The Strait of Hormuz was open on February 27, 2026. Twenty percent of the world’s oil flowed through it. No tolls. No blockade. No crisis. Then Trump slammed his little fist on the bright red Palantir “easy” button on his big desk.
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, killing its supreme leader and seriously depleting American preparedness for actual war. Iran closed the strait and waited.
The math is stupid, it’s so simple.
The Pentagon told Congress the first six days cost $11.3 billion. Harvard’s Kennedy School estimates $2 billion a day in short-term costs. The AEI puts the five-week total between $22.3 billion and $31 billion. The Pentagon has requested an additional $200 billion from Congress.
Get it?
Spend $30 billion to close a strait that was open.
Then ask for $200 billion to reopen it.
While you also say you will close it, because… when talks fail, blockade the strait and float the idea of the United States charging tolls on the strait you blockaded because the enemy closed it because you bombed them.
Every phase of this stupidity costs more than the last.
Every phase intentionally escalates to generate new contracts, new munitions orders, new revenue for the targeting platforms that identify the next set of things to destroy. It’s like lighting taxpayer money on fire.
Which brings us to news about Friday’s “Truth Social” post.
“Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies!!!”
Trump included the stock ticker. PLTR was down 14% for the week. CREW flagged the post as a potential attempt to pump the stock of a major backer that had sponsored multiple administration events and donated to the White House ballroom project.
Note the roles converging in one person.
Trump is the commander-in-chief who authorized the strikes. He is the head of the government that provides more than half of Palantir’s U.S. revenue. He is the promoter of the stock on social media.
Customer, warmaker, and pitchman.
When Trump pumped Tesla, the conflict was financial.
The Tesla pump killed hundreds. Here the conflict is financial and operational, killing thousands. Palantir’s “Maven Smart System” identifies targets for the strikes. School girls? Triple tap? The war crime strikes sustain the MAGA rage. The rage sustains the contracts. The contracts sustain the stock price. The president sustains all of it and then posts the ticker symbol when the price dips.
Palantir’s own communications chief called the company’s political shift toward the Trump administration “concerning.” The video of her saying it was scrubbed from the internet because Palantir has a social truth problem.
Michael Burry is holding puts. He believes the fundamental value is well under $50 a share. Why not $5? The stock trades at $126. The gap between actual and speculation value is sheer corruption, held open by cooked government contracts tied to a war that has cost at least $30 billion to bomb school children and produced a global energy crisis that did not exist seven weeks ago.
The strait was open. Trump spent tens of billions to close it. Now Trump is trying to spend hundreds of billions to… repeatedly claim he can open and close it while he tries to juice his stocks for whatever happens next.
That is the dumb, corrupt math of Palantir.