Hey! Hope everyone is well despite the general madness. Here are a few things I’ve found interesting lately.
Substack
Since we’re on Substack, I’ll start with newsletters. My favourite newsletter to read right now is Hegemon by Seva Gunitsky. I don’t know what it is exactly, but he’s just on fire lately. For example, he recently wrote an article about the personalisation of global politics that’s definitely worth reading:
The world’s most powerful states are now governed by leaders who purge all opposition, ignore formal institutions, and rule through inner circles of sycophants, making policy based on private fixations instead of national interests. In political science terms, these are personalist regimes.
As you might expect, the convergence toward personalism in Russia, China, and the United States creates an unpleasant international system.
Been thinking about this a lot, and I think we’re only just beginning to understand the implications of this shift. It’ll most likely be quite miserable.
Social Media
Over on Twitter, the Washington Post just issued an astonishing correction. I’ll present it below without comment, it’s really something:
Next, look at this chart of aid allocation to Ukraine. The United States has all but given up on supporting Kyiv, which is really quite a dramatic shift. Europe has stepped up, but overall aid to Ukraine is down. It does make you wonder where things would stand if both Americans and Europeans had provided more support over the last couple of years. Could things perhaps be different?
This tweet caught my eye:
It seems almost inevitable to me that we’ll see more of this, and not just when it comes to soldiers. There’s so much money involved that just about everything is vulnerable to the influence of prediction markets. Intelligence officers, civil servants, politicians - you name it. It’s going to be like sports betting just that the stakes are much higher because it can literally be about life and death.
Books
Been reading a lot lately, in big part to prepare for the podcast. One of the books that really stood out to me is Breakneck by Dan Wang (see below).
The scale of change that has occurred in China is just mind-blowing and the book provides really interesting insights into the way it all works. I can recommend it.
Last but not least, I just had a fascinating conversation with Patrick McGee, the New York Times bestselling author of Apple in China. Everyone always talks about the West’s dependence on China, but it’s often quite abstract. So what does it actually look like? In my discussion with Patrick, we went through one particular case: Apple. For companies like Apple, the challenge is huge. They’re trapped. Watch below:
Talk soon.
-MD