“Jensen [Huang] is the engineer, okay? He's the world's best engineer. He's great at engineering his company. He's great at engineering his products. He's great at engineering himself. And he's figured out how to engineer the president.” podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/t...

The Next Big Idea

Maatschappij en cultuur podcast · Wekelijks bijgewerkt · The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join hosts Rufus Griscom and Caleb Bissinger — a...

podcasts.apple.com

“there's no biological laboratory in the world even capable of making a super virus. Not that the AI couldn't do it, but just that the infrastructure isn't there.” Is this actually true? podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/t...

The Next Big Idea

Maatschappij en cultuur podcast · Wekelijks bijgewerkt · The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join hosts Rufus Griscom and Caleb Bissinger — a...

podcasts.apple.com

@eliotacohen.bsky.social presents the seven questions every strategist must ask, from “what else is going on?” to “what is your theory of victory?” podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/t...

The President’s Inbox

Politiek podcast · Wekelijks bijgewerkt · Each episode of The President’s Inbox explores a foreign policy challenge facing the United States.

podcasts.apple.com

Rusland wil een andere Europese veiligheidsarchitectuur en prikt daarom net niet hard genoeg om artikel 5 te activeren. De MIVD ziet nu geen intentie voor een grootschalige aanval, maar mobilisatievoorbereidingen en overproductie van materieel stellen niet gerustst podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/g...

124. Gaat Rusland Europa aanvallen? Met MIVD-directeur Peter Reesink over de toekomst van spionage

Podcastaflevering · GeopolitiekNu Podcast · 6 oktober · 48 min.

podcasts.apple.com

“Het is het een of het ander: of meer overheidsgeld uittrekken of het voor investeerders aantrekkelijk genoeg houden. Sturen met andermans geld klinkt heerlijk, maar als je het overdrijft, werkt de markt niet meer mee.” Geldt niet alleen voor woningmarkt. @marikestellinga.bsky.social @nrc.nl

Jeff Schmid: "The beauty of a seven-layer dip is you have equal amounts of beans and sour cream. [Right now, with AI and data centers,] there's too much beans in that dip." "And not enough chips!" quipped Tom Barkin www.axios.com/newsletters/...

🌍 Surprising trade consensus

axios.com

"While France should have gotten its budget under control a long time ago, politicians just respond to incentives. In the Euro zone, those are that the ECB will bail you out when sovereign debt comes under stress because the ECB fears for its own survival."

Robin Brooks@robin-j-brooks.bsky.social · 7d ago

France is just a symptom. The ECB is the disease. The ECB intervened aggressively to cap yields in Spain and Italy in 2022. If you protect high-debt countries, you set the wrong incentives for politicians. Fiscal policy will just get worse and worse... robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/the-debt-c...

China’s exports to the Global South grew 39-fold between 2000 and 2024, while the US’s grew only two-fold www.gzeromedia.com/news/analysi...

Will China ever replace the US as the world’s dominant superpower?

Just three years ago, people around the world viewed the US more favorably than China. That is no longer the case.

gzeromedia.com

Whereas the population of solid-blue US counties is still growing naturally, deaths now outnumber births in reliably Republican counties for the first time since at least 1982. www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

In MAGA-land people are dying faster than they are being born

Our analysis suggests Trump country is only growing because of migration

economist.com

A senior UK govt figure to @politico.com: “Somebody needs to make a positive case for AI. But what are you meant to do when the messaging from these [American AI] companies is that they’re going to destroy humanity in the next 10 years?” www.politico.eu/newsletter/f...

The eye-rolling at the end of the world

Global power is in flux. Your daily guide to what comes next. By JACK BLANCHARD Send tips here | View in your browser Welcome to POLITICO Forecast. This is Jack Blanchard, writing to you from Bruss…

politico.eu

As economic weapon, a distance blockade can have real effect, but it can't achieve anything that is strategically a victory. The US has already lost its bases in the region, the Iranian regime has survived, partners already have understood that the US is weaker than they imagined

brendanamartin.bsky.social@brendanamartin.bsky.social · last wk.

“(A distance blockade) does not correct the basic flaw in the plan, and that is the US is being forced militarily away from the region (it is completing the withdrawal from Iraq now too) and Iran and its proxies are going to stay there.”

"It is fascinating how, more than seven months after the war started, US victory conditions as laid out by the US government have devolved down into this one condition—Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. This is now all Trump et al. mention when they discuss the war."

brendanamartin.bsky.social@brendanamartin.bsky.social · last wk.

“(A distance blockade) does not correct the basic flaw in the plan, and that is the US is being forced militarily away from the region (it is completing the withdrawal from Iraq now too) and Iran and its proxies are going to stay there.”

“(A distance blockade) does not correct the basic flaw in the plan, and that is the US is being forced militarily away from the region (it is completing the withdrawal from Iraq now too) and Iran and its proxies are going to stay there.”

Phillips OBrien@phillipspobrien.bsky.social · last wk.

Midweek update is out, first part free. The US distance blockade of Iran might be seen as a classic case of the US winning a battle but losing a war. Also, the Xi-Trump summit revealed that not only can the Chinese humiliate Trump… phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/midweek-up...

"With America's tech titans crowded around a single White House table yesterday, President Trump extracted what he called a "morally binding" compact on AI safety, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. The terms were simple: Press ahead, project optimism and police yourselves."

Axios@axios.com · last wk.

The White House accord that secured a "morally binding" commitment on AI safety capped an extraordinary day for the AI race across three capitals of American power.

The general Chinese view: over the near to medium term, the most realistic goal for the Sino-US relationship will be risk reduction and preserving room for manoeuvre — not ceasing to fear the other side, but still picking up the phone despite that fear www.sinification.org/p/gung-ho-di...

Gung-Ho Diplomacy: Chinese Commentary on the Trump-Xi Summit

Mistranslations, pomp and circumstance

sinification.org

“if people can't struggle for democracy and for equality based on the victory of those principles in an earlier generation, then they're going to struggle against equality and dignity because they want to struggle for the sake of struggle” podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/i...

What Comes After the End of History? with Francis Fukuyama (Part One)

Podcastaflevering · Intelligence Squared · 10 september · 1 u 30 m

podcasts.apple.com

“I once said about Robert Kagan, it's always 1939 for him, right? That there's always this looming, you know, terrible threat. Now, it turns out that a stop clock is right twice a day. And so he now thinks it's 1939. And I think it's 1939.” podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/i...

What Comes After the End of History? with Francis Fukuyama (Part One)

Podcastaflevering · Intelligence Squared · 10 september · 1 u 30 m

podcasts.apple.com

"The personalization of policy that produced the détente is exactly what can unmake it. The most reliable instrument for reading public mood is, by definition, the least reliable guarantor of policy."

Sinica@sinica.skystack.xyz · last wk.

The Fever Has Broken — For Now • Why “Chinamaxxing” actually matters

"the architecture of competition is still standing, and no one’s really moving to dismantle it — not in Washington, and perhaps even less so in Beijing. We still live in a world of export controls, outbound investment regimes, entity lists, and quite aggressive force postures."

Sinica@sinica.skystack.xyz · last wk.

The Fever Has Broken — For Now • Why “Chinamaxxing” actually matters

"China Hawks who once filled the halls of the White House, State Department, Department of War have been sidelined. Trump has become, as many well-placed people in Washington have told me separately, “his own China desk officer.”"https://www.sinicapodcast.com/p/the-fever-broken-for-now

@kaiserkuo.bsky.social: Cultural detritus — silly internet memes — often registers mood shifts before formal discourse does. Perhaps it’s always been so & that’s why Chinese rulers way back in the Spring & Autumn and Warring States periods seem so obsessed with the songs & rhymes chanted by children

"There is no solution to America’s Hormuz problem while the current regime in Tehran exists. Eventually the U.S. military has to go home, and when it does it is hard to see what force could restrain Iran from controlling traffic through the strait." amerex.substack.com/p/checking-i...

Checking in on Hormuz

Stalemate continues, return to war looks likely

amerex.substack.com

"An AI might autonomously design, train, and test its successor, and still need exponentially more resources to make each additional step forward. Closing the loop doesn’t tell us whether it’s strong enough to sustain itself."

Noahpinion@noahpinion.blogsky.venki.dev · 2w ago

Where’s the “intelligence explosion”?

"Everywhere we look, AI has diminishing returns. It gets more expensive in treasure and talent to make each step forward...We’ve been able to scale these inputs because, until recently, the cost was within the scope of what hyperscalers could pay from their profits. That is no longer the case."

Noahpinion@noahpinion.blogsky.venki.dev · 2w ago

Where’s the “intelligence explosion”?

History matters because countries remember their pasts and mould those memories into stories that serve the present. They argue over them, turn them into monuments and myths, occasionally weaponise them, sometimes reconcile themselves through them peterfrankopan.substack.com/p/the-return...

The return of a Tsar: Samuel comes home

One of my niche specialist topics is golden age Bulgaria - from Khan Krum up to the end of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

peterfrankopan.substack.com

Tussen alle doom & gloom over de duikeling van Nederland op tal van internationale ranglijsten is er ook goed nieuws. Al moet er uiteraard weer een pessimistische kanttekening bij geplaatst worden. @nrc.nl

Japan’s 4 main geopolitical objectives: 1 Unite the 4 main islands 2 Secure the 5 gates that lead to Japan 3 Neutralize the superpowers that can invade 4 Secure all the resources it needs through maritime trade unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/japans-pri... @tomaspueyo.bsky.social

Japan’s 4 Priorities

If you know how to look at this map, you can deduce a lot of Japan’s history, why it has the borders it has today, where they are contested, and why it went through the wars it did.

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

@tomaspueyo.bsky.social: Japan is lonely. There’s nothing to its east and south. To its north, there’s just cold. All its potential threats come from the west—but that’s also where all the resources used to come from unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/japans-pri...

Japan’s 4 Priorities

If you know how to look at this map, you can deduce a lot of Japan’s history, why it has the borders it has today, where they are contested, and why it went through the wars it did.

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

On just about every conceivable front — arming & assisting U.S. adversaries, espionage, hacking & cyberwarfare, stealing intellectual property, smuggling oil, nuclear testing, detaining citizens — China ‘s regime headed by Xi Jinping acts against US interests. www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-...

No, the U.S.-China Relationship Is Not the Best It Has Ever Been | National Review

We ought to see Xi and the PRC clearly for what they are.

nationalreview.com

If the IPO goes as planned, and the revenue keeps up, by the end of the year Anthropic could be one of America's 50 largest companies by revenue and 10 largest by market capitalization. Anthropic didn't even exist six years ago… www.axios.com/newsletters/...

✨ Axios AM: The face of AI

axios.com