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Was Amazon’s Tokenmaxxing Fiasco Behind Claude’s $500M Mystery Bill?

Axios reported this week that an unnamed Anthropic enterprise client managed to run up roughly $500 million in Claude charges in a single month after failing to put usage limits on employee licenses.

The company was not named, but we suspect Blue Origin might not be the only thing that blew up for Jeff Bezos this month.

Just as the Axios report landed with the $500M tidbit, Amazon was shutting down an internal AI-usage leaderboard after employees reportedly began “tokenmaxxing” – routing unnecessary work through AI tools to inflate their usage scores. The result was a perfect case study in what happens when corporate America turns AI adoption into a metric, then acts surprised when employees optimize for the metric instead of the work.

Whether or not Amazon was the mystery Claude whale, its internal AI experiment shows exactly how a runaway enterprise AI bill can happen.

The $500M Claude Mystery

The Axios item was brief, but extraordinary:;

An AI consultant tells Axios one of their clients recently spent half a billion dollars in a single month after failing to put usage limits on Claude licenses for employees. 

So, oops to every CFO who recently approved “AI adoption” as a corporate priority.

In the old software world, when true nerds roamed the land, a bad rollout usually meant paying for licenses employees barely touched. The waste was real, but at least it was mostly static. In the new agentic AI world, a bad rollout – or simply adopting AI for everything – can quickly become devastating: thousands of employees – or autonomous agents operating on their behalf – prompting, testing, summarizing, refactoring, retrying, and spinning up new tasks on usage-based pricing.

That is the heart of the current enterprise AI hangover. Companies spent the past year foisting AI on employees, often without a clean way to separate productivity from dashboard-friendly activity. And now the hangover is here. 

Microsoft has reportedly started canceling most Claude Code licenses and steering developers toward GitHub Copilot CLI. Uber reportedly burned through its entire 2026 AI coding-tools budget by April, with COO Andrew Macdonald saying it was “very hard to draw a line” between rising Claude Code usage and useful consumer-facing output. Meta killed an employee-created “Claudeonomics” dashboard after workers competed to rank among the company’s top AI token users.

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U.N. Atomic Energy Chief Rafael Grossi Blasts Agency for Irrelevance: ‘Absent’ from World Conflicts

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, lamented in remarks on Thursday that the United Nations, of which the IAEA is part, has been “absent” from the world’s greatest conflicts.

Grossi made the remarks during an event in London, within the context of his candidate to run the United Nations. The term of current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expiring this year, prompting the somewhat convoluted and backdoor process of various successor candidates making their pitches to the body. First, the Security Council, the most powerful body of the U.N., nominates a candidate, whom the General Assembly then confirms. The United Nations has officially approved five candidates for secretary-general this year. Grossi’s closest competition is believed to be Michelle Bachelet, the socialist former president of Chile and apologist for the Uyghur genocide in China, along with Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the former president of the General Assembly.

Grossi has been on the front lines of two of the most high-profile conflicts in the world today: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the IAEA has advocated for the protection of various nuclear sites in the war theater; and the conflict between Iran and America. The IAEA, under Grossi’s leadership, condemned Iran for violating international law in 2025 for the first time in two decades, which led to the U.S. military taking action against three of Iran’s largest nuclear sites last year. Iran and America continue in conflict today under an ongoing ceasefire, and are reported to be negotiating a peace agreement that Washington insists must result in the long-term dissolution of any Iranian illicit nuclear development.

In his remarks on Thursday, Grossi mentioned these two conflicts, as well as ongoing civil war in Sudan and Israel’s conflicts with neighboring parties.

“Interstate war has returned after many years here in Europe but also in Africa and many other places,” he noted, according to the Emirati newspaper The National. “The UN is absent from the management or resolution of any of the conflicts I have just mentioned. It needn’t be so.”

“It’s not going to happen unless we do something differently,” he continued. “It is only going to happen when there is a conviction in leaders, in belligerent nations, that the participation of the U.N., and in particular the SG, is going to facilitate a better outcome than what they are having.”

Grossi added that he believed it was “possible” for the United Nations to be a relevant party in these conflicts because of his personal experience running the IAEA. He also reported lay the blame of the U.N.’s inability to act in a timely and impactful manner on the size of its bureaucracy, outsourcing jobs he said should belong to the secretary-general to a host of “special rapporteurs” and other officials. He suggested that he would shut down several special rapporteur offices if he was chosen to run the United Nations.

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Obama Judge Launches Investigation Into Trump Settlement with IRS

A federal judge on Friday launched an investigation into the Trump Administration’s settlement with the IRS that led to the $1.77 billion anti-weaponization fund.

Earlier this month, President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns in exchange for a deal.

Trump dropped his blockbuster lawsuit against the agency in exchange for a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded fund to pay people who were unfairly targeted by the Biden Regime.

In January, President Trump, Eric Trump, Don Jr., and the Trump Org filed a lawsuit against the IRS for leaking their tax returns.

They sought $10 billion in damages.

After Trump agreed to drop his lawsuit in exchange for the anti-weaponization fund, a group of former judges asked a federal judge to launch an inquiry to determine whether the Trump Administration defrauded the court.

On Friday, Miami-based US District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, launched the inquiry.

Politico reported:

A federal judge is demanding answers to allegations that President Donald Trump defrauded her court by filing a lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext to reach a settlement that resulted in a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to make payouts to his political allies.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams launched the inquiry Friday, after closing the lawsuit on her docket last week. The Miami-based Obama appointee cited a request by 35 former federal judges who urged her to reopen the case to determine whether Trump’s effort amounted to “serious misconduct” and an abuse of the court system.

In September 2023, federal prosecutors charged a former IRS contractor who worked for the agency from 2018 to 2020 with unlawfully obtaining and disseminating the tax details of a high-ranking public official and numerous affluent Americans to media outlets.

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Bitcoin ETFs Bleed $2.8B In Record 9-Day Outflow Streak

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) posted their longest outflow streak since launch, extending withdrawals as institutional demand for Bitcoin exposure weakened.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded another $223 million in net outflows on Thursday, marking the record nine-day outflow streak since the funds launched in 2024, according to data from Farside Investors.

The latest streak surpassed the previous record eight-session outflow run recorded in February 2025, though its roughly $2.84 billion in cumulative withdrawals remains below the $3.2 billion lost during the earlier selloff.

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Hillary Clinton Gets Nuked With These Two Critical Reminders After She Rips Trump for Turning White House into “Rubble” and a “Cage Match”

Hillary Clinton emerged from hiding on Friday to lash out at President Trump’s remodeling of the White House and immediately got torn to shreds on social media.

As TGP readers know, the White House is undergoing a $400 million East Wing renovation primarily funded by private donors and spearheaded by Trump. It features a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom complex.

The construction of the ballroom has been limited by activist judges.

Trump has also installing a UFC fighting cage on the South Lawn ahead of next month’s event to celebrate 250 years of American independence, causing more liberal heads to explode.

Clinton angrily lashed out over the state of the White House, calling it “rubble” and a “cage match.”

“What a metaphor,” she added.

Despite Clinton turning off the comments, X users were quick to remind her of two critical items: not only did her husband, Bill, defile the Oval Office by having sex with an intern, but they also stole silverware and trashed the White House right before leaving for good.

Who really disgraced the White House?

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Bitcoin Depot, North America’s largest bitcoin ATM operator, files for bankruptcy

The Atlanta-based company filed voluntarily in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas on Monday, saying it would wind down operations and sell its assets in an orderly, court-supervised process. Its entire ATM network has already been taken offline.

At one point last year, the company operated 9,276 kiosks, allowing customers to convert cash into bitcoin in retail locations throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia. The company went public on Nasdaq in 2023.

The writing was perhaps on the wall after the preliminary first-quarter earnings report showed a 49% collapse in revenue from a year earlier. The company swung from a $12.2 million profit to a $9.5 million loss in the same period. Gross profit also fell 85% to $4.5 million.

The company blamed regulation for its decline. “States have imposed increasingly stringent compliance obligations, including new transaction limits, and in some jurisdictions, outright restrictions or bans on BTM operations; and operators have faced increasing litigation and regulatory enforcement,” Alex Holmes, CEO of Bitcoin Depot, said in the press release.

“These developments have materially affected Bitcoin Depot’s business and financial position. Under these circumstances, the Company’s current business model is unsustainable,” he added.

Bitcoin Depot is facing a high-profile lawsuit led by attorneys general in Massachusetts and Iowa over allegations that it facilitated crypto scams. Crypto ATM fraud hit a record $389 million in reported losses last year, a 58% increase from 2024, drawing increased scrutiny from regulators and prosecutors.

The company’s Canadian entities are included in the U.S. court-supervised bankruptcy process. Other non-U.S. entities will wind down operations in accordance with the law in their respective countries.

The company’s collapse comes at a moment when the broader industry is riding a wave of institutional adoption through alternative investment vehicles such as ETFs and the recent progress of the Clarity Act.

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White House Launches Aliens.Gov After Series of Cryptic Messages: ‘They Walk Among Us’

A new White House website builds upon the curiosity generated by the Trump administration’s release of government files on UFOs, but the message is far more down to earth.

“THEY WALK AMONG US,” Aliens.gov proclaims in glowing massive script.

“For 60 years, the U.S. government has kept a closely guarded secret. Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods, and interacting with us in our daily lives. They’ve shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children, and lived seemingly normal human existences,” the site reads.

“With one exception — they do not belong here,” the site said.

The message starts to shine through as the script continues.

“Millions arrived under the cover of darkness and embedded themselves directly into our society. Countless presidents, congressmen, and senior officials knew exactly what was happening. Instead of protecting American citizens, they chose to cover it up and even accelerate the invasion,” the site says.

“Until one man finally had the courage to tell the truth. Bold. Unapologetic. Unafraid. President Trump was the first to call out the real danger Aliens pose to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation.”

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Beware, AI cameras in the classroom filming your children and gathering personal data

There’s a new and dire threat to privacy that parents of school children need to be aware of and be prepared to fight against.

AI surveillance in the classroom.

Frank Landymore of Futurism.com reports, in a May 18 article, on a sinister plan hatched by the University of Washington to film pre-school children during class time. If this is going on in Washington, you have to believe it’s going on, at least in the planning stages if not already happening, across the 50 states.

The article reports that a planned University of Washington study would’ve had preschool teachers wear cameras to “record first-person footage of everything in the classroom,” including the children they were instructing, and use that footage to train AI models.

Remember, those behind the global technocracy movement believe the only value a human being will hold in the new society they are trying to create, is the data sets they produce. This was stated in the wide open a few years ago by World Economic Forum adviser Yuval Noah Harari. Without your personal data to be stolen, manipulated, and sold for profit, you are nothing to them but a useless eater.

Part of the plan is to create a “digital twin” of every person on earth as an anchor to the new digital control grid.

So why wouldn’t the Epstein class of entitled billionaire elites who harbor perverted, twisted views of children, want a daily video record of everything your child does in school? Every word uttered. Every facial expression. Every action and reaction. Year over year for comparison’s sake. Then they can use this data to create algorithms that predict everything your child will grow up to become before he or she is 10 or 12 years old?

Harari, an Israeli historian and chief adviser to the WEF, has said that if he had access to artificial intelligence when he was younger, he believes he would have discovered he was a homosexual at age 11 or 12 instead of at 17. In fact, a Newsweek article from September 8, 2017, made the case that AI can predict “with startling accuracy” whether a person is gay or straight.

But this particular story, in the case of Washington State, has a positive outcome. It exemplifies the kind of parental awareness and bold activism that is needed to shut down the illegitimate use of AI technology in the classroom.

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Seattle’s New Socialist Mayor Flatly Refuses to Investigate Fraud at Somali Daycare Centers

Given the massive amount of fraud that has been uncovered at Somali daycare centers in Minneapolis alone, you would think that every American city would be looking into this rather seriously.

That is not going to happen in Seattle, however.

Katie Wilson, the city’s new socialist mayor was recently asked if she is doing any investigation into this and responded with a simple “no.”

The Post Millennial reported:

Seattle socialist mayor will NOT investigate fraud at Somali-run daycare centers, calls it attack on immigrants

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said the city has no intention of investigating fraud claims in taxpayer-funded social programs, claiming the concerns are an effort to target immigrant communities rather than address legitimate financial irregularities.

In an interview with KOMO News, Wilson was asked if she had authorized the Seattle Police Department or the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to investigate fraud charges involving daycare providers, particularly those in Somali and other immigrant communities. The mayor responded: “No.”

“This whole issue is not really about fraud,” said Wilson. “It’s about dividing and conquering. It’s about making an immigrant community a target. There’s no reason to assume based on the identity of a daycare operator that their small business is doing anything wrong.”

She added that “it’s problematic to have random people showing up to daycares” and emphasized that “the fear in the Somali community is real” and “the fear in immigrant communities are real,” saying her administration is “taking that very seriously.”

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Australia: Victoria’s Labor government oversees police state raids against anti-war protesters

Victoria’s Labor government under Premier Jacinta Allan is spearheading an increasingly authoritarian offensive against basic democratic rights, deploying counter-terrorism police in pre-dawn raids on the homes of peaceful anti-genocide protesters.

These operations are part of a broader turn to police-state methods by Labor at state and federal level, as it deepens its participation in escalating imperialist violence internationally and imposes a historic assault on the social rights of the working class.

The immediate aim of the raids is to silence and punish those who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran. But their wider purpose is even more sinister: to create an atmosphere of fear, to send a message that anyone who publicly challenges the war drive or the destruction of social conditions can expect to be treated as a security threat, have their home invaded and their life turned upside down.

The most recent raid occurred at about 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday 12 May, when Victoria Police’s Security Investigation Unit (SIU)—a counter-terror squad—descended on the home of an individual known only as “Alex,” an anti-genocide protester who had been arrested at a rally against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog in February.

In an interview with Sydney Criminal Lawyers, Alex said officers smashed open the bathroom door while she was on the toilet and grabbed her phone from her hand.

Alex was not charged, but was handed a notice compelling her to surrender her passwords, which she refused to do. The warrant cited potential offences under Victoria’s newly strengthened “hate” and “incitement” provisions—including “incitement on ground of protected attribute” and “threaten physical harm or property damage on ground of protected attribute”—yet police refused to say what specific words or actions supposedly justified a counter-terrorism raid.

“The SIU is a counterterrorism unit. One of their specialities is disruption. They want to disrupt people perceived as political enemies of the state. They’re also involved in preemptive policing and surveillance,” Alex said.

This was at least the third wave of such operations targeting Melbourne-based pro-Palestinian activists in as many months.

At about 7:00 a.m. on 17 April, roughly 50 Victoria Police officers raided four homes over a satirical guerrilla-theatre protest outside the US consulate on St Kilda Road, held on 26 March in opposition to the criminal US-Israeli war on Iran. The three performers—adopting the stage names Gina Minehard, Moregun Chase and Peta Philewrangler—poured oil and fake blood at the consulate entrance. 

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