
Dan Polner
3.9K posts

Dan Polner
@dpolner
Tech Business Advisor, unabashed $TSLA skeptic









Trade: The Miami Dolphins are sending Minkah Fitzpatrick to the New York Jets in exchange for the 2026 seventh-round pick from the Chargers, per ESPN sources. The Jets will sign Fitzpatrick to a three-year, $40 million deal, per his agent Drew Rosenhaus.


🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump's take on dragging out ops? Whatever it takes. Trump claims their military's basically wiped out already. The U.S. could crush it even harder, but no call yet.


Few days ago I wrote that China was not joining this war but pricing it, and that the era when a ship needed an insurance policy to transit Hormuz was ending while the era when a ship needed a Chinese relationship was beginning. The Financial Times just confirmed the proof. At least ten vessels in the Persian Gulf have altered their transponder signals in the past week to broadcast messages reading “Chinese Owner,” “All Chinese Crew,” or “Chinese Crew Onboard.” The ships are not Chinese. They are commercial vessels from other nations, deliberately falsifying their electronic identity because they observed that Iran does not attack ships associated with China. Read that again. Ships are pretending to be Chinese to stay alive. This is not a curiosity. This is the single most important maritime development since the Strait of Hormuz closed. It is the moment when the new order stopped being theoretical and became operational, verified by MarineTraffic data, confirmed by shipping industry sources, and reported by the Financial Times with specific numbers. For eighty years the United States Navy guaranteed freedom of navigation. Any vessel, any flag, any cargo could transit any waterway because American naval power enforced universal access as a global public good. That system required aircraft carriers, destroyer escorts, and the implicit threat that targeting commercial shipping would trigger American military response. It is being replaced by a text message on a transponder. The IRGC has struck ports, refineries, airports, embassies, bases, data centers, and residential towers across the Gulf. It has attacked vessels linked to Western interests. It has not attacked Chinese vessels. Not because China has a navy in the Gulf. Because China is Iran’s largest oil customer, its source of technology transfers, and the only power negotiating bilateral safe passage for its energy flows. That commercial relationship, not military force, is now the determining factor in whether a ship can safely transit the most critical waterway on earth. The ten vessels spoofing Chinese identity have made the calculation that every shipping operator in the Gulf is making silently: the American flag no longer protects you, the insurance policy no longer covers you, and the only signal that appears to guarantee safe passage through these waters is an association with Beijing. In the 1980s Tanker War, Kuwaiti tankers reflagged as American to gain US Navy escort protection. In 2026, commercial vessels are reflagging as Chinese because Chinese commercial leverage provides what American military power cannot. The direction of the reflagging tells you which power governs these waters now. The spoofing violates international maritime law and AIS regulations. It risks IRGC crackdown if detected. None of that matters to a captain calculating whether his ship survives the next twelve hours. When the choice is legal compliance or physical survival, the law loses every time. Ten ships and counting. Every one broadcasting the same message: the ocean’s rules have changed, and the new rules are written in Mandarin. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…












Yup. Pretty crazy. Knicks couldn’t score last night and KAT only got 5 shots up.





Many wonder whether anyone will want to give up car ownership (in favor of taking driverless $TSLA robotaxis). Yes. 😝 At first, mostly people: 1) under 30 2) lower income 3) full-time students 4) in big cities (where it’s expensive to drive your own car) 5) working from home

