The moves between the great powers, read in five minutes. EDITION 01 · AUGUST 2026August 6, 2026 · covers July 23 to August 6twice monthly Top line · this edition The past two weeks turned pressure on Russia into pressure on everyone who trades with it. The United States Senate…
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A six-part series on conflict, state fragility, resource pressure, and the structures that keep turning local crises into regional ones. I have traveled through parts of the Middle East: Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Dubai. Travel does not make anyone an authority on a region this large or…
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The antiwar movement of the 60s and democratic socialism today follow a similar ecosystem logic: system stress, moral framing, youth mobilization, institutional conflict, and strategic choice. I was driving when a song by Richie Havens came on the radio. The voice sent me immediately to Woodstock: August 1969, Bethel, New…
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With 100 days left before the midterms, the week’s strongest signals came from three places: household costs, unsettled primaries, and election rules. Published July 27, 2026 Foreign policy is reaching the household budget The most immediate signal was gasoline. The national U.S. average moved back above $4 a gallon on…
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Humanity has more options than collapse or denial. But every solution changes the system—and usually reveals the next bottleneck. On July 2, 2026, the PJM Interconnection—the largest U.S. power-grid operator—came close to breaking its all-time peak-demand record during an eastern heat wave. PJM activated emergency conservation measures, including a demand-response program…
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Alphabet’s stock fell after another large increase in AI spending. But the same spending is creating demand across chips, data centers, cooling, networking, electricity, and construction. Alphabet reported the kind of quarter that usually lifts a stock: Revenue rose 24 percent to $119.8 billion. Google Cloud revenue rose 82 percent…
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A twice-monthly systems read of the continent — twelve domains, one signal. Edition 01 June 2026 · covering ~16 May–18 June 2026 ~9 min read Subscriber edition How to read this. We track the African continent as one system across twelve domains — the big moving parts of development, from money and minerals…
Comments closedAn AI-ecosystem-model reading of today’s news Over the past few months, we’ve built something we call the AI ecosystem model, a map of how one jolt in the chain that makes artificial intelligence possible travels outward to everything else: the minerals, the chips, the data centers, the power grid, the…
Comments closedEveryone’s still guessing A quick note before we start: this one runs a little longer than usual. I’d planned to come at this subject in smaller pieces over the next few weeks, but the news got ahead of me, so I’m covering the whole topic in one piece now, and…
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