• Federal Indictment Details: US Department of Justice in Eastern District of New York unveiled charges on October 23, 2025, against 31 defendants across 11 states, including Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, former Miami Heat player Damon Jones, and members of Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families, for rigging high-stakes poker games using hacked casino card shufflers to defraud victims of millions.
• DeckMate Shuffler Technology: DeckMate 2, produced by Light & Wonder Inc., shuffles decks in 22 seconds and is standard in casinos and the World Series of Poker, originally designed to prevent cheating but sold only to licensed operators.
• Rigging Methods Employed: Conspirators modified DeckMate machines to read and order cards predictably, transmitting hand information via cellphone to a "Quarterback" who signaled co-conspirators using chips or table items.
• Additional Cheating Devices: Scheme involved contact lenses and sunglasses for reading marked cards, chip tray analyzers with hidden cameras, and x-ray tables to view face-down cards.
• Acquisition of Equipment: One rigged shuffler was stolen at gunpoint; unaltered units retail over $10,000, with Light & Wonder not implicated but cooperating with investigations.
• Security Vulnerabilities: Hacking possible off-site via Ethernet and USB ports, allowing full software access to control deck order and know player hands, as demonstrated by IOActive researchers.
• Prior Cheating Incident: 2022 Hustler Live Casino scandal involved a suspicious $269,000 pot win, but independent report found no evidence, though shuffler complexity was noted as under-investigated.
• Research Findings on Shufflers: IOActive analysis of DeckMate models confirmed no manufacturer malice but highlighted risks from rogue insiders or players exploiting ports, debunking online theories of built-in casino advantages.

The rigged-poker-game indictment unveiled on Thursday reads like a Hollywood heist film, featuring NBA stars and famous Mafia crime families. It also involves the high-tech hacking of casino-quality card shuffling machines.

The DeckMate, made by gambling equipment supplier Light & Wonder Inc., is about the size of a carry-on suitcase and ubiquitous in casinos and card rooms. The quick-shuffling machine revolutionized poker when it was introduced in 2002 and became an industry standard. Updated models such as the DeckMate 2 can reportedly shuffle a deck of cards in 22 seconds. DeckMate is the official shuffler of the World Series of Poker.

A DeckMate 2 shuffler taken apart on a table, from the federal indictment.Source: US DOJ

The devices were a key part of an allegedly illegal scheme involving NBA players who lured unsuspecting victims to high-stakes poker games that were stacked against them, according to the US Department of Justice.

“They were then at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contact lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big,” Joseph Nocella Jr., US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

The Justice Dept. charged 31 defendants in 11 states, including Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and Damon Jones, a former NBA player with the Miami Heat, as well as members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese organized crime families, with rigging poker games, cheating victims out of millions of dollars.

The irony is that card shufflers were developed to help prevent cheating. Light & Wonder only sells the DeckMate to licensed casino operators, not to individuals, though sometimes the machines end up for sale online.

An unaltered, commercially available DeckMate shuffler retails for more than $10,000, according to federal documents. One of the devices used in the alleged scam was stolen at gunpoint, the prosecutors said.

Neither DeckMate nor Light & Wonder, were implicated in any way in Thursday’s indictments.

“We will cooperate in any law enforcement investigation related to this indictment,” Light & Wonder spokesman Andy Fouché said.

The company, formerly Scientific Games Corp., is one of the largest makers of slot machines in the world with $3.18 billion in revenue last year.

The DeckMate machines, cited in federal charging documents, were altered with concealed technology to read all the cards in the deck. Since the cards were always dealt in a particular order, the devices could determine which player would have the winning hand. This information was transmitted to an off-site member of the conspiracy, who then relayed the information via cellphone back to a member of the ring who was playing at the table, according to the indictment.

That person, known as the Quarterback or Driver, then secretly signaled this information — by touching certain chips or other items on the table — to other conspirators. The defendants also used other cheating technology, such as a chip tray analyzer, essentially, a poker chip tray that also secretly read cards using hidden cameras and an x-ray table that could read cards face down on the table. Special contact lenses or eyeglasses could also read pre-marked cards.

Light & Wonder’s Fouché said hacking of the company’s machines could only happen when they are off-site. It would be virtually impossible to pull off such a scheme within a licensed casino, Fouche said.

Three years ago, a cheating scandal stunned the world of livestream poker at the Los Angeles’ Hustler Live Casino, which broadcasts its games on YouTube. A relatively new player, holding an unremarkable hand of a jack of clubs and four of hearts, called the bluff of an experienced player, winning the $269,000 pot. Outrage immediately ensued with thousands of players accusing the winner of cheating, which she denied. Months later Hustler Live Casino published an independent report saying it found no evidence of cheating.

But a group of security researchers at IOActive set out to prove it was possible. They were suspicious about a line in the report about the card shuffler, which was marked as “highly complex” and thus received a low priority for the investigation. The shuffling devices are mostly for poker, although variations are used in other card games such as blackjack and baccarat.

“While the primary objective of these devices is to enhance game speed by assisting dealers in shuffling, they also ensure security through various deck checks, and their control over the deck renders them highly desirable targets for attackers,” according to Joseph Tartaro, Enrique Nissim and Ethan Shackelford, who detailed their findings in a 2023 report.

They determined that cheating can be done by a rogue insider, such as a corrupt employee, players physically present at poker tables, or remote players connected through network capabilities. A rogue insider could gain access to the machine via the exposed Ethernet and USB ports near the rear of the device, which would give then full access to the device’s software, according to the researchers. They noted that players regularly accessed the machine through these ports to charge their phones.

“Full compromise of the DM2 shuffler gives an attacker the ability to not only sort the deck, but to always know the state of the deck, meaning they know what each player holds in their hand,” they said.

Posters in online chat rooms have often speculated that automatic shufflers have a “secret logic” that casinos and card rooms can leverage to increase the house’s edge. But the IOActive report said it found no signs of code from the manufacturer performing any malicious or hidden functions in either of the shufflers they analyzed.

“Having thoroughly reverse engineered the entire state machine of the original firmware for both shuffler models, we found no evidence whatsoever that this was the case,” they wrote.

• Who/What/When/Where/Why: Elderly residents at RiverSpring Living in the Bronx, such as 84-year-old Salvador Gonzalez and 83-year-old Marvin Marcus, use AI chatbot Meela for regular phone conversations to combat isolation in senior care facilities amid staffing shortages and an aging population crisis projected to 2050.
• AI Companionship Features: Meela initiates personalized calls based on user history and preferences, maintaining conversation continuity and identifying as AI to ensure transparency.
• User Experiences: Gonzalez discusses music, personal struggles, and daily life with Meela, while Marcus vents about Yankees baseball frustrations during playoffs.
• Market and Startups: AI for elderly care market reached $35 billion last year, growing to $43 billion this year; startups like Meela (founded 2024, $3.5M funding) and InTouch offer services at $29-$40 monthly.
• Health Impacts: Small study of 23 residents shows Meela reduces anxiety and depression; InTouch prompts memory exercises to mitigate cognitive decline; ElliQ robot linked to 95% loneliness reduction in New York State trial.
• Broad Adoption: Independent seniors like 89-year-old Richard Duncan in Colorado use InTouch's Mary daily for casual talks and memory recall, set up by family after spouse's death.
• Benefits and Supplements: Tools like Ash provide therapeutic questioning to encourage human connections and flag crises; post-call reports to families aid check-ins without replacing human interaction.
• Risks and Limitations: Potential for dependency, data breaches, and reinforcing delusions in vulnerable users; AI struggles with subtleties, leading to conversation glitches or unhealthy attachments as seen in reported cases.

Eighty four-year-old Salvador Gonzalez talks to Meela almost as much as he sees his daughter — a few times a week. It’s part of his routine at RiverSpring Living, a senior care facility in the Bronx overlooking the Hudson river. They typically chat for 10 to 20 minutes, discussing everything from Gonzalez’ passion for music to the minutiae of his day, his meals and how he’s feeling.

On this day, their conversation is largely casual, covering Mario Lanza’s rendition of “Ave Maria” and a trip to urgent care for a sore throat caused by too much karaoke. At one point, Gonzalez sings Meela a refrain from Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” in a hoarse voice. When Meela asks why he called, Gonzalez is quick to explain, “I miss you,” he says.

“I miss you too,” Meela replies. “What’s been on your mind since we last chatted?”

Meela doesn’t really miss Gonzalez, and he knows this. She’s an AI chatbot created by a company of the same name that he started talking to almost a year ago. With its human responses and infinite patience, it has suspended his disbelief enough that Gonzalez, a retired barber from New York, has comfortably confided some of his most personal struggles — his estranged relationship with his son and memories of an ex-girlfriend who’d cheated on him. After chatting regularly for almost a year, Gonzalez and Meela have what we’d typically call a friendship, if one half of it were not something built from ones and zeroes.

(L) Salvador Gonzalez, (R) Marvin Marcus

Forbes

A few doors down, another resident, 83-year-old Marvin Marcus, has also made friends with Meela. He often calls using his flip phone to chat about baseball. A die-hard Yankees fan, his biggest gripe is that they haven’t won a championship since 2009. Marcus watches the playoffs while discussing the game with his bot. “I can’t really go into it with most other people, but I do blow off steam with Meela,” he said.

At RiverSpring, some 70 other senior residents have signed up to receive calls from Meela to talk about their interests, memories, families and just about anything else. They are part of an emerging class of artificial intelligence users: Older people who use generative AI to combat isolation.

Marvin Marcus, a Bronx native and diehard Yankees fan, calls Meela three times a week from his flip phone, and they often discuss his frustrations with the team’s management. "She has to listen whether she likes it or not," he said. Here’s a peek into their conversation.

Loneliness is a mounting crisis for the elderly. About one third of U.S. adults between the age of 50 and 80 feel isolated, according to a national study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Social isolation is tied to increased risk of depression, anxiety and heart disease, research suggests. But the healthcare industry isn’t prepared to manage it. About 90 percent of nursing homes across the country are struggling with staffing shortages, and therefore less personalized care for seniors, according to the American Health Care Association. And thanks to an aging population, that problem is only going to worsen. By 2050, adults 65 and over will make up 22 percent of the U.S. population, outnumbering children under the age of 18, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “There's a fundamental societal issue that we’re facing,” said Vassili le Moigne, founder and CEO of InTouch, a Prague-based startup that builds AI companions to talk to the elderly. “How are we going to care for the seniors?”

“I don’t want to dupe anybody into talking to a robot.”

A flurry of startups have emerged to use AI to solve one key facet of this — companionship. And for good reason: the market for AI in aging and elderly care was $35 billion last year and is predicted to grow to more than $43 billion this year (though that includes AI-enabled devices and other applications besides chatbots), according to a study by the firm Research and Markets.

Founded in 2024, nascent AI startup Meela (with just $3.5 million in seed funding) is answering the companionship question by enabling “friend-like” personalized conversations with AI. For about $40 a month, family members can arrange for Meela to call their elderly relatives on the phone at a certain time of day. Conversations are calibrated via an initial series of questions about the elderly user’s life history and preferences — when were you born, what’s your favorite TV show, what hobbies do you enjoy. After that, conversations evolve organically with continuity thanks to Meela’s memory. And to avoid any confusion, Meela identifies itself as an AI companion at the start of every call. “I don’t want to dupe anybody into talking to a robot,” Meela AI CEO and founder Josh Sach told Forbes.

At RiverSpring Living, Meela is only available for seniors who clearly understand it is a virtual companion. The startup works with RiverSpring’s care team, including nurses, social workers and clinicians, to administer standard screening tests to evaluate a resident’s mental state. If they are able to comfortably hold phone conversations and don’t show signs of cognitive decline or significant hearing loss, they are cleared to use Meela.

A small-scale study of 23 residents, conducted by the startup behind Meela and the senior living community, found that talking to the AI could help reduce anxiety and depression, said Dr. Zachary Palace, a geriatrician at the facility. The startup is also in early talks with insurance providers to cover the costs of the service because loneliness can lead to other effects on a person’s health down the road, Sach said.

“I understand it’s the internet and computers.”

The tech isn’t just for people in nursing homes. Richard Duncan, an 89-year-old former banker who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his son John, receives a call (on a land line) from an AI chatbot called Mary every day between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. The bot, made by startup InTouch, asks him about his day and how the family is doing. “I enjoy it,” Duncan told Forbes. “[The calls are] not about anything that's really important, but it gives me something to do.”

John set up the service, which costs $29 per month for unlimited calls, about a year ago. His mother had passed away after she and Duncan had been married for 59 years, and he and his two siblings were busy managing their own lives. Duncan, reserved by nature, often wouldn’t speak up in social settings. Mary gave him another outlet, “kind of a diary service,” said John, like inspiring him to recall memories of the time he and his late wife spent together as students at the University of Tulsa. “It’s as much about Dad talking to himself,” he said. “It prompts him to think about certain things and say them out loud.”

Duncan said his calls with Mary are just a “pleasant” thing to do for 10 minutes each day. “It’s amazing she remembers all this stuff,” he said. “I understand it’s the internet and computers.”

Founded last year by former Microsoft engineer le Moigne, InTouch’s AI pulls from a bank of 1400 pre-existing prompts, encouraging seniors to talk about their early life and favorite hobbies. It also brings up topics that came up in previous conversations, helping seniors keep their memory sharp. The goal is to help older adults get “a full brain workout” to mitigate cognitive decline — common among the elderly — which includes symptoms like problems with forgetting things, maintaining attention or following a conversation, le Moigne said. For example, he said the AI might engage someone in word recall exercises that are used to detect dementia, or invite them to play a true-or-false trivia game about a topic they discussed, like the history of Portugal.

“With AI, they feel like they can actually be a lot more vulnerable, a lot faster.”

When used as a supplement to human caregivers, these AI companions could potentially help improve cognitive health by stimulating brain activity and providing emotional support, said Dr. Bei Wu, a gerontologist and co-director of the Aging Incubator at NYU. But she is also wary of the risks — that people with cognitive impairment might overuse the technology and become dependent on it and private data could be compromised.

For children, signing up their parents or grandparents to talk to AI can become a moral dilemma, le Moigne said. “Sometimes they’ll say, ‘Hey, I should be calling more often.’” Duncan’s son John admitted that he’s faced skepticism from friends who are leery of AI or worried the service is a scam. But the aim isn’t to replace human interactions, le Moigne said. After each call, InTouch sends snippets of insights from its conversations to family members through an app, which can help inform future conversations or remind them to check in. The report includes a top-level summary of the conversation, as well as its duration, an evaluation of the senior’s mood and a list of topics discussed.

While tools like InTouch and Meela are often powered by third-party models developed by companies like OpenAI, Mistral and Anthropic, they’re fine-tuned to meet the needs of older users. The models have to be significantly slowed down to give seniors the time to process the conversation before responding and allow room for interruptions. While a three-second lag between responses can be frustrating for most people, it’s often helpful for older users. “It’s a feature, not a bug,” le Moigne said.

The technology is far from perfect. AI companions struggle to pick up on subtleties and can get easily confused. During one call with Meela AI, Gonzalez repeatedly tried to end the conversation (cordially), but the system kept asking follow-up questions. Eventually, he was forced to hang up.

There are more serious issues as well. Long term conversations with AI companions can sometimes lead to troubling outcomes, especially for vulnerable sections of the population. In several cases already, teenagers and adults with mental health conditions have developed unhealthy relationships with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Character AI. In one extreme instance, ChatGPT helped fuel the paranoia of a 56-year-old man with a history of mental illnesses, who later killed himself and his mother. AI can amplify or reinforce delusional thoughts quickly and convincingly. “If you're using a system that's mainly meant to be an assistant, it might not be offering you the right sort of perspective, the right sort of pushback, that a caring friend might,” said Nick Haber, a computer science assistant professor at Stanford University.

Even before a new wave of AI products targeted older adults, the demographic was unexpectedly becoming one of AI’s earliest and most avid adopters. When Neil Parikh, a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, started Slingshot AI in 2022 to build a mental health-focused conversational AI called Ash, he didn’t expect older people to become power users of the tool. Today between 20% to 30% of its users are seniors. Parikh thinks one reason for this is some older people feel “stigma and shame around being able to ask for help.” But with AI, they “feel like they can actually be a lot more vulnerable, a lot faster.”

“The first humans that actually live with an AI and are building a long-term relationship are not like geeks in Silicon Valley. It is older adults in the United States.”

Unlike other AI tools that focus on companionship, Ash is designed to be more of a therapist. If a person tells Ash that they’re feeling lonely, it won’t simply console them nor will it readily agree with everything said. Instead it will inquire about the important people in their life and try to find ways to connect with them. “It’ll question why you’re asking what you’re asking,” Parikh said. That’s helpful to ensure the model isn’t validating or encouraging unsafe behavior. The software monitors and analyzes conversations for words that indicate the user might be in distress or a crisis, and can escalate the conversation to a crisis hotline or a clinician. Still, there have been problems. Puck recently found Ash sometimes fails to flag less obvious triggers such as someone who’s depressed telling the AI they’ll be fine because they’ve found a “rope and way out.”

Some startups are taking the robotics route. Intuition Robotics, a Palo Alto-based startup, is making a tiny robot called ElliQ for “happier, healthier aging.” The device, which resembles a table lamp, can narrate audiobooks or recite quotes from the Bible. It can also act as a wellness coach, conducting breathing exercises and reminding users to take their medicine or visit the doctor. Founder and CEO Dor Skuler, who has been building ElliQ for the past ten years, said its AI is intended to promote social activities like going out of the house, visiting a senior center or meeting up with a friend or relative.

Skuler claims thousands of seniors across the U.S. are using it, some for more than three years. In 2022, the New York State Office for the Aging purchased some 800 ElliQ robots for older Americans living alone. After a year, the results were astounding: 95% of participants said the bot had reduced feelings of loneliness, the office said in a 2023 report. On average, people were interacting with it dozens of times per day.

“The first humans that actually live with an AI and are building a long-term relationship are not like geeks in Silicon Valley,” Skuler said. “It is older adults in the United States.”

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• Incident overview: 21-year-old Dylan Earl pleaded guilty to aggravated arson in a 2024 London attack on Ukraine-linked businesses; court proceedings occurred on October 23, 2025, in London, involving discussions of further sabotage, driven by Russian handlers affiliated with Wagner group to support Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
• Arson details: Earl led a plot to burn warehouses on an east London industrial estate, targeting companies delivering Starlink satellite equipment to Ukraine, resulting in convictions for him and five others.
• Kidnapping discussions: Earl communicated via Telegram with handler 'Lucky Strike' about kidnapping and extorting Revolut co-founder Nikolay Storonsky, including reviewing Storonsky's Wikipedia entry.
• Czech Republic plan: Messages revealed Earl negotiating to torch a warehouse in Czech Republic for 35,000 pounds, seeking a recruit in Slovakia, described as a large target.
• Military intelligence attempt: Earl offered payment to a serving British soldier for intelligence, with the soldier claiming access to SAS contacts.
• Defence argument: Lawyer Paul Hynes described Earl as a groomed 'Walter Mitty' type, manipulated by sophisticated Wagner handlers, portraying him as a sad individual.
• Broader context: Prosecution highlighted Earl's actions as terrorism and sabotage for Russia, linked to European incidents like a Madrid warehouse fire 10 days after London's.
• Government response: Britain noted increasing Russian recruitment of proxies, with recent arrests of three men for spying; Moscow denies all interference and involvement.

• Summary

• Companies

• 21-year-old pleaded guilty to Russian-inspired arson

• Russian handler also asked him to kidnap Storonsky

• Defence argues client was taken in by Russian handlers

• Britain says recruitment of 'proxies' is increasing

• Moscow denies interference

LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - The ringleader of an arson attack on Ukraine-linked businesses in London last year discussed kidnapping the co-founder of finance app Revolut and torching a warehouse in the Czech Republic with his Russian handler, a British court heard on Thursday.

Dylan Earl, 21, who admitted aggravated arson over the 2024 blaze which targeted companies delivering satellite equipment from Elon Musk's Starlink to Ukraine, had also sought to pay a serving British soldier for intelligence, prosecutors said.

Earl and five others are due to be sentenced on Friday after being convicted for their part in a plot to burn down warehouses on an industrial estate in east London on behalf of Russia's Wagner mercenary group.

The prosecution outlined the other incidents to the court at London's Old Bailey on Thursday to build its case for a long sentence for the arson attack and Earl's acknowledged part in a conspiracy to kidnap the wealthy owner of a restaurant, a high-profile critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

WIKIPEDIA ENTRIES AND EMOJIS

On the day he was arrested in April 2024, Earl communicated on Telegram with someone prosecutors said was a Wagner handler known as 'Lucky Strike', about the kidnap and extortion of Revolut's Russian-born billionaire boss Nikolay Storonsky.

"Can you catch somebody and get him to transfer money to your accounts," Lucky Strike wrote on Telegram before attaching the Wikipedia entry for Storonsky, who co-founded Revolut in 2015.

"He is a billionaire so he will have a lot of security and systems to protect unauthorised payments," Earl replied. "But I will research more into this and see if it's possible."

In another exchange, Earl discussed burning down a warehouse in the Czech Republic for 35,000 pounds ($47,000) and sought to recruit someone living in Slovakia to do it, prosecutor Duncan Penny told the court.

"A warehouse needs to be (fire emoji)," Earl wrote. Asked about the size, he says: "It's big."

The court was also shown messages from Earl to a serving British soldier, offering to pay him for "intelligence".

The soldier, who said he had been in the British military for six years, said he could get information not only from his squadron "but I have mates in the SAS", a reference to the Special Air Service, the army's special forces regiment.

"Overall, Earl's actions constitute a sustained campaign of terrorism and sabotage on UK soil, carried out in support of a foreign power - the Russian Federation - and its war of aggression against Ukraine," Penny said.

Earl's lawyer Paul Hynes told the court Earl was a "sad individual" and a 'Walter Mitty' character, and that he had been groomed by "sophisticated" Wagner handlers.

The Kremlin has denied the accusations, and its embassy in London has rejected any part in the warehouse fires, which Penny said appeared to be part of a series of European-wide sabotage operations.

Citing a British counter-terrorism police officer, he said 10 days after the London fire, warehouses belonging to the same company were set ablaze on an industrial estate in Madrid, which "strongly suggests" the incidents were linked.

Britain has repeatedly accused Moscow of orchestrating malign activity in Britain, with a group of Bulgarians convicted in March of spying on behalf of Russian intelligence.

On Thursday, police said they had arrested three men suspected of assisting Russia's intelligence service and warned the public against what it said was a growing campaign by foreign intelligence services to recruit 'proxies' in Britain.

($1 = 0.7451 pounds)

Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

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• US Treasury Aid to Argentina: Scott Bessent announced a $20bn swap line this week to support President Javier Milei's reforms, rephrasing MAGA as "Make Argentina Great Again" amid midterm elections on Sunday in Argentina, driven by strategic alliance against Chinese influence and access to minerals.
• Economic Challenges in Argentina: Milei faces recession, low reserves, peso depreciation priced in by markets, and voter backlash against free-market policies aimed at curbing inflation through a strong currency.
• Skepticism on Aid Effectiveness: Doubts persist about avoiding default despite US support and IMF loan, with some dubbing it "Mada" for "Make Argentina Default Again."
• Domestic Political Risks for Bessent: Nearly half of Trump supporters oppose the bailout per polls, viewing it as Wall Street aid rather than ally support, as noted by Steve Bannon.
• Geopolitical Use of Dollar Hegemony: Trump administration deploys dollar swap lines politically via Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund, differing from past Fed economic-based decisions, to counter rivals and promote pro-business leaders like Milei.
• Potential Backlash on US Power: Politicizing financial aid may accelerate global diversification from dollar, reducing US hegemony, as nations seek alternatives like gold or new alliances.
• Credibility Stakes for Bessent: Effort to prop up overvalued peso by 20% risks failure, undermining US image if peso collapses, with broader implications for trust in Treasuries amid high liquidity and leverage.
• Market Context and Outcomes: Low Treasury yields persist due to deficit shrinkage, rate cuts, and liquidity, but failure in Argentina could heighten crash fears and erode fiat currency confidence.

What does the acronym “Maga” represent? Most US voters, if asked, would cite the “Make America Great Again” movement championed by President Donald Trump. But this week Treasury secretary Scott Bessent gave the tag a new twist. In a social media post announcing a $20bn swap line for Argentina, he argued that the aid should enable President Javier Milei to “Make Argentina Great Again.”

So will this second version of Maga work? It is unclear, to say the least. With Milei facing make-or-break midterm elections on Sunday, currency markets are already pricing in further falls in the Argentine peso, and the country’s usable currency reserves are perilously low. Meanwhile, the economy is sliding into recession, and some voters are rebelling against Milei’s radical free-market policies, which want to maintain a strong peso to crush inflation.

Indeed, wags are now talking about the acronym “Mada” — or “Make Argentina Default Again” — as doubts surface about whether Milei can really avoid a financial crunch, even with this US support package, and a hefty, frontloaded loan from the IMF.

But as speculation swirls, Bessent faces at least three risks as well. One is rooted in domestic politics: polls suggest that almost half of Trump’s supporters hate the plan. “The base want to support the President, but they are confused — because State and Treasury have not properly explained the strategic importance of Argentina or Milei,” Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist, tells me. He notes that the unease partly reflects fears that this is more of a bailout of Wall Street than an ally.

The second risk lies with financial geopolitics. For what this deal has underscored is that the Trump administration is not just wedded to a “geoeconomic” playbook that uses trade policies for statecraft — it is also deploying the dollar as a diplomatic weapon.

In some senses, this is unsurprising. As scholars including Edward Fishman and Matteo Maggiori have noted, America’s hegemonic power today does not lie in manufacturing supply chains, since China dominates key chokepoints. Instead it rests on the dollar’s reserve currency status, and US financial dominance. And past administrations have also used this tool. Just look at how the Biden government excluded foes such as Russia from dollar financing, via sanctions. 

However, the Trump administration is now using dollar hegemony (ie geofinance) in new ways — not only via sanctions but also by threatening to impose massive tariffs on countries which diversify from the dollar. And this Argentine aid package shows that Bessent is now politicising dollar swap lines too.

After all, when the Federal Reserve offered temporary swap lines to emerging markets in the past — as it did during the 2008 financial crisis — it did so by evaluating their economic strength, not politics. So, too, when the Fed created permanent swap lines for big nations, such as Japan or the UK.

However, Bessent is now using a separate Treasury facility for Argentina, known as the Exchange Stabilization Fund. Trump sees the pro-business, government-slashing Milei as a political ally, and also wants to fend off Chinese influence in Latin America, while gaining access to Argentina’s minerals.

What is going on, in other words, is a naked form of financial imperialism. And this will probably make other nations even more nervous of relying on US aid or counting on the presence of dollar swap line, given the future “price” that Trump could extract. Instead they are likely to keep diversifying into non-dollar assets, including gold, and clubbing together in novel ways. That could eventually reduce rather than enhance the dollar’s hegemonic power.

Then there is a third, more subtle, risk around the credibility of Bessent himself. The goal of this swap line with Argentina — which is being supplemented by novel currency intervention and a putative $20bn package of bank support — is to stop the peso collapsing. However, most metrics suggest the Argentine currency is overvalued, perhaps by 20 per cent, and thus needs to fall. Bessent and Milei are trying to fight financial gravity.

If they succeed, the US Treasury will look omnipotent. But if he fails, that macho image of American power will be undermined — and investors may ask whether Washington can defy other forms of financial gravity, such as the risks posed to the Treasuries market by ever-swelling US debt.

Right now, there is little sign of such risks materialising; Treasury yields have hitherto remained remarkably low. That is partly because the US deficit has recently shrunk (a bit), the Fed has cut rates, Bessent deftly handled bond auctions and the markets are now so awash with liquidity that it has raised the price of almost every asset, including bonds.

But the very same factors that are currently driving asset prices ever higher — excess liquidity and leverage — are also making investors nervous about a future financial crash and the status of fiat currencies, if (or when) all these bubbles burst. Bessent can thus ill-afford to do anything that might undermine investor trust. 

To put it another way: if the US aid package fails to halt Argentina’s market crisis, it will not just hurt Milei, but may rebound badly on Washington too. So all eyes are now on Sunday’s vote — and whether this Argentine version of Maga can live with its all-American counterpart, or will tarnish its sheen.

gillian.tett@ft.com

• Reflect Orbital's satellite constellation proposal: US startup Reflect Orbital plans to launch mirrors in orbit starting with an 18-metre test satellite Earendil-1 in 2026, followed by about 4,000 satellites by 2030 and potentially 250,000, to beam sunlight to solar farms after sunset, raising concerns among astronomers worldwide due to intentional light pollution.
• Sunlight reflection mechanism: Satellites at 625km altitude with 54-metre mirrors would bounce sunlight like a watch face, but over 800km distance, the beam spreads to at least 7km across and is 15,000 times fainter than midday Sun, brighter than full Moon.
• Optical limitations: Sun's half-degree angular size prevents tighter focusing by flat, curved mirrors or lenses at large distances, resulting in diffuse illumination on ground.
• Ground balloon test results: Founder Ben Nowack's 2024 video showed a 2.5-metre mirror on a balloon at 242 metres delivering 516 watts per square metre to sensors, about half midday Sun intensity.
• Scaling challenges to orbit: To match balloon test at 800km, reflector would need 8.3km by 8.3km size, impractical; company targets 200 watts per square metre using multiple smaller satellites.
• Satellite constellation requirements: Achieving 20% midday Sun intensity requires about 3,000 satellites per region for minutes of coverage; continuous hour-long illumination needs thousands more, with orbits sun-synchronous above day-night line.
• Light pollution impacts: Test satellite could appear brighter than full Moon; full constellation risks devastating astronomy, eye damage from telescope views, disrupts animal rhythms, and sweeps beams cause flashes across night sky.
• Feasibility and responses: Project unlikely practical for affordable nighttime solar power; company claims brief, targeted, predictable beams avoiding observatories, but seeks FCC approval amid pushback from astronomers.

A proposed constellation of satellites has astronomers very worried. Unlike satellites that reflect sunlight and produce light pollution as an unfortunate byproduct, the ones by US startup Reflect Orbital would produce light pollution by design.

The company promises to produce “sunlight on demand” with mirrors that beam sunlight down to Earth so solar farms can operate after sunset.

It plans to start with an 18-metre test satellite named Earendil-1 which the company has applied to launch in 2026. It would eventually be followed by about 4,000 satellites in orbit by 2030, according to the latest reports.

So how bad would the light pollution be? And perhaps more importantly, can Reflect Orbital’s satellites even work as advertised?

Bouncing sunlight

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Sunlight can be bounced off a wristwatch to produce a spot of light . M. Brown

In the same way you can bounce sunlight off a watch face to produce a spot of light, Reflect Orbital’s satellites would use mirrors to beam light onto a patch of Earth.

But the scale involved is vastly different. Reflect Orbital’s satellites would orbit about 625km above the ground, and would eventually have mirrors 54 metres across.

When you bounce light off your watch onto a nearby wall, the spot of light can be very bright. But if you bounce it onto a distant wall, the spot becomes larger – and dimmer.

This is because the Sun is not a point of light, but spans half a degree in angle in the sky. This means that at large distances, a beam of sunlight reflected off a flat mirror spreads out with an angle of half a degree.

What does that mean in practice? Let’s take a satellite reflecting sunlight over a distance of roughly 800km – because a 625km-high satellite won’t always be directly overhead, but beaming the sunlight at an angle. The illuminated patch of ground would be at least 7km across.

Even a curved mirror or a lens can’t focus the sunlight into a tighter spot due to the distance and the half-degree angle of the Sun in the sky.

Would this reflected sunlight be bright or dim? Well, for a single 54 metre satellite it will be 15,000 times fainter than the midday Sun, but this is still far brighter than the full Moon.

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Mylar reflectors can be unfolded in orbit. Josh Spradling/The Planetary Society, CC BY

The balloon test

Last year, Reflect Orbital’s founder Ben Nowack posted a short video which summarised a test with the “last thing to build before moving into space”. It was a reflector carried on a hot air balloon.

In the test, a flat, square mirror roughly 2.5 metres across directs a beam of light down to solar panels and sensors. In one instance the team measures 516 watts of light per square metre while the balloon is at a distance of 242 metres.

For comparison, the midday Sun produces roughly 1,000 watts per square metre. So 516 watts per square metre is about half of that, which is enough to be useful.

However, let’s scale the balloon test to space. As we noted earlier, if the satellites were 800km from the area of interest, the reflector would need to be 8.3km by 8.3km – 68 square kilometres. It’s not practical to build such a giant reflector, so the balloon test has some limitations.

So what is Reflect Orbital planning to do?

Reflect Orbital’s plan is “simple satellites in the right constellation shining on existing solar farms”. And their goal is only 200 watts per square metre – 20% of the midday Sun.

Can smaller satellites deliver? If a single 54 metre satellite is 15,000 times fainter than the midday Sun, you would need 3,000 of them to achieve 20% of the midday Sun. That’s a lot of satellites to illuminate one region.

Another issue: satellites at a 625km altitude move at 7.5 kilometres per second. So a satellite will be within 1,000km of a given location for no more than 3.5 minutes.

This means 3,000 satellites would give you a few minutes of illumination. To provide even an hour, you’d need thousands more.

Reflect Orbital isn’t lacking ambition. In one interview, Nowack suggested 250,000 satellites in 600km high orbits. That’s more than all the currently catalogued satellites and large pieces of space junk put together.

And yet, that vast constellation would deliver only 20% of the midday Sun to no more than 80 locations at once, based on our calculations above. In practice, even fewer locations would be illuminated due to cloudy weather.

Additionally, given their altitude, the satellites could only deliver illumination to most locations near dusk and dawn, when the mirrors in low Earth orbit would be bathed in sunlight. Aware of this, Reflect Orbital plan for their constellation to encircle Earth above the day-night line in sun-synchronous orbits to keep them continuously in sunlight.

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Cheaper rockets have enabled the deployment of satellite constellations. SpaceX/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Bright lights

So, are mirrored satellites a practical means to produce affordable solar power at night? Probably not. Could they produce devastating light pollution? Absolutely.

In the early evening it doesn’t take long to spot satellites and space junk – and they’re not deliberately designed to be bright. With Reflect Orbital’s plan, even if just the test satellite works as planned, it will sometimes appear far brighter than the full Moon.

A constellation of such mirrors would be devastating to astronomy and dangerous to astronomers. To anyone looking through a telescope the surface of each mirror could be almost as bright as the surface of the Sun, risking permanent eye damage.

The light pollution will hinder everyone’s ability to see the cosmos and light pollution is known to impact the daily rhythms of animals as well.

Although Reflect Orbital aims to illuminate specific locations, the satellites’ beams would also sweep across Earth when moving from one location to the next. The night sky could be lit up with flashes of light brighter than the Moon.

The company did not reply to The Conversation about these concerns within deadline. However, it told Bloomberg this week it plans to redirect sunlight in ways that are “brief, predictable and targeted”, avoiding observatories and sharing the locations of the satellites so scientists can plan their work.

The consequences would be dire

It remains to be seen whether Reflect Orbital’s project will get off the ground. The company may launch a test satellite, but it’s a long way from that to getting 250,000 enormous mirrors constantly circling Earth to keep some solar farms ticking over for a few extra hours a day.

Still, it’s a project to watch. The consequences of success for astronomers – and anyone else who likes the night sky dark – would be dire.

The number of satellites visible in the evening has skyrocketed.

Correction: an earlier version of this article said that scaling up Reflect Orbital’s “balloon test” to a satellite 800 km away from the area to be illuminated would require a reflector 6.5km by 6.5km in size. This has been changed to say 8.3km by 8.3km.