Read what the $5 billion is actually for.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

The Pentagon's biggest loan ever isn't going to a data center Read what the $5 billion is actually for. Read online The loan is not for a data center. Read what it is for. AI ARMS RACE WEEKEND FILE Knox Bennett, Lead Strategist, Strategic Compute  ·  Saturday, September 12, 2026 BUBBLE GAUGE 67/100— unchanged EUPHORIA Flat on the day. Valuation and froth are market inputs and the market is closed. The credit component already carries Thursday's news, which is what the rest of this letter is about. FROM OUR PARTNERS Editor's Note: Larry Benedict — the hedge fund legend who beat the S&P 500 by 18 times in 2025 and made his clients $95 million during the 2008 crisis — says Trump's installation of a new Federal Reserve chair is triggering the most significant shift in U.S. markets in nearly 20 years. He has already identified the one ticker he believes will be at the center of the money flows — and he's revealing it completely free. Click here to see the details or read more below… Dear Reader, Keep your eye on this ticker after the recent Federal Reserve announcement... It’s one of the most predictable patterns I’ve seen over my 40+ years of trading. Many investors have never heard of this security. It has nothing to do with AI, tech, or precious metals. And the profits have been extraordinary. Click here to see exactly what I'm talking about. In January 2022, the Fed signaled it was about to start raising rates aggressively. I was already prepared, and my readers could have made 117% in under a month. Six months later, Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke at Jackson Hole. Again, I was already ready, and my recommendation made 89% in 17 days. Then in September 2024, the first rate cut in four years. This ticker jumped, and my readers could have made 35% profit in two days. Click here for the full story. Over the next few months, I expect more Fed announcements than we’ve seen in recent years. The next announcement could be just days away… Which means this ticker is going to move. A lot. In this exclusive briefing, I reveal the name of this ticker — completely free. Click here to find out what this ticker is. Regards, Larry Benedict Founder, The Opportunistic Trader P.S. Don't miss out on this one — it could be one of the best wealth building events of the year. TODAY'S BEAT — WHO PAYS FOR THE BOTTLENECK The Pentagon isn't funding a data center. Read what it is funding. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital is in talks to lend roughly $5 billion to Fluidstack, an AI cloud company most of this list has never heard of. Reuters picked it up the same day. Neither the rate, the maturity, nor the collateral has been disclosed. Most coverage stopped at the headline number. The sentence underneath it is the one worth your evening. According to the reporting, the money would not build a facility. It is earmarked for domestic manufacturing capacity and supply chains for data center components. Power equipment. Cooling gear. The kit that sits between a signed lease and an energized building. Washington had every option here. It could have bought compute. It could have underwritten a campus, planted a flag, and held a ribbon-cutting. Instead the largest loan this office has ever contemplated is pointed at switchgear and heat rejection. That is not a subtle signal. When a government decides something is strategically scarce, it does not buy the finished product. It funds the chokepoint. The same office has previously backed rare earth producers and drone manufacturers. Transformers and cooling loops have now joined that list, which tells you how Washington has categorized them. The scale shift underneath this is its own story. OSC's original equipment-financing program wrote loans between $10 million and $150 million against an initial notice of up to $984 million. Director David Lorch told a CSIS panel on June 30 that the office's lending authority now exceeds $210 billion, and that it is focused on loans principally between $1 billion and $5 billion. That is not an expanded program. That is a different institution wearing the same name. Here is the part I would sit with over the weekend. Every thesis in this sector eventually reduces to a question about who is paying, and the answer has been drifting for months. It started as hyperscaler cash flow. It moved to vendor financing and equity-for-compute. This week it reached a term loan from the Department of Defense. Each step down that ladder buys more capacity. Each step also moves the buildout further from earnings and closer to a balance sheet, which is a sentence that should mean something to you the next time the Fed speaks. $7.5B → $18B, in one year Fluidstack raised an $830 million Series A at a $7.5 billion valuation earlier this year. A later $1.5 billion round led by Jane Street reportedly valued it north of $18 billion. A $5 billion federal loan would exceed that Series A by roughly six times. Erebor Bank, founded by Palmer Luckey, is advising on the application.   Why this company Anthropic announced a $50 billion US buildout running on Fluidstack sites in New York and Texas. The company also has arrangements with former bitcoin miners holding powered land. Founded at Oxford in 2017, headquarters moved from London to New York in December. The government is lending to the connective tissue, not the brand names. ADVERTISEMENT This AI System identified the stocks positioned to surge While everyone rushes into Nvidia and SpaceX, one AI insider says the real money will be made elsewhere. Keith Kaplan's AI system has identified a small group of stocks positioned to surge as the big-name AI trade breaks down. Watch his free briefing now before September 30th. This ad is sent on behalf of TradeSmith at 1125 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. If you're not interested in this opportunity, please click here. THE LONG GAME Last month an executive order declared a national emergency over the power grid and barred certain foreign-made equipment from it. Set that beside a $5 billion loan aimed at domestic production of grid and cooling components and the shape becomes obvious. One policy closes the import door on a category of equipment. The other pays to build the replacement capacity at home. A transformer shortage that used to be a procurement problem is now an industrial policy problem, and the companies with domestic plants and qualified production lines did not have to do anything to become strategically relevant. They already were. Nothing in this letter is a recommendation. But if you have been waiting for confirmation that the constraint in this buildout sits below the chip layer, a defense department preparing to write its largest loan ever against power and cooling equipment is about as direct as confirmation gets. MUST READS • The Magnificent Seven Will Not Lead the Market Forever • Some of the Biggest Opportunities Start Before a Stock Ever Trades • Option-Like Returns Without Strikes, Expiration or Decay YOU'RE EARLY. KEEP IT THAT WAY. The gauge prints before the open and again before the close. It does not tell you to buy anything. It tells you what the money is doing while everyone argues about the models. Forward this to one person who still thinks this is a chip story. Monday we are back on chips. Watch the delivered numbers, not the ordered ones. 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