Erik Prince: Off Leash update 20 October 2026

Off Leash update 20 October 2026

COMING UP THIS WEEK
•Alberta held a largely performative, non-binding referendum on seceding from Canada yesterday. Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, had called the poll a “dangerous bluff” and urged Albertans to vote “stay.” Projections suggest they overwhelmingly did: remainers outnumbered leavers 3-to-1 in early counts.
•Brazil will hold the second round of its presidential election on Sunday, with incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) facing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Pollsters underestimated Bolsonaro in the first round and analysts now expect he’ll win the second.
•Serbia will hold early parliamentary elections on Sunday.

COMMODITY AND COIN MARKET PRICES
•Aluminum: $3,002/ton
•Antimony (global avg.): $34,482/ton
•Bitcoin: $82,762
•Cobalt: $35,705/ton
•Copper: $14,408/ton
•Ethereum: $2,431
•Gold: $4,187/toz
•Lead: $1,889/ton
•Natural Gas (Nymex): $3.10/MMbtu
•WTI Crude Oil (Nymex): $99.48/barrel
•Zinc: $3,692/ton

UKRAINE
•U.S. SecState Rubio denied Ukrainian Pres. Zelensky’s claims that American intelligence agencies had briefly stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine and cut off its access to Starshield last week.
•Zelensky now seems cautiously open to making amends. He’s meeting with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Norway today (Kushner remotely) to put “diplomatic efforts on a more constructive path,” according to Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, who will join the talks too.

INDIA
•Indian police re-arrested Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke before he could join another demonstration against hasty election “reforms” that were widely seen as a way for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to cling to power.
• So far, Prime Minister Modi’s BJP has been unwilling to compromise – or even to hear its critics out – and has fallen back on its usual playbook of projecting confident power while silencing anyone who questions it.
•Some observers have pointed out that jailing popular young leaders for voicing grievances that resonate with tens of millions of Indians – and ignoring their calls for reform – projects the opposite of power.

ISRAEL
•Israeli police arrested 10 settlers following a spate of attacks on Palestinians harvesting olives in the West Bank.
•Such arrests are rare, despite the increasing frequency and intensity of settler attacks. Convictions are rarer still. But that may soon change as global condemnations of settler violence get louder.
•Even U.S. diplomats – who usually refrain from publicly criticizing Israeli policy – expressed concern. SecState Rubio said the U.S. had “the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff,” and U.S. Ambassador to Israeli Mike Huckabee called last weekend’s attacks “a despicable act of terror.”
•The Trump administration may sharpen its criticism after Israel’s election next week, but won’t want to hamper Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chances of surviving his toughest electoral challenge yet. Yesterday, Pres. Trump endorsed Netanyahu and SecWar Hegseth flew to Israel to show support ahead of the closely contested vote.

YEMEN AND SAUDI ARABIA
•After initially projecting an air of “business as usual” amidst unrelenting incoming Houthi fire, Saudi Arabia caved and postponed its annual Future Investment Initiative conference – which was due to start next Monday – until 2027.
•Attendees and speakers had been dropping out or deciding to join remotely, so following through with this year’s event would’ve laid bare an embarrassing downgrade from the glitzy past editions that earned it the nickname “Davos in the Desert.”
•Meanwhile in Yemen, the Houthis killed at least 58 Yemeni army and police recruits in a ballistic missile attack on a training camp deep inside government territory.
•Houthi media claimed the strikes targeted Saudi “troop buildups” at the camp, but it’s not clear whether Saudi is actually embedding any ground troops with Yemeni forces or just backing them up from the air. [Saudi is certainly engaged in the war from the air, though. On Sunday alone, it launched 110 airstrikes on Houthi positions in Sanaa.]

NORTH KOREA
•A U.S.-based Chinese dissident sparked wild rumors that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un had suffered a brain hemorrhage, slipped into a coma, and died in a hospital in Beijing.
•The rumors were unsubstantiated and didn’t get as much traction with Western intelligence agencies as credible reports of a dictator’s death would get.
•Separately, North Korea said it tested a new “super-speed” torpedo system that it claimed was also superintelligent, with AI “applied to the target detection and the guidance function.”
•The ambiguity – perhaps deliberate – left analysts wondering whether Pyongyang is claiming that there is AI aboard the Zam-2.0 – or just that its engineers queried ChatGPT for some homework help along the way.
•The scarier first interpretation is uncomfortably plausible, given North Korea’s deepening military coordination with Russia, which makes extensive use of AI in weapons and military operations in Ukraine.

FRANCE
•Last week’s protests in France descended into riots over the weekend, and riots led to finger pointing about who failed to anticipate and prevent the violence. Macron failed in every way…
•Macron’s critics chide him for largely ignoring the crisis until it blew up, and the populist-right National Rally is capitalizing on the melee by joining in on the criticism.
•There’s likely more unrest to come: trade unions and grassroots leaders have called for new demonstrations on Saturday.

— ErikDPrince (@realErikDPrince) October 20, 2026