotionally invested in an argument has become incredibly accessible. There are companies selling governments the tools and training to do it.

Citizen Lab's investigation into BlackCore gives us a look at that business. The Israeli influence-for-hire company's materials describe training Angolan government communications personnel to run an operation using fake identities, a made-up news outlet and posts distributed through online communities. Researchers matched the materials to real online accounts and assessed it as highly likely that the training happened, though they could not independently confirm it.

Think about how easy this makes the job. Create a person who doesn't exist, give that person a news article from an outlet you control, and have other accounts spread it around. To someone scrolling through a feed, it can look like people independently noticing the same thing. Meanwhile, the people behind the operation are watching the response and adjusting what they put out next.

And before anyone decides this is something that only happens in Angola, Meta reported in 2022 that it removed a network linked to individuals associated with the US military. That operation targeted audiences abroad using fake accounts across multiple services. Government-linked influence operations on social media are already documented. We don't have to speculate about whether they exist.

I would not be surprised in the least to find that some governments are also coordinating with the social media companies themselves to influence what their algorithms put in front of people. That's my suspicion, not a finding of the BlackCore report. If you want to shape how a population thinks, the companies deciding what millions of people see would seem like an obvious place to go.

This gets back to the Hegelian dialectic we talked about earlier this week. The problem-reaction-solution routine. Get people frightened or furious, divide them into camps, and let the demand for somebody to do something build until they're willing to accept a response they would have rejected otherwise. You don't have to invent the underlying problem. A real problem gives you plenty to work with if you can steer the reaction to it.

I'm definitely guilty of falling prey to this. I've gotten angry at things put in front of me by social media algorithms. I don't know who was behind every post I've reacted to, but I would be very surprised if none of the material I've encountered came from a government influence operation. Being aware of the possibility doesn't mean you're immune to it. I need the reminder as much as anyone reading this.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the online frenzy around the Lindsay Clancy case is being deliberately amplified to emotionally manipulate Americans and people watching from elsewhere. You don't have to manufacture a tragedy to exploit people's reactions to it. You can take something that already horrifies them and keep pushing it in front of them until they're furious at one another.

With the AI data-center narratives, there is documented foreign influence to look at. OpenAI identified a covert campaign likely originating in China that posed as Americans and pushed claims about data centers driving up electricity bills. Its investigators assessed that the operators likely worked for a Chinese technology company serving provincial government clients. OpenAI found no meaningful breakout beyond the operation's own activity, but the attempt was there.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute has also traced funding from Neville Roy Singham into a nonprofit network it describes as CCP-aligned, alongside Chinese state-media campaigns opposing American AI infrastructure. That's a lot more concrete than simply wondering who benefits. My read is that Beijing has every reason to encourage Americans to slow their own AI development while China pushes ahead. We should be able to ask legitimate questions about a project's electricity and water use without letting foreign interests turn those concerns into an argument for shutting everything down.

We saw this during COVID too. Reuters uncovered a Pentagon propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting China's vaccines and other pandemic aid in the Philippines. People were trying to make decisions about their health while a government was secretly trying to influence what they believed. There is a lot going on behind the things that appear in our feeds.

Fall back to first principles. What do you know? What are you assuming? Who benefits from you being angry at this particular thing, at this particular moment? And what are they asking you to support while you're angry? I'm definitely guilty of getting caught up in it. I need to ask myself those questions too.

This is part of what bitcoin and self-custody symbolize to me. You can run your own node and verify the rules and the coins you receive. You can hold your own keys instead of relying on somebody else's promise that they'll let you access your money. You know what you have because you can verify it yourself. In a world where so much effort goes into manipulating what we believe, having that ability matters.

Stay frothy out there.

SIGNAL

Another refinery outage when diesel is already expensive

Exxon's Joliet refinery remained offline Thursday after a power outage shut it down Sunday. Electricity has been restored. A Thursday filing also disclosed that floodwater overwhelmed a pump, although Exxon declined to say whether that problem was connected to the electrical outage. This is a substantial facility: Exxon lists 6% of Midwest refining capacity and roughly 11 million gallons of gasoline and diesel production per day, combined.

AAA's national diesel average reached about $6.45 this morning. Those costs were already painful before Joliet went offline. A prolonged disruption would add pressure to a fuel market that trucking companies and farmers can't simply opt out of. Restoring electrical service is one step; getting the refinery producing again is the update I'm interested in.

A utility makes the case for more customers

Hopkinsville Electric System's general manager says an existing bitcoin mine accounts for 3.1% of utility revenue and has helped avoid rate increases. The operator wants to convert that 15-megawatt facility to AI computing and develop a separate 50-megawatt site. Hopkinsville is still considering the rules, with another public hearing scheduled for September 28.

I'd like more towns to have this conversation. New industrial customers can contribute revenue that helps pay for the infrastructure everyone uses. Residents should also know who pays for new substations, what happens if a project fails, and how noise and water protections will be enforced. Those are reasonable questions. Make the benefits tangible and the obligations enforceable, and give people a reason to welcome productive investment in their town.

Washington targets the businesses around bitcoin

OFAC sanctioned Iranian exchange BitBank, its developer and three associates of financier Babak Zanjani yesterday. Treasury alleges that Zanjani used the exchange to facilitate hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of bitcoin transfers to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps between June and July. Treasury's release doesn't supply a transaction ledger we can independently check against its allegations.

The action is worth paying attention to because of where the pressure is being applied: a named exchange, the company that developed its software, and the people operating the business network. Bitcoin's permissionless settlement doesn't remove those businesses from the reach of governments. Sanctioning them also isn't the same thing as stopping the network. Those distinctions tend to get lost whenever a government announces that it is cracking down on bitcoin.

Japan raises the cost of yen funding

The Bank of Japan voted 7–2 at its September 18 meeting to set its overnight policy-rate target at 1.25%, effective September 24. Its statement points to high crude prices, the weaker yen and expanding AI-related demand as sources of price pressure, and says further increases will depend on economic and financial conditions.

For investors borrowing yen to finance positions elsewhere, the cost of that funding matters well beyond Japan. Higher funding costs and exchange-rate moves can make a previously attractive trade considerably less attractive. After the Fed's move this week, this is another reminder to pay attention to how positions are financed. I wouldn't turn one central-bank decision into a prediction that every leveraged trade is about to unwind, but I wouldn't ignore the borrowing side of the trade either.

Mistral responds to the code-sale claim

Mistral said overnight that it investigated a claim of unauthorized access, found no supporting evidence, and concluded its systems had not been compromised. The response follows claims that someone was selling the company's entire codebase. FrenchBreaches, which examined a file listing and a sample, could not establish a fresh September intrusion and raised the possibility that older compromised material was being recirculated.

I'm keeping an eye on this, but “entire codebase stolen” goes well beyond what has been demonstrated publicly. A seller's listing, a sample of development tooling and the theft of model weights are very different things. The company's denial belongs alongside the allegation, particularly when the allegation has already traveled much further than the evidence.

⚡ FREEDOM TECH CORNER

DATA SNAPSHOT

As of September 18, 2026, approximately 8:30 a.m. ET. Bitcoin Lab daily on-chain observations dated September 17 UTC.

Sources: Kraken for spot price; mempool.space for network readings; Bitcoin Lab for daily on-chain metrics. Sats per dollar is calculated from the quoted price. MVRV compares market value with realized value; SOPR compares the value of spent outputs with their acquisition value; short-term holder realized price is an on-chain cost-basis estimate; NUPL measures net unrealized profit relative to market value.

If you know someone who would enjoy The Commoner, forward this to them.

See you on Monday,

Marty

Marty Bent · TFTC · Nostr

YouTube

Podcast