we've seen increases in transponders going dark. they are essentially falling off the map. you're not supposed to turn them off for hours at a time unless they are going through pirate-infested waters. that doesn't seem to be the case here. windward, the artificial intelligence that tracks ships, they said there has been an increase in the numbers of affiliated russian ships going dark this week since the war. you can see it really has increased. why is this happening? usually countries do this to get around sanctions. both venezuela and iran have done this in the past. the twist, though, is russian energy isn't really sanctioned directly. the united states can't import it, but other countries technically can. but the war has created this stigma around doing business with russia. of trading companies, vessels, banks, insurers, they've all backed away. so an analyst told me what was