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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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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For years, tungsten cost the same in China and everywhere else. This period, that stopped being true. China requires a license to export tungsten, and it has cut the list of firms allowed to sell abroad. The result, spelled out this cycle by industry price reporters: two separate markets. Chinese…
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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 closedWhy a richer developing world is in everyone’s interest In 1990, about 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. By 2025 that figure had fallen to roughly 830 million (World Bank, 2025), even as the world added more than two and a half billion people along the way (UN World…
Comments closedHow AI turns one question into a systems view A small business owner asks the model whether she should open a second café. The answer comes back with the cash-flow math, yes. But also with the lease timing, the staffing lead time, the risk that two locations split her customers…
Comments closedOr: what we actually mean when we say “AI” in 2026. In November 2022, ChatGPT reached one hundred million users in two months, faster than any product in history. Today, that chatbot is the simplest thing AI does. When most people picture AI, they picture a chat window: type a…
Comments closedThe architecture of risk and reward. In 2015, Beijing published a document called Made in China 2025. It named ten industries: advanced manufacturing, aerospace, biotech, new-energy vehicles, AI hardware, robotics, and several others. It set targets, timelines, and financing. It coordinated ministries, state-owned enterprises, banks, universities, and provincial governments around…
Comments closedA Boeing 787, an ore-testing lab, and the chemistry behind half your dinner. Three things held up by villages of expertise no country could replicate — and what happens when one thread breaks. Bernard Philippe Markowicz May 16, 2026 In March 2021, a fire broke out in a single building…
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