Editor’s Note: Jeff Brown and Marc Chaikin, two investment legends who picked Nvidia 10 years ago, are predicting that by the end of this month, Elon Musk’s new AI breakthrough will collide with a strange market pattern with a flawless 100% track record of massive market gains. Click here to see the details or read more below because the last time this happened everyday folks had a chance to turn $10,000 into as much as $350,000 in just about 12 months.

Dear Reader,

Where should you invest $100 right now?

Well, Elon Musk just invented and patented this new AI technology…

And he’s predicting it will launch a NEW industry that will grow more than 7 million percent in the coming years.

Think about how insane that is.

That would be enough to grow a single $100 bill into more than $7 million.

Even if Elon is only 10% right…

That would still be enough to grow $100 into more than $700,000.

That’s how big this opportunity is.

So please click here to see the details because this breakthrough could create so much wealth that Elon Musk calls it…

“An infinite money glitch.”

We have so much to look forward to,

Jeff Brown
Founder & CEO, Brownstone Research

Friday, August 14, 2026

Ships pay up to $2 million per crossing.

On May 5, 2026, Iran created a government agency called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. It controls who passes through the Strait of Hormuz. That channel carries roughly one-quarter of the world's seaborne oil.

The process works like a permit office. A ship emails [email protected]. It discloses its owner, insurer, crew, and cargo. If approved, the ship pays between $1.5 million and $2 million. Then the IRGC, Iran's military branch, escorts it through.

That is not the story. IRGC advisers flew to Yemen to build the same thing for the Houthis. The Houthis are the armed group that controls northern Yemen. They sit on the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

Iran built a toll authority for one chokepoint and is now handing the blueprint to a proxy militia at a second. The Houthis are not a state. They have no sovereignty, no treaty obligations, and no legal standing under the rules designed to prevent this. Every mechanism the international system has to stop it requires a state on the other side.

President Trump just returned from Beijing with the most powerful business delegation in American history…

Elon Musk. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Apple’s Tim Cook. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the CEOs of CitiBank, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs.

The media covered the handshakes, the state banquet, the 200 Boeing jets that China agreed to buy.

But, of course, they missed the real story.

Because while the world watched the pageantry, I believe something far more consequential was being negotiated behind closed doors.

Trump wasn't in Beijing to talk about soy beans. He was there to secure America's hemispheric grip on the most critical resource of the 21st century.

So precious, he desperately needs it to reverse the decline of the U.S. dollar. And so powerful, Vladimir Putin has said whoever controls it will "become the ruler of the world."

No one seems to be asking why Trump brought the CEOs of the world's most powerful technology and energy companies onto Air Force One.

Or what those men – who between them control more capital than most nations – were really there to negotiate.

And nobody has connected what went down in Beijing to a landmark pact signed by 13 nations in Washington just months ago – a pact designed to cut China out of the biggest investment wave in financial history.

But I have.

And what I've uncovered could impact everything about your financial future – from your stock portfolio to your retirement account to the purchasing power of every dollar you've saved.

In my new documentary, I expose exactly what Trump is really doing, how he has completely bypassed Congress to make it happen – and the five mission-critical assets sitting at the heart of his shocking, $3 trillion gambit.

Go here for the full story

The PGSA runs like a bureaucracy because it is one. Every vessel applies. Every application is vetted. Every approved ship gets an armed escort and a bill. Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the country's top security body, oversees the fee structure.

This is not a shakedown at sea. It is an administered system with forms, approvals, and a published email address. That distinction matters. A shakedown can be dismissed. An institution can be copied.

Observation: Iran has charged up to $2 million per large tanker transit since mid-May 2026. IRGC naval escorts complete each passage.
Interpretation: The PGSA converts military control of a chokepoint into a revenue-generating administrative system. The institutional structure is what makes it exportable.

Officials from Yemen's internationally recognized government have identified the architects. Information Minister Eryani stated that IRGC experts are designing the administrative framework for a Houthi toll authority. Foreign minister-designate al-Zouba put it simply: the Houthis are seeking to "copy the Iranian model."

Houthi officials traveled to Iran in July for the funeral of Supreme Leader Khamenei. According to Reuters, the delegation discussed the toll framework during the visit. They returned to Yemen with Iranian advisers.

The Houthi-run maritime operations center denied the reports. It called its safe-passage service voluntary and said transit is free of charge. The institutional build-out continues alongside the denial.

UNCLOS, the UN treaty governing international straits, guarantees ships the right of transit passage. It prohibits bordering states from taxing that passage. The IMO, the UN's shipping agency, stated plainly: no international agreement allows tolls on international straits.

But UNCLOS applies to states. The Houthis are not one. There is no treaty signatory to hold accountable. No legal counterparty to bring to the table.

Observation: IRGC advisers are in Yemen building an administrative toll framework for a non-state armed group at the Bab el-Mandeb.
Interpretation: The legal architecture that keeps international straits open assumes a state actor on the other side. A non-state operator falls outside that framework entirely.

The system does not need legal recognition to function. It needs enforcement and selective access. Both are already operating.

China is the world's biggest buyer of Saudi oil. It held direct talks with the Houthis to get its tankers through the southern Red Sea. Chinese officials cleared each vessel individually. Both sides informed Iran. The Houthis declared a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia on July 20. Since then, at least four Chinese tankers bound for China crossed the strait without incident.

Everyone else faces a different cost structure. War-risk insurance jumped from roughly 0.3% of hull value to 0.75% after the blockade. For Saudi-linked ships, rates hit 3%. Even a fraction of a percentage point adds hundreds of thousands of dollars to a single voyage. The premium itself functions as a toll. No fee schedule required. Overall vessel traffic through the strait fell 24%. Mainstream tanker traffic dropped 42% in one week.

The world's second-largest economy is negotiating ship-by-ship passage with a militia. Some ships pass freely. Others pay enormous premiums. Others reroute entirely. That is tiered access, and it is already functioning.

Observation: China has secured individual vessel clearances with the Houthis while insurance costs for non-exempt ships have risen tenfold on Saudi-linked routes.
Interpretation: A two-tier system does not require formal tolls. It requires coercive capacity and selective enforcement.

The Bab el-Mandeb handles roughly 12% of global seaborne oil trade. The cost of crossing it is no longer set by fuel and distance alone. It depends on who owns the ship and where the cargo goes. A bilateral deal with the group at the chokepoint changes the price entirely.

Two signals are worth tracking. The first is the Houthi institutional build-out. If a formal authority appears with an application process and published fees, the Hormuz model has been replicated. Both the Sana'a Center in Yemen and the Synergia Foundation in India have warned that this model is repeatable. Any armed group with missiles, drones, and a position near a strait becomes a candidate.

The second signal is insurance pricing. A 14-nation maritime defense coalition led by Saudi Arabia is forming to secure the passage. Insurance premiums for non-exempt vessels are the indicator. They measure whether military presence offsets coercive capacity at the chokepoint.

A tiered access system is forming across two chokepoints, outside any legal framework built to prevent it. The template started at [email protected]. The first franchise is under construction.

Until next time,
The Navigator