Multipolarity

Super-Size Me II.

140 episodes ago, Malcolm Kyeyune launched a piece of verbal artillery into the mess hall of online discourse.

The Burger Theory of History.

It quickly became one of our most quoted episodes.

The Burger Theory is the idea that, since the pandemic of 2020, the rising costs of basic necessities is feeding a malaise that is eating into our society. The sense not that we are in yet another cost of living crisis. But that the system itself is failing.

Much like it did in late-80s Russia, when Soviet citizens were confronted with the Big Mac, and knew that their Leninist world view simply could not stack up. A few years later, the economic Iron Curtain truly tumbled when Mikhail Gorbachev did an advert for Pizza Hut.

Now, as the Hormuz crisis after the Covid crisis after the Ukraine crisis once again strangulates the delicately balanced trading system of the West, he’s ordering a second helping – with fries.

I’ll be explaining what the USS Rustbucket, aka the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, tells us about the quickening tempo of that unravelling.

And I’ll be explaining why he’s right.

The Golden Arches are the new Twin Towers, folks. Strap in, let’s roll…

***

Multipolarity is a long-running alt-geopolitics brand, starring the economist Philip Pilkington, and the journalist Andrew Collingwood. In January 2023, we began with the slogan ‘Charting the rise of the multipolar world order’. And we’ve hardly struggled for material since.

Each week, our duo take three key stories affecting the global balance of power, and explain what each means for the coming multipolar era. Increasingly, they’re joined by guests from across the spectrum: technologist Steve Hsu, journalist Malcom Kyeyune, strategic analyst Amerikanets, or academics like Warwick Powell and Glenn Diesen. You can follow us on X, get into our lively Substack with the weekly Multipolarity Brief – a one-stop shop for deep analysis – and Philip Pilkington's bimonthly column.

You can also get our premium subscriber-only podcast episodes on either Patreon or Substack.

Please like, subscribe, and be excellent to each other.

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September is here. As the calendar page tugs away, the madness of the dog days of summer blows away. The madness of the autumn is upon us.

With the Pina Colada mix in the recycling bin, the sense of happy impermanence is over, and all the bills we’ve rung up are about to fall due.

Now, with the put-upon air of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s lawyers, we’re counting the cost. Taking the medium-range view. Going through the key agenda items that will see us out of 2026.

Item one: Sort out Iran.

Two - Figure out who’s scamming US Treasury Yields

3. Count the cost of the US midterms

Number 4. Draw a bead on European energy policy as the frost starts to roll south.

5. Get inside the Russia Game.

6. Unpick America’s secondary sanctions on China

Finally, number 7 – throw the Donroe Doctrine in a skip.

Yes it’s a wardrobe’s worth of homework falling on us at once - across a 98 minute show.

And half of all that is here for all of our free subscribers.

The other half is behind the paywall.

That’s right: in a complex and ever-changing world, if you want to stay half-informed, remain a free sub. If you want to see the whole of the moon - sign up for the pods-only on Patreon.

Or pods plus our lively Substack output on, where else, Substack.

Two audio essays, one smouldering fuse.

This week, Philip Pilkington takes on a financial cascade emerging from the Japanese Bond situation. Ever since its one-day bond market heart attack in March, Japan has been trapped: it can't raise rates, it can't let the yen fall, so it has sold the very US Treasuries that hold the US system together. Knowing how perilous things are, in the background, Scott Besent is trying to send in support. But this Wizard of Oz is himself running out of tricks. And when these fail, much like the 2011 sovereign debt crisis, there will be other marks ready to be hit – starting with Britain.

Meanwhile, the Japanese bond crisis began with the spike in oil prices. Now, Andrew Collingwood asks how the Iran War is about to be extruded through the gravitational field of US domestic politics. To him, what looks like a stalemate is actually profoundly unstable, hinging on a unique paradox: the more success America has in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, the more likely Iran is to escalate.

Of course, this week is pay week – only available to subscribers. So you’ll need to pony up to get it. If you want to support our work, you can tip $8 a month on Patreon. Or get the podcast, plus our paywalled analysis, including Philip Pilkington’s bi-monthly column, and Andrew’s brilliant weekly Multipolarity Brief – for $12, all in.

Simply go to Patreon or Substack, search for us, and do the necessary.

You’ll also have access to our deep archive of over 25 paywalled episodes spanning the three years of the show.

Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of special multipolarity interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical.

In this episode, Steve Hsu.

Where to start with Steve? He’s a member of that tiny sliver of humans who have managed to make significant contributions to multiple fields of academia, including quantum physics, dark energy, and computational genomics.

Outside academia, Steve has founded multiple startups and has been involved in AI and information security. He's also one of the most prominent of the Silicon Valley adjacent public intellectuals.

Tonight we'll be tapping the capricious brain of this polymath to address two of the questions most pertinent to the future of American Power. AI and the future of warfare.

Can America beat China in the AI race? What are the differences in the approaches the two are taking beyond the well-known cost differential? What are the various likely scenarios for the outcome of this highest of high stakes versions of the VHS versus Betamax race, and what does it all mean for humanity?

Meanwhile, how have cheap drones and missiles really changed the nature of warfare? And do they spell the end for the two century long era of maritime powers dominating the world?

Coming up this week, last week, and the week before…

A massive multi-part episode.

The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order is with the death doula right now. The new one has yet to go through lamaze class.

The only thing that can save us is podcasting. More of it. Longer. Harder. More esoteric. More riffs on the Thirty Years War. Bigger tangents into the exact mechanics of USAF recruitment in Tallahassee.

As our old sense-making apparatus breaks down, as the world on which unipolarity once relied goes tits up, we’ve decided it’s time to raise our eyes from the trough of news-analysis, and think about the big picture now emerging from the Persian Gulf.

The Pod to End All Pods is a three episode collaboration between Multipolarity, and our two most requested guests – Malcolm ‘Juche Respecter’ Kyeyune - and Amerikanets, the anonymous Substacker who uncovered the implausibility of Trump’s Venezuela Raid.

The results were incendiary and interminable. They spoke for three hours — which we’ve decided to carve into three separate episodes.

Two weeks ago, in the first episode, we spoke about the Air War — the debaseification thesis, as laid out by Amerikanets. In other words, how Iranians are systematically denying the US its regional airbases by killing personnel and hitting assets on the tarmac.

Last week, in part two, we got round to The Systemic-War Thesis. The idea that, like World War I, or the Napoleonic Wars, the Hormuz Crisis has become a conflict that pulls in every actor within a closed system — and only stops at mutual physical exhaustion.

Now, this week, The Return of the King, we take on Europe, America and the political fallout. Is the old world about to be dragged into this, much against their will?

All this and more, as the crisis takes shape.

They said it would all be over by Christmas — and this show just about will be.

This is the Pod To End All Pods.

The story so far.

The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order dies of smoke inhalation in a dumpster fire. The new one has yet to be lifted out by C-Section.

The only thing that can save us is podcasting. More of it. Longer. Harder. More esoteric. More riffs on the Thirty Years War. Bigger tangents into the exact mechanics of USAF recruitment in Tallahassee.

As our old sense-making apparatus breaks down, as the world on which unipolarity once relied goes tits up, we’ve decided it’s time to raise our eyes from the trough of news-analysis, and think about the big picture now emerging from the Persian Gulf.

The Pod to End All Pods is a three episode collaboration between Multipolarity, and our two most requested guests – Malcolm ‘Juche Respecter’ Kyeyune - and Amerikanets, the anonymous Substacker who uncovered the implausibility of Trump’s Venezuela Raid.

The results were incendiary and interminable. They spoke for three hours — which we’ve decided to carve into three separate episodes.

Last week, in the first episode, we spoke about the Air War — the debaseification thesis, as laid out by Amerikanets. In other words, how Iranians are systematically denying the US its regional airbases by killing personnel and hitting assets on the tarmac.

How the Reaper drones that put the fear of god into America’s enemies in the 2010s are now undergoing their own holocaust in the skies over Iran.

This week, in part two, we get round to The Systemic-War Thesis. The idea that, like World War I, or the Napoleonic Wars, the Hormuz Crisis has become a conflict that pulls in every actor within a closed system — and only stops at mutual physical exhaustion.

Finally, next week, in part three, we’ll take on Europe, America and the political fallout. Is the old world about to be dragged into this, much against their will?

All this and more, as the crisis takes shape.

They said it would be over by Christmas — and this show just about will be.

Coming up this week and next week and the week after…

A massive multi-part episode.

The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order dies of smoke inhalation in a dumpster fire. The new one has yet to be lifted out by C-Section.

Iran, it is now clear, represents the smouldering conflagration that will consume US power. As its strength is sapped, this lumbering giant will make ever-poorer decisions. Bad money will be poured after good. The Falcon F-16 cannot hear the falconer. Which way is up will become ever harder to discern. In the face of this spinning compass, our sense-making apparatus is as useless as a cavalry charge in the Ardennes.

But there is one doomsday weapon that could yet unscramble our circuits. One that has only recently become known to science.

The Pod to End All Pods is a three episode collaboration between Multipolarity, and our two most requested guests – Malcolm ‘Juche Respecter’ Kyeyune - and Amerikanets, the anonymous Substacker who uncovered the implausibility of Trump’s Venezuela Raid.

We’ve assembled this little RAND Corporation, and told them to solve for the next twelve months — and the next ten years.

The results were incendiary and interminable. They spoke for three hours — which we’ve decided to carve into three separate podcasts.

In the first episode, this week, we’re going to talk about the Air War — the debaseification thesis, as laid out by Amerikanets. The Iranians are systematically denying the US its regional airbases by killing personnel and hitting assets on the tarmac. The Reaper drones that put the fear of god into America’s enemies in the 2010s are now undergoing their own holocaust in the skies over Iran. Meanwhile, American generals are struggling to understand what the target even is — in a KPI culture, they’re running out of targets, and pushing towards more and more abstruse success metrics. This is a war being run without a purpose.

Then, In part two, we get round to The Systemic-War Thesis. Like World War I, like the Thirty Years War, or the Napoleonic Wars, this has become a conflict that pulls in every actor within a closed system — and only stops at mutual physical exhaustion. A point only underlined by the Saudis’ decision to hit Iranian targets this week.

Finally, in part three, we take on Europe, America and the political fallout. Is the old world about to be dragged into this, much against their will? Given the spate of fires at EU refineries and munitions plants, are we on explosion watch?

All this and more, as the July Crisis takes shape.

They said it would be over by Christmas — and this show just about will be.

This is The Pod To End All Pods.

You’ve heard of de-Baathification? Now what about de-baseification? The gradual chipping back of US strategic assets in the Gulf as each in turn comes under pressure from drone and rocket fire… till only a handful of super-bases remain.

Iran’s president says country is in ‘full-scale war’ after an expansion of US attacks. They’ve struck US interests in Bahrain, Kuwait - and the Houthis are blockading Saudi ports.

The US was unlikely to win this war - but now it seems it could actually lose it.

Meanwhile…

14%. 18%. 18%

Year-on-year sales drops at Volkswagen, and Audi and Porsche, which it owns, respectively.

Germany’s biggest auto maker is in free fall, with warnings of 50 000 job cuts. But Chinese competition is only half the problem.

Finally, the main public TV station has been shut down overnight. The President has been summarily dismissed by a dubious constitutional amendment. And the opposition leader has been banned from standing for re-election.

The new leader parades round in Mao suits, making agit prop video tours of the former regime’s residences to stoke up his base.

As the airwaves breathe static, will the EU send troops to restore democracy in the little-known far-off nation of Hungary?

This week: two audio essays, on one big Iran cluster-frig.

In the Collingwood corner:

Donald Trump has become an unreadable politician. His credibility has burst through various levels of ‘madman theory’ negotiating prowess, into a place where it may not even be clear to his most intimate subordinates where his true intent begins and ends. The result is that US policy is now a broken sail, flapping in the wind.

Originally, America had four aims: dismantle Iran's nuclear programme, cap its missiles and drones, cut off its proxies, and change the regime. With nil-for-four, the window to credibly settle this beef is getting farther away – not closer.

Meanwhile, chez Pilkington:

The US now believes it can ‘print oil’. That the present attempt to jigger the markets by making use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and various ‘Whale of Hormuz’ attempts to rig the options market are long-term sustainable. They are not, as Phil points out. What goes up must come down, and the slip-slide will not be pretty. Rather than a war of attrition, Pilko suggests, the oil price war has become the totality of conflict – a Baudrillardian quarrel over supremacy of a number – only secondarily underpinned by the drones and bombs of the Arabian Gulf.

Yes, it’s time to up the escitalopram – enter code HAPPYPILLS26 at checkout to redeem this offer.

It’s an oil rush. Fill your boots, fellers, America is releasing its strategic petroleum reserves, ostensibly to see down Iranian pressure. Good news for voters, great news for foreign countries who want to sponge of the US teat. But in its ducking and diving haste, has the Trump administration inadvertently drunk its ownmilkshake?

Then in the second half of a two-parter, we’re digging into the brewing Ukranian-Polish conflict. At the earliest days of the Ukraine War, around 2014, their Parliament passed a series of laws which granted official veteran status to a couple of Second World War military groups who had, shall we say, colourful pasts.

Recently, the Polish President withdrew the Polish White Eagle decoration from President Zelenskyy after Ukraine named an elite special unit after one such.

Hundreds of hatchets were buried after Communism, but now, despite the shock of the war, old animosities are bubbling to the surface. And with them, the facade of a united Europe begins to crack.

This week on Multipolarity, we’re taking your questions.

It’s a Q&A episode, involving queries sent in by our loyal listeners.

Questions like:

How did you guys meet?

(Drunk, at a party).

Which EU country will be first to do its own deal on Ukraine?

(The first to fall to the populists)

Where should young Euros emigrate to if Europe is ‘screwed’?

(Find your bliss in the emerging world)

Is the Rouble overvalued?

(Depends on how you count)

Could Turkey become the balancing power in the coming struggle between China and the US?

(Probably not)

What are the mechanics of oil price manipulation?

(Dump a big short position on the market on Monday morning, squeeze the longs out)

Why do we still live with the Boomer model of geopolitics?

(Give it ten years)

And several more. You had questions. We had answers.

Of course, this week is a Pay Week - 1 in 4 episodes are gated for the folk who support our work. So if you want to get in amongst the Real Multipolarity Heads, you’ll need to sign up on Patreon or Substack. Substack gets you our print journalism too — head over, and get access to the entire back catalogue.

Iran’s 14 points: making the world safe for Shia Theocracy.

Obviously, Donald Trump putting his John Hancock to the Islamabad Memorandum at Versailles carries absolutely no historical resonance.

But after the occupation of the Ruhr and the abdication of the Kaiser, what else could the Mullahs possibly put on their shopping list?

We’ll be picking through the carcrash, looking for signs of life in DC.

Meanwhile, to cement his lousy week Donald got into a love tiff with Georgia Meloni at the G7. Was this a passing fugue of Italian passion? The flamethrower of a woman scorned? Or was it the beginning of the end of what we’ve dubbed the ‘Euroslopulists’ – fake populists kept on a long-short leash by Brussels and the European Central Bank?

Finally, Donald Trump – remember him – managed to scoop the world’s press to the news that Keir Starmer would resign as British Prime Minister, being sure to spell his name wrong as a final boot in the teeth.

Sir Keir has evoked the kind of visceral loathing among Brits normally reserved for child killers and queue jumpers. But who will they have left to blame when his affable dimwit successor blows up in half the time?

Fable — a short fantastical tale with a moral message.

For weeks, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei was telling anyone who’d listen that he’d invented an AI so powerful it could walk through walls, shoot sparrows from the sky, talk to horses, invent trees. A death star of tech.

Whether this was part of the sales pitch or genuine alarm, the US Government has taken him at his word, and shut off access to it beyond America’s shores.

Suddenly, the biggest tech of the 21st century is at the heart of a new age of mercantilism.

The world is waking up. But some of the world was already awake.

TP Huang is one of the best China watchers out there. A programmer and tech specialist, he sees an even bigger battle coming.

The divergence of chip supply chains, ever since the Biden Administration’s October surprise in 2022, now stands ready to produce a space race over not just the chips, but the software itself.

In that aspect, China is perpetually six months to a year behind. But is six months really decisive, when you can do everything at a fraction of the cost of your rivals? And when you’re not just bowing down before a brain in a jar, but embedding AI in factories and robots?

While the world focuses on AGI psychodrama in California and flat-footed despair in Brussels, this week, TP is talking to Andrew Collingwood about the flint-eyed Chinese strategy to build a truly insulated supply chain within the next ten years.

You can read his full piece, published in two parts, on the Multipolarity Substack.

https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/p/the-struggle-for-mastery-of-the-21st

It’s war in our time. After flirting with peace for a few miserable hours, the US and Iran are back to what they know best: taking uneven chunks out of each other amidst the world’s prime oil pathway.

This week, Iran levelled a terminal of Kuwait’s airport, and attacked the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Then there was that mysterious Apache helicopter crash off Hormuz.

Now, after the crisp kinetic strikes of the first few weeks – then the tentative tests of strength – the war is entering a new phase.

One in which Iran shows that the US will not be able to achieve on the negotiating table what it did not achieve on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, it’s a thriving Asian tiger, the skyscraper skyline of its capital shows the bustle and optimism of the Rising East. Mobile phones. Electric cars. That’s right — North Korea is this year’s big economic success story, according to a new piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Turns out the Hermit Kingdom is less hermetic these days. North Koreans have made good money providing weapons to Russia in Ukraine, and China has turned on the trade taps. Pyongyang no longer rations electricity to a few hours every day.

So what happens when North Korea is no longer a Potemkin village but a Potemkin megalopolis?

Meanwhile, lose a war, get voted back in. Three years after the catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh, what inspired the Armenian people to re-elect Nikol Pashinyan? Perhaps it was precisely because of how vulnerable the country feels itself to be.

The strategy is to buy off and shore up: peace with Azerbaijan, EU candidacy, and normalisation with old enemy Turkey. But how low can you lie in a region that Russia sees as its backyard?

Do check out our Substack if you can - https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/

This week: two audio essays.

First up, they’re calling it the Poor Man’s Tomahawk. Ukraine is firing up to 2000 long range drones a week into Russia. The production facilities supplying them are scattered across Western Europe. These production facilities have an artificial shield, in that they are diplomatically protected. But how long this will last is unclear.

For its part, Ukraine would like the West to be more active in the war. And one way to do that would be to antagonise Russia into responding beyond its borders. There is now a 50% chance of erratic strikes into Europe proper within the next year, as Philip Pilkington makes clear in The Escalation Ladder.

Meanwhile, Andrew Collingwood has been supping on a 2019 masterwork of geopolitics. Weaponized Interdependence is the title of a Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman paper, in which the pair argue that states with political authority over the central "hubs" in global economic networks: such as those for finance, data, and trade, can exploit this position to gain a strategic advantage. States sitting atop those nodes can exploit two effects: panopticon (information dominance) and choke point (cutting off access to irreplaceable hubs).

Hormuz is one hub. Russia has its commodity hubs. And China has its manufacturing hub dominance.

Put it all together, and the new Iran war has revealed a structural shift in global power, says Andrew Collingwood.

Of course, this is a pay week — if you want access to this episode, you’re going to have to go on Patreon, and sign up. Simply type Multipolarity into the search bar and do the needful. Alternatively, you can now get premium episodes and our regular print work over on Substack for 12 USD a month. The choice is yours, but don’t get caught in no man’s land.

Russia has rained Oreshnik hypersonic missiles on Kiev. Four people killed. 549 missiles apparently shot down. This was a message. The Oreshnik travels at Mach 10. It was designed to deliver nukes.

As fighting season starts in earnest, year five looks like it might be the start of real escalation.

But, if Russian munitions start tiptoeing ever further West, could this be the year of, you know, real real escalation?

Meanwhile, the US-Iran war peace talks are going well:

Iran wants tolls on the strait. US says no.

Iran wants 12 billion in reparations. US says no.

Nuclear weapons? They’re being kicked into another round of talks-about-talks.

So why is Little Marco still predicting a deal within days?

Finally, Huawei say they have figured out a new approach to chip design that doesn’t require them to be smaller.

“What happens when you’ve got a silicon chip the size of a dinner plate?” is one key question. Another is what happens when chips are no longer the ace card for Western leverage.

Do check out our Substack if you can - https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/

Donald Trump took Elon Musk and Jensen Huang to Beijing with him for 48 hours. But rather than the frat boy big weekend of their autistic dreams, the trip turned into a sequel to The Hangover.

A dressing down from President Xi on Iran, a few more soybeans flogged, and some Boeings on order: was it worth Jensen’s $17 000 an hour time?

Meanwhile, the Japanese 10 year bond yield has climbed above the Chinese one. This is something of a sorpasso. As the country struggles to keep its debt load manageable, there’s a sense of sag to the economy. Does the Japan of our techno-futurist imaginations now bear the same degree of relation to reality – as the Italy of our Fellini fantasies?

Finally – another sorpasso – Mexican birth rates have dipped below those of America for the first time. Problem being, if the Mexicans don’t have sex, they can’t supply the US with a constant source of surplus labour.

US conservatives have long been scornful of European immigration patterns, falling back on the cultural compatibility of their southern neighbours – but unless Pablo and Maria get back in the bedroom, they’ll soon be receiving the same rich blend of Africans and Middle Easterners as the EU.

Do check out our Substack if you can - https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/

This week: a tale of two audio essays.

Philip is going deep dive on the coming oil crisis.

He sees a two-wave format emerging. The initial wave - dropping in a month or so, is already baked in.

“The oil infrastructure is like a body,” he says. “if the heart stops pumping, the cells stop oxygenating, after a while they begin to die off.” They're "living chemical engineering systems" that need constant throughput. Shutdowns normally require years of planning and cost hundreds of millions. This will entail real damage to the global oil infrastructure, but eventually reparable.

And then a second wave - if things persist into the autumn. Which will mean an inflationary depression. Real declines in global living standards.

That future portends a potential schism – a genuine multipolar moment, as the Strait is hived off to genuine Iranian control, under the aegis of Russia and China.

His message is simple: “Enjoy the beginning of summer…” While you still can.

Meanwhile, Andrew has turned his attention towards Broken Britain. With the Prime Minister now holed below the waterline, is there still any potential universe in which Britain avoids a big bond market shock?

What he’s calling The Madame Butterfly Effect explains how Jeffrey Epstein could crash the UK economy.

During the period in which Mandelson left politics (after 2010), a new form of political operator emerged. What Matt Stoller calls 'entrepreneurial brokers'.

An American gold mining company wishes to secure a stake in a new deposit in Siberia.

A major British political donor wants to raise capital for his son’s hedge fund.

An Italian politician might enjoy access to a luxury yacht twice a year.

Mandelson found himself 'fixing things'.

In the Unipolar world order, he says, nations specialised. Britain’s specialisation was financial services and openness to trade, which in turn allowed it to piggyback on US foreign policy.

This, however, led to deindustrialisation and to associated policies such as openness to high immigration.

But that system of integration, of the entrepreneurial brokers running things, is now capsizing, thanks to Epstein. The Labour Left will likely take charge after Starmer's resignation. They have no brokers. And no links into the real world of high level market traders who might smooth their passage.

Another cheery week.

Do check out our Substack if you can - https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/

Remember Olaf Scholz? Just about?

Remember when he sunk to the lowest opinion poll rating in German political history?

Well the good news for anonymous hopeless former Chancellors is that the next beige technocrat in charge of Germany has just beaten his record. Plunging to 89% dissatisfied – with only 11% satisfied.

Even with Macron as the most unpopular President ever, Starmer the least popular Prime Minister, Merz is more unpopular still.

Our lead question this week is very simple: what the flaming fuck is going on in Germany?

Meanwhile, more news just in on Europe’s cordless bungee ride: UK bond yields have spiked again. To 5.3% - the highest rate since 1998.

They can’t go any higher – right?

In the four years since the Truss contagion blew up the markets by hitting 5% and toppled the government, it’s a good thing the UK Treasury used that period to stop running massive deficits… right?

Finally, the global oil market is beginning to resemble Argentina under Kirschner. You’ve got your official prices; and then your real prices. As reality continues to diverge from the markets, we’re asking: who is this mysterious Whale of Hormuz who keeps on fiddling with the international price mechanism?

Of course, this being a pay week, you’ll need to sign up on Patreon or Substack if you want to hear that bit - only the real heads get to dine on the whole hog.

That’s easily done - simply go to Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity) or Substack (https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/) and sign up. It’s 8 or 12 dollars respectively, and you can cancel any time you like….

After weeks of Iran drumbeats - time for something a bit different.

George Yeo is the former Foreign Minister of Singapore

Educated at University of Cambridge and later at Harvard Business School, he's a former Brigadier-General in the nation's Air Force, and one of its most distinctive strategic thinkers - a man whose career tracks the rise of modern Asia itself.

Yeo served in government for over two decades, holding key portfolios including Trade and Industry.

As Singapore’s Foreign Minister from 2004 to 2011, he played a central role in shaping the country’s global posture.

Since leaving frontline politics, Yeo has become a widely followed voice on geopolitics, civilisational identity, and the shifting balance of power in Asia.

We wanted to ask him about the view from Singapore.

Singaporean diplomats are renowned for their coolheaded, realist approach. They are highly skilled - and they have to be.

A unique fragment of the complex geometry of South East Asia, Singapore has to balance its warm relations with the West, its unmatched status as a trading hub, and the rise of the Goliath on its doorstep - China.

The hot question this summer: Can you bring your own jerry can of diesel onto an EasyJet?

As all the major airlines begin to cancel flights, bump surcharges, and post losses, the looming fuel crisis is finally hitting landfall - in the skies.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s Prime Minister elect, Péter Magyar, has decided he wants to unilaterally remove the country’s President and the head of the Constitutional Court. Another win for Democracy and the Rule of Law.

As his administration takes flesh, Magyar has declared that he will arrest Benjamin Netanyahu – last seen touring Budapest in May – the next time he enters the country. The International Criminal Court wants a word with BiBi, and the new regime is keen to be seen as a responsible global citizen.

But what Magyar doesn’t seem to know is that this is an EU stalking horse for pulling him back into line, by linking it with another man with a price on his head – Vladimir Putin.

Finally, the bot singularity is coming for the markets. Turns out it’s not just journalists and email jobbers who are quietly outsourcing their work to LLMs. Market traders are increasingly sloppi

ng out on the S&P. For now, this is about capturing delta. But what happens when everyone on the internet is a dog?

Trump blockades a blockade.

The world holds its breath: will the Iranians blockade the blockade of the blockade?

Are we destined for battleship Tetris piling up in the Gulf?

Or is this just one more instance of the real war being the PR one?

Then, with his Fidesz party reduced to a rump, what happens when the lynchpin of anti-Brussels energy falls out?

The EU threw everything at Orbán, and it has paid off handsomely.

Ursula von der Leyen clearly had her speech about moving to qualified majority voting written before the polls closed.

Beyond a cost of living election in a landlocked medium-sized country, this is a story about the future of the EU. Apres Viktor, le deluge…

IMPORTANT A Note on Substack

You might already know that we have a Substack, and we’re growing it. (multipolaritypod.substack.com)

We’ve run into a small issue, in that lately, a few people have been signing up on Substack, with the intent of getting the premium episodes of the podcast - which have so far been exclusive to Patreon.

So we’ve decided to take the premium podcast to Substack, and bundle it with a new range of articles we’re in the process of producing.

The deal is this -

The Substack will be $12 a month - that will get you the podcast and then various paywalled articles on top.

We’re not paywalling the Substack yet - all the pieces you can presently read are free of charge - but we have plans to start gating the odd piece. And as we said, we will gate the premium podcast on Substack.

Of course, if you’re an existing subscriber, you can do whatever you like - Patreon, or Substack. The one gives you the pod only. The other will give you both. Obviously, your price won’t change unless you change platforms. So there’s no need to do anything.

Annihilation - no more.

On Tuesday, the world was saved at five minutes to midnight.

For the next two weeks, at least…

But while the power plants are safe for now, the tragi-comic spectacle conflict in Iran has poked bigger holes in the global defence-industrial system.

No one knows this better than Malcom Kyeyune, the Mad Mullah of Malmö, who is back on the pod to take a victory lap, after predicting much of what was to come in the first week of the war.

This comes fresh on the back of his new essay in UnHerd - https://unherd.com/2026/04/the-twilight-of-americas-sky-knights/- where he compares the US dilemma with the strategy of the Hussites in the earliest Reformation wars.

1973.

Beyond the war, we’re hacking into the coming implications of the major energy crisis that’s brewing - as the last tankers to leave the Gulf trundle into the ports of Europe.

From Volkswagen to venture capital, we’ll be charting what life looks like with oil at 150 or 200 dollars a barrel.

Energy lockdowns. Rationing. Bond crises.

All of these are being whispered in the press right now. As much as our leaders dare.

But this is still the Ardennes Forest in spring 1940. Eerily quiet.

Soon enough, the flamethrowers will burn through the Old Continent, and then begin to ricochet back onto America itself.

Will this break up the order we once took for granted?

Are we at the end of the US consumption model of economics?

Will resource rich Canada end up speared by its bigger brother?

We’ll be taking a grand view from the sidelines, as we start to figure out how to live through the latest version of the polycrisis - after 2008, after Covid, after Ukraine - this is the next major re-shaping of the world we live in.

Of course, this is a premium Multipolarity episode - so you’ll have to be on the Patreon list if you want to listen to the full episode. That’s easily done - simply go to Patreon and sign up. It’s 8 dollars, and you can cancel any time you like….

Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, think as an experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical.

Now, is Iran actually winning this war, or is the US slowly pounding it to bits with its air power? Will there be a land invasion? Could a land invasion even succeed? How are the oil markets gonna react? What are the likely economic consequences of this war? How will it affect the US midterms? All these are questions that are being discussed to death on the super giant gossip chambers that are the mainstream and social media.

But what is less discussed is the big picture geopolitical change that is occurring before our eyes. We at Multipolarity already suggested that this war means that Taiwan is a lost cause to the United States. Is that true though? And what would it mean for the overall US strategic posture? Most importantly, what is going to happen in the Middle East, which itself is a theatre of great importance.

Nobody in the public sphere has shown a better understanding of the academic literature on these matters than Anusar Farooqui, better known as Policy Tensor (@policytensor).

He is a prolific tweeter and essayist on geopolitics and geoeconomics and grand strategy, and for that reason his X account has just exploded with followers in the last three weeks. We had to welcome him back on to the show...

The dog that didn’t bark.

China is cooling its heels on the war in Iran. As America’s entanglement deepens, it’s not Sun Tzu they’re turning to, but the wit and wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Meanwhile, even closer to Beijing, US weakness is showing up the true nature of the slow war in the South China Sea. If America can’t open the Strait of Hormuz, how can it maintain the Taiwan Strait?

Finally, is Bibi booboo? A new wave of rumours has him six feet under, backed by… videos of him looking basically fine. Welcome to the AI hall of mirrors. Where reality buckles under the weight of the slopoverse. The Propaganda War is now 4D, hologrammatic, and features the Kirkbot 3000.

As Iran smoulders, ships burn in Hormuz, and TACO traders search for signal in the thunderous noise, we’re celebrating the end of the world in the only way we know how - two audio essays.

Philip Pilkington on the economic consequences of the war. And Andrew Collingwood on the political mess we’re in.

The Netherlands has its youngest ever Prime Minister. Liberal technocrat Rob Jetten is also openly gay - a big win for diversity. But can the VVD survive in coalition without meaningful agricultural reforms?

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, wheat futures are up almost nine percent since September. We’ll be asking whether transitory commodities inflation in the Stans is the big story we’ve all been missing.

Finally, the little known African country of Bapetikotsweti has signed a memorandum of understanding with Peru. It includes bilateral tariff reductions on soy beans and electric toothbrushes. What does this mean for the flatulence control and dentistry industries in these terriers of the global economy?

Only joking… just one story this week…

IRAN

That's right. We're at war. And The Lads are joined at the podcast frontline by the one and only Malcom Kyeyune. Strap in...

The US State Department advised its citizens in Northern Mexico to ‘shelter in place’, as the cartels took their reprisals, following a major Mexican security forces operation against gang kingpin El Mencho - and then another called El Tuli.

It’s all LOL, until you realise that this is just the start. By targeting the cartels, the US has poked a hornet’s nest; And the hornets are on cocaine.

Meanwhile - have you paid a US steel tariff in recent months? Was it over 30%? If so, you could be due a refund. Just dial 1-800-WHITE HOUSE to see if you may be eligible.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that sorting out the tariffs strike-down would be ‘a complete mess’.

But after the mess, the reckoning: deep down, this is a story about the US balance of payments.

Finally, Christine Lagarde is stepping down from the ECB. Emmanuel Macron' s Napoleonic pincer movement is that this frees the way for a Lagarde Presidential Run – and stops a National Rally government from appointing its own bank governor in 2028. But with these kinds of cynical machinations now effectively running the European elite, the entire Centrist establishment may be embarking on its Russia Campaign.

All of this. Coming up. For premium subscribers. That’s right - it’s premium week.

If you’re not a premium subscriber, you can sign up on our new Metternich Tier on Patreon, for eight dollars, pounds or Euros a month.

patreon.com/multipolarity

For clarity, we should point out that founder subscribers still on the old Palmerston tier will stay at $5 a month.

For anyone else, try it once, you won’t regret it. And you can cancel any time.

And if you like visual Multipolarity, you can always check us out on Substack, where we’re expanding our output with a weekly Multipolarity Briefing every Tuesday.

multipolaritypod.substack.com

At the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio offered Europe a peace in our time.

The Americans sprayed on the charm. But looking between the fine words, it seems like Marco was on his way out the door.

Do Europe’s friends need to tell her this is a break up speech?

Meanwhile, rumours of the destruction of Iran remain premature.

We’ve run the numbers, and it turns out it would take ten per cent of all the Tomahawks in the world to flatten three mullahs and an oil derrick.

But with American strike fleets still camped in the Persian Gulf, how does this end?

Finally, Hungary was all anyone was talking about backstage at Munich.

The Brussels establishment have decided that defeating Orban in his upcoming fourth successive election will bring a massive W in a world drowning in Ls.

The polls haven’t just tightened - they’ve actually split.

With two sides both predicting victory for their candidate, across a spread of 15 points, what happens when one side wakes up in April to find themselves robbed?

Firas Modad is back for his second turn on the pod.

After talking about Neo-Ottomanism last time, he is turning his attention to Iran, and its faltering regime.

With rumours of an imminent attack continuing to swirl, what future is there for a post-Khamenei world?

What part could be played by the exiled Shah? Is there perhaps a different faction that could take the reins if the mullahs fell?

Even then: do Iran’s neighbours even want the regime to fall - given that it could unleash an oil rich industrialised state of 80 million into the region’s balance of power?

Then, talk turns to Somaliland. Recently recognised by Israel, this northern splinter state of Somalia is relatively stable, and hangs on a hinge of the Gulf of Aden, making it a juicy prize for lovers of international shipping lanes. The Emiratis are for it – but Turkey says no.

Who will win in this coming tussle between the Gulf monarchies and the neo-sultan Erdogan?

Today we bring you two audio essays from your favourite geo-political podcasters.

First up Philip is looking at the recent attempt to short the precious metals market.

Perhaps the push to lower the interest rate is not to juice the economy but rather an attempt ultimately stop the Sell America trade?

Meanwhile Andrew’s shouting from the rooftops "it’s right there in the document!".

The Donroe Doctrine… Trump wants to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and the evidence has been there the whole time.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

After Greenland, the rupture in the Transatlantic Alliance was made visible at the WEF conference in Davos.

Mark Carney said the quiet bit aloud. But the real implications are beginning to be felt in the deep financial plumbing that undergirds the global economy.

Now, a Japanese bond market sell-off is unsettling larger forces. If Japanese interest rate then rocket, they may need to liquify their massive US Treasury bond holdings. Beyond the geopolitics, this is going to turn nasty – economic levels of nasty.

We’ll be exploring the full low road prospectus in this bumper-length members-only show.

This is our monthly paywalled episode.

To get it, simply go to Patreon, type in Multipolarity, and sign up - you can cancel any time.

In 1991, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard published a series of essays in Libération and The Guardian entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard's argument was effectively twofold. Firstly, since the American military overwhelmed the Iraqi army so easily and barely sustained casualties, what took place for the West was not really a war per se.

Secondly, the new medium of cable news television meant that viewers in the United States were able to watch the war unfold in real time, albeit through a lens of carefully curated propaganda. Viewers were told that they were being given real-time insight into war, but in reality, they were being fed a simulation of war that was, in many ways, more fictional than they would receive from high quality war fiction.

Our guest today, Anon writer and Substack Amerikanets has written a new essay in this genre entitled Virtual War Simulated Conflict in the Trump era (https://www.amerikanets.com/)

In the essay, Amerikanets described the same experience on the morning after the capture of Venezuelan president; a feeling of unreality.

The initial images and news stories available that morning suggested something like a major American military strike on a capital city. But as the smoke cleared and time went on, it became increasingly evident that all was not what seemed.

The war simulation machine appears to have now reached its nadir, but it has not resulted in a unified propaganda net where everyone unquestioningly accepts the American narrative of global conflict.

Rather, it has created an extremely fragmented reality where no one is really sure what is going on. And as Amerikanet’s essay shows, the more you actually understand what happened, the greater the looming sense of unreality becomes.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Reza Pahlavi is packing his toothbrush again. As protests grow in Iran, the exiled Crown Prince has been popping up for media appearances, from his home in the Maryland suburbs near DC.

As we enter yet another cycle of Persian proto-revolution, we’re saying he shouldn’t count those air miles just yet.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump says that Greenland’s defences are two dogs and a sled. Handy, because America has three dogs and two sleds.

The Danes have been humiliated already – but can anything useful still come from the biggest gorilla in the room turning on his kin? We'll be watching, as Nato slides into the mid-Atlantic.

Finally, when Jerome Powell is putting out hostage-style video statements, you may have squeezed the Fed too hard. Or have you? Whatever the details of the present spat, is there still a place for independent central banking in the Western model?

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

They got the Ace of Spades.

The annual dictator kidnapping season got underway in fine style this week as the US bagged a big one, 1.9 meter Nicolás Maduro.

But while the President and his exposer were taking a tour of the Gulf of America by Black Hawk, back on Planet Earth the geopolitical plates were shifting as never before.

In 2026, it looks like we're about to answer the greatest question of them all.

Can you just do things?

We might not like the answer.

Expanding on that thought, do you know the old joke about the economist, how he refused to pick up the $20 bill lying on the ground?

He assumed it was an illusion because if it had been real, in an efficient market, somebody would've already picked it up.

The young bucks at the State Department think they've found a way to hot wire the great game.

We're asking whether there is such a thing as an efficient market in geopolitics?

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

And to all a good night.

Need a last minute gift? Or want to treat yourself to something you actually want?

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.

The Special Relationship: from Britain defaulting on its loans in the 1930s, to Suez, to Falklands, to the War on Terror, to Trump patronising Starmer at the recent Israel-Gaza peace summit, the precise specialness of this relationship has long been in dispute - whether the political classes acknowledge it or not. There was of course Lend-Lease and the small matter of two World Wars, but Britain’s post-war status, as junior partner in the American Empire has meant it has profited, but as the world pivots, it is now exposed.

Philip Pilkington has been watching the recent wire-tap scandal with Steve Witkoff and Russian official Yuri Ushakov with interest. There is only one country with the capabilities to pull off that kind of intelligence breach, he suggests. And as a result of this and much else, that country may soon find itself off the special list.

So what then? What is Britain’s destiny if it can’t eat at America’s table? And how will America re-make itself in a world where it treats its historic allies so lightly? And what will that mean in turn for the wider Western alliance?

This week, our duo go in search of the long story of the Special Relationship - but only for Patrons. Pay us $5 $5 or €5 a month by searching Patreon.com for Multipolarity, and you too can understand why the good ship Anglo is going down down down to Davey Jones’ Locker.

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity

The common story of modern China’s development is that it has two ages: Mao, and reform.

The truth is there are at least six internally coherent economic eras within the country’s journey from basket case to superpower. Each with their own rules and obsessions.

That’s certainly the view of Philip Pilkington, who has been crunching the deep data on the Chinese economy, in a new paper for Eurasia Magazine.

This week, in an hour long special, Andrew Collingwood quizzes him on the particularities of these periods: from the black-and-white-cats of Deng, to the red-in-tooth-and-claw market mercantilism of Hu Jintao, up to Xi’s property sinking funds and robot army.

As Philip argues, most US Republicans still imagine that the central danger of China is that it trades unfairly - in truth, the country has moved on from that point on the global value chain.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Would every company be affected if the AI bubble were to burst? That’s what Sundar Pichai, the head of Google's parent firm Alphabet reckons.

The facts are startling, with the crypto market shedding more than $1tn in six weeks amid fears that the bubble may just go pop. With bitcoin price at its lowest level since April and the FTSE 100 falling, the guys at the top still say they absolutely do NOT think there’ll be a burst. That normally goes well right?

In UK News, Philip has started somewhat of an X meltdown. He reported that British abortion rates as a % of pregnancies are exploding in spite of recent innovations in contraception. Warning that this a major signal that something is deeply wrong in the economy. Is Britain heading to an almighty demographic crash-out, leading to an immigration boom?

Meanwhile in Mexico, after thousands of demonstrators marched in the capital on Saturday to protest against violent crime President Sheinbaum has again dismissed Trump’s threat of sending in US troops. Sheinbaum said the marches, which also took place in other cities, had been funded by right-wing politicians who oppose her government. 

Could the US be trying to encourage a colour revolution? While Trump continues to keep eyes on his armada in the southern Caribbean, close to Venezuela, who’s to say? And would it even work?

Still hungry for more?

Philip sat down to converse with Jacques Sapir, a leading expert on the Russian economy, and part of the Institute of Economic War in Paris, to chat all things Russia, for the Danube Institute. Thoroughly recommended, you can watch here: https://youtu.be/5raqAVEOWXU

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.

The Middle East is as violent and fractious as ever. Now the questions that arise from that violence appear more important than ever. Israel seems to want to end the chaos in a way that provides it with military dominance over the region and some semblance of peace. 

But can it achieve this or even survive for much longer? Given the scale of enmity it faces in the region and the recent shifts in US domestic politics. 

What of Egypt, which has been since the Second World War, the dominant military power within the region? 

And are we seeing the reemergence of Turkey to its traditional place as regional hegemon?

Well, to answer these questions we have Firas Modad joining us.

Firas is a Druze Lebanese convert to Catholicism, who now lives and works in the UK. As founder and principle of Modad Geopolitics, a consultancy which provides commercially relevant analysis of the effect of geopolitical change on specific regions and industry sectors. 

Firas for some years now, has been a mainstay geopolitical commentator on the podcast circuit and indeed hosts his own podcast, Realpolitik, within the burgeoning Lotus Eaters ecosystem.

This week, the Lads are taking the sword to Trump’s big deal with China. 

The South Korean talks were heralded by both sides as a breakthrough. 

They reached agreements on US soybean exports, the supply of rare earth minerals, and the materials used in production of the drug fentanyl. They managed to resolve the Nexperia crisis by means of a simple volte face. 

But in an era where trade deals tend to come and go, Andrew and Philip are picking this one out as significant. A moment where the Trumpists have had to bend the knee to the rising power, and thereby, set out the trajectory of the next decade. 

Is this The Sorpaso? 

To listen in full to this hour long special, you’ll need to go to Patreon, and pay Andrew and Philip 5 £ $ €. Just google Patreon + Multipolarity.

This week: Halloween Fright Night on Multipolarity. 

We’re taking various geopolitical doomsday scenarios, and running through how they would play out, in full ghoulish detail. 

From Britain disintegrating, to America crashing the global economy, to Forever War on the Eastern Front. 

And stay tuned for an extra special guest… The Headless Norseman himself, Malcom Kyeyune.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

This week: two audio essays.

Peace is coming to Budapest… whether you believe it or not. So says Philip Pilkington, our man on the ground. 

The show may be paused, but that doesn’t change the fundamentals: Trump and Putin need a meeting; they need a venue; the Russian President can’t be arrested on sight. And Hungary’s nous in positioning itself as a true neutral makes it the ideal venue. He talks through the implications of the next phase of bargaining. 

Meanwhile, from the front pages to the middle of the paper: Andrew Collingwood says that we’re missing a really big story on Nexperia. The Dutch chip maker is now owned by the Chinese, and has become a resource allocation geopolitical football of late. 

Volkswagen has warned of temporary production outages citing China’s export restrictions on semiconductors made by Nexperia.

In response, the Dutch government has intervened to take control of Nexperia’s governance under national security laws.  

He warns that Europe could be sawing off the branch it sits on. If they steal Russian sovereign reserves – and at the same time go around stealing Chinese businesses is Europe even investible anymore, is using the Euro and sterling even possible anymore for third countries?

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

About a month ago, the foreign affairs and geopoltical media was abuzz with talk about the Victory Day military parade in Beijing. What had shocked was that, unlike the standard communist bloc military parades, with their thousands of Soviet-style tanks and armoured personnel carriers and well trained goose-steppers, this one showcased weaponry that could have come from a science fiction film: mobile, directed energy laser weapons; hypersonic glide vehicles; futuristic looking, fighter jet sized, loyal wingmen stealth drones; robot wolves; space defence systems.

But was it real, or just a Potemkin arsenal driving past the Forbidden City? And if they were real, what do these things actually do? What do they mean for the balance of power in the western pacific? And, finally, as China climbs at breakneck speed up the military tech ladder, what does it mean for Washington's efforts to hold its defensive perimeter at the first Island Chain?

Anybody interested in China's military tech, and especially its military aviation, will know TP Huang, an invaluable provider of detailed analysis on Beijing's ever greater military arsenal, and China's Beijing's technological progress more generally. He joins us for a special interview with Andrew. 

Multipolarity dialogues is a series of interview that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel.

If you’re an enterprising nine year old looking to top up your pocket money, get yourself a bar of bullion. Gold is up to $4000 an ounce for the first time ever – while the dollar is down ten per cent on the year. The biggest drop since, well, since the gold window closed in 1971. Dedollarisation will always mean something-else-isation — this week’s rally seems to be the latest shake out. 

Between 2021 and 2027 the EU budget for NGOs was around €1.5bn. The new EU budget proposal is advocating increasing that 600%. While America now thinks that USAID is outdated political technology, the EU is trying to buy the dip.   

Finally, we’ll have an update on three countries teetering on the brink: France, The Philippines and Georgia. Could the third world quasi-dictatorial basket case on that list actually topple over? And what about the Philippines? 

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

Welcome to Multipolarity Dialogues –  a series of interview that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.

On this episode: Anusar Farooqui. Like the public intellectual equivalent of a DC comics superhero, Anusar lives a double life. By day he’s a man who wrote his PhD research on the geometric noise arising from black hole rotation, and went on to found Systematic Portfolios, the New York hedge fund he currently leads as CEO. 

By night, he is Policy Tensor the writer of a highly regarded Substack that focuses on international relations, grand strategy and economics. Policy Tensor was one of the few analysts to argue in 2022 that the Russian economy was far stronger than commonly believed – in other words, that sanctions would fail.

He joins Multipolarity with another warning – about an even greater danger, arguing that the United States might be preparing for the wrong war against China.

We will be looking at the big picture strategic position between the US and China – the Thucydides Trap – and why Xi Jinping might take an entirely different route to win back Taiwan. 

Modern Monetary Theory. Magical Money Tree. 

Whichever name you know it by, everywhere, these days, the intellectual salons hum with people trying to say that they’ve invented that most terrifying of things: a new paradigm. That they have the economic equivalent of Einsteinian Relativity. 

These people profess that debt is no issue. That a country that prints its own currency can’t go broke. And rather, that by a canny toe-heel on the brakes, countries can juice their economies without slamming into a wall.  

This week, after talking around the topic on any number of previous episodes, we’re tackling MMT head-on, in an hour long special edition.  

Andy Collingwood is grilling Philip Pilkington, who claims to have been there at the birth of modern monetary theory in 2013 — and asking him whether there is much more here than a placenta, some hair and three teeth.    

The answer, it transpires, is yes and no. MMT does indeed represent a new vein of insight. But that insight is only partial. Misapplied, it is as catastrophic to a monetary system as liquid Robert Mugabe.  

So join us, on a journey, to a magical money tree not so far away…

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

This week, it's the sensual adventure in Geopolitical ASMR you've all been waiting for.

Our two men talking to themselves on their mobile phones in separate locations.

With Philip Pilkington presently locked in a hotel room in China, it seems Andrew is penning him Sleepless in Seattle-style voice notes from Northumberland. Dynamic. Digital. Dangerous. Disestablishmentarian.

How much of this you can handle is up to you? Two audio essays, half a world away.

Later, Phillip Pilkington talks about how much he hates Javier Milei and how hard you should short your pesos.

But first Andy Collingwood talking about a nuclear umbrella and how it could be flopped out right in the middle of a Persian Gulf.

This is geopolitics, as you've never heard it before.

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

Multipolarity Dialogues is a new series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We’ll be talking to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, experts, about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now. 

This week: Carlos Roa is the Director of Research at the Washington DC Danube Institute. He was formerly the executive editor of National Interest magazine. 

Last time on the show – an episode well worth seeking out – he offered us a DC Rake’s Progress, sketching the shape of the technocrat class who run Washington, from first infant mewling as a Pentagon intern, to final wrinkled Cruise strike on a Middle Eastern country. 

This time, he’s got his eyes on something more global. The New Golden Road – and its rivals. 

There is the Silk Road, there is the Belt-and Road, but there is also a third way to move goods from East to West overland.  

It is this that Roa has been studying in his recent paper, also titled The New Golden Road. 

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, quietly unveiled at a G20 summit in 2023, is designed to link India with Europe via the Arabian Peninsula, stitching together ports, railways, energy pipelines, and digital cables. 

In this episode Andrew Collingwood talks to Carlos about the deep mechanics, the economics, and the distortions of geopolitical gravity that this grand new interconnector will bring.

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

Recently, Philip Pilkington and David Lloyd Dusenbury published a couple of papers and an article on the long story of China's intellectual history with the West. A story that extends beyond Marco Polo, and has far more breadth and interchange in pre-modern times than most would suspect.

Lloyd Dusenbury is an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida, author of three well-regarded books of religious history, and a frequent writer and thinker on the history of ideas.

Last month, our duo sat down to comb over what they'd learned in the project for the Danube Culture podcast.

We're bringing you their exchange as a bonus this week.

Friend of the Pod Malcom Kyeyune is back, and he’s got that late empire feeling. After the Chinese Military staged an extraordinary parade in Beijing, Washington is worried. The top dog question has resurfaced. 

In the same week, Elbridge Colby released a new strategic document effectively telling Washington it needs to be far more selective in military affairs. 

After they spent a quarter of their entire interceptor missile stocks shoring up Israel, and with the Abrams tanks proving ineffectively heavy in Ukraine, US procurement is looking shoddy in a way it never has before. No wonder Colby increasingly senses the Taiwan question must be gently settled. 

As  Malcom puts it: “Times were when the US could just pick up a small country and smack it against a wall in order to show who’s boss.” Are recent manoeuvres off the Venezuelan coast a last gasp of smack-it-against-the-wall hegemonic diplomacy?

In this typically ranging hour long special, The Lads look into the abyss called Kyeyune – and he stares back.

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Narendra Modi. In Shanghai. In the back of a car. With Vladimir Putin. Positively glowing.  

The tweets the Indians sent out at the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation were the equivalent of a taken for grantedgirlfriend openly flirting with the jocks at the big keg party. The key question: is this obvious piece of signalling going to be stronger than the thick skulls of the lugs in Washington? 

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, US destroyers are patrolling the coastline. Ostensibly to stop cartel shipments. Are they about to make a Noriega of Maduro? 

Finally, in Britain, the bond yield has hit a thirty year high. At the same time, France can’t pass a budget, and has 114% debt to GDP. What’s going to happen when two of Europe’s big three economies both try to squeeze through the door of the IMF at the same time? 

All this and more in an hour of super soaraway subscriber special. That’s right – it’s that time of the month. Time to put down five Dollars, Pounds, Euros to get to eavesdrop with your fellow subscribers in the secret Multipolarity green room. 

Go to patreon.com/multipolarity. Slap down your cash. And get backstage, where the real action is.

As they say in the Economist: "Serbia is at a crossroads..."

Anti-corruption protests after the collapse of the station roof in Novi Sad have not gone away, now many months after the event. The country's leader, President Vučić, is under pressure as never before, after 13 years in power. He has offered 'televised dialogues': his opponents have declined. The standoff continues.

Meanwhile, in the tiny breakaway relic of the Bosnian War, Republika Srpska, the crossroads has come to a fork.

In February 2025, the President of the RS region of Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, was stripped of his office, for planning to hold an independence referendum to break away from Bosnia. He was handed a one-year prison sentence plus a six-year political ban. Christian Schmidt, Bosnia’s High Representative, froze budgetary support for RS ruling parties after attempts to arrest Dodik were thwarted by Republika Srpska police.

Two concurrent crises, oddly twinned: as we all know, when Serbia goes off, the world needs to stand well back.

Miša Đurković is head of the MCC-MKI Center for Geopolitics at the School of International Relations at MCC. . This week, he joins us to unpack the dense politics of this geopolitical pocket rocket.

With EU leaders summoned to the White House to take dictation, it seems as though the Ukraine War is entering its final phase. Can the Europeans take their medicine? Or will they stay doolally on the happy pills? 

India has made it easier for Russian banks to operate. Turns out, Trump’s capricious decision to threaten them with swingeing sanctions has had second order consequences. These days, the monkey’s paw is twitching so hard it’s tapping out morse code. 

Finally, Goldman Sachs has estimated the winners and losers of the tariff wars. And the loser is – US consumers, who can expect to bear 64 per cent of costs before Xmas.

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity is now open. Only problem? It goes through a geopolitical electromagnet pulling all the badboys of the region into its tractor beam.

The US has taken out a 99 year lease on a corridor that connects Armenia and Azerbaijan. It’s a breakthrough peace deal, certainly. But is it a silk road through a minefield?

Meanwhile, in Alaska, Vlad is about to jet in for talks. Is there some historical echo in doing it in a territory Russia once signed away? Or merely a historical echo of a big empty nothing?

Finally, Trump’s new 401k rules mean that Americans will soon be able to invest their money in crypto. And to create their own retirement tontines — that’s to say, when one pension saver dies early, the rest inherit their forfeited funds. Is this more genius from the great negotiator? Or just a fantastic chance to turn America into a series of Agatha Christie-style bump-off clubs?

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Lawds malarkey guv’nor, Blighty’s popped its clogs. 

Americans have been hoovering up ‘UK doom’ content ever since Elon Musk decided to push the grooming gangs scandal on X at the start of the year. 

On the inside, everyone understands the Notting Hill days are long gone. Only some have clocked that the Children of Men era is upon us.

Now, with the banning of a viral ad for a crypto exchange describing the dismal state of the country, we’re checking in on the dismal state of the country. 

Meanwhile, America is pushing India to cut its oil trade with Russia. Obviously, this will never have any bad second order consequences. 

Finally, having exposed their air defence nakedness in one wild weekend, the Iranians are in the market for a new system. And the news is they’re going Ali Express. Can China succeed where their own engineers failed? Watch this underground bunker.

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Get on the bus. Or get on the Trump train. 

At this week’s Chinese trade talks, Europe has found itself piggy in the middle in the great global realignment. 

After Team Ursula were shunted off an airport bus by their Chinese hosts, – and given no official welcome, it’s clear which side is now entering their Hundred Years of Humiliation.  

We’ll be clipping the tickets of both delegations, and trying to piece together where the Great Tariff Wars of 2025 are up to.  

But as this is a pay week, we’re also going to have to impose a 75% tariff of our own, until you come to heel. 

For those inside the customs union - Multipolarity’s Patreons - this episode is entirely free throughout. For the rest of you – you’ll get the first quarter and no more. 

But all is not lost. Join us, in an ever-closer union, by going to patreon.com/multipolarity, and paying five Euros, Pounds, or Dollars a month. 

Steve Hsu is a physicist, a tech founder, the hub of a network of cutting edge thinkers, and the host of the excellent Manifold Podcast.  After a record-breaking first appearance, this week, he returns to Multipolarity for his second turn. 

This time, we want to ask him about the big picture on China’s tech frontiers. Six months on from the Deep Seek shock, it’s clear that China is making leaps not just in AI, but a range of high-end technologies, from materials science to robotics, semiconductors and telecoms. 

Far from the old paradigm of ‘China doesn’t innovate; it copies’, we’re seeing genuinely novel applications: from beetle-inspired heat censors, to synthetic biology, to silicon wafer replacement.

Beyond the immediate economic implications, how does their coming prowess relate to the strategic balance of power? 

We talk military hardware: the debate about tech missiles versus jets, China’s 6th generation fighters, drones, and the battlefield of the future.

And given all this – what can the US do to claw back the high ground? Can Washington accept their diminished status? Or will they end up both more insular and more aggressive on the world stage? 

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Philip Pilkington is away in Belgrade on a foreign assignment, which means we’re serving up a Sleepless In Seattle-style double header, on tariffs. 

First off: what is the end game for trade and the dollar? With Liberation Day now a distant memory and the passing of The Big Beautiful Bill, Philip has crunched the numbers, and figured out that all is not what it seems. 

Meanwhile, Andrew, casts his eyes eastwards. How are tariffs affecting the geopolitical balance of power in south-east Asia? Are the Japanese slicing up some lessons in Cakeism for Trump?

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In a viral video clip, tantric sex expert Javier Milei once said that he only makes love once every three months. Let’s see if he goes to the IMF any more regularly. In the wake of an enormous bailout, we’ll be busting some myths on the grand schemes of Captain Ancap. 

Meanwhile, in Britain, the finance minister is crying in Parliament, and the Prime Minister is too socially awkward to comfort her. At least Milei made the cuts first; and then went to the lender of last resort after. What happens when a dying G7 economy is too proud to cut anything, and too paralysed to do anything? Looks like they’re also ready for a visit from a certain monetary fund. 

Finally, the Stablecoin revolution is here. That’s right: you can now buy one dollar you don’t physically hold, for the price of one dollar you do hold. Sounds a bit silly? Welcome to crypto, bro. We’re asking: Is the GENIUS Act actually the DURR BRAIN Bill?

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Nothing Ever Happens. Or does it? A week on from a one act play of a war, we pick through the charred remains of the Fordow Nuclear Site. We’re looking for clues. A smouldering nothingburger here; or a flambéd Middle Eastern order there?  

Meanwhile, Daddy got his five percent — NATO members have signed up to splash the cash on the next generation of weaponry. But is this wise defensive spending, or just a fully-armoured hypersonic pork barrel? 

Finally, the S&P has rallied this week - just as the dollar has dipped enough to offset the wins. Now, with bond yields also on the up, we’re into an era of two snakes for every ladder. Is this a weird blip - or the first horseman of dedollarisation? 

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Was it real?

As we record this on the morning of the 23 June, we are a little over 24 hours removed from Operation Midnight Hammer, in which USAF assets, including B2 Spirit stealth heavy bombers, attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. 

US President Donald Trump says that Iran's nuclear programme has been destroyed for good. Open Source satellite pictures of the Fordow site show six ominous black holes in two, tightly clustered groups of three, into which deep-penetration bunker buster bombs were dropped. The entire strike package got in and out entirely unmolested.

But was Iran's nuclear programme really destroyed? There are suggestions that Iran moved its highly enriched uranium from the Fordow site some days before the US attack. If it was such a devastating blow, why has Iran not responded? US Bases and Gulf energy infrastructure is far closer, and far easier to strike than Israel, which Iran is still pounding.

And was Iran a paper tiger? So beset by corruption and ill discipline that Israel could establish air supremacy in a single night, and US air assets can roam the skies with impunity? So that it could have its entire nuclear programme destroyed in a week? That it would be too afraid to strike back, lest the US escalate further. 

What was real at all? And what's next… 

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Malcom Kyeyune is one of the oldest friends of Multipolarity.

In his first 2025 appearance, he catches up with Andrew about the state of the world. Trump’s ‘military parade’. The breakup of the MAGA coalition. Violence on America’s streets. The advent of hypersonic missiles above the skies of Tel Aviv.

This is a wide-ranging, theory-of-everything overview of the geopolitical moment.

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The Big Divorce has finally hit. Like a country rock record written by the WWE, the Trump Musk split has been its own kind of kino. But beyond two hotheaded men who secretly still love each other very much, could it be that this marks the schism between tech and MAGA?

Meanwhile… that escalated quickly. As LA smouldered over the weekend, Trump punched the nuclear button, demanding to send in squadrons of marines. Whether they storm the beaches of the I-110 is perhaps secondary to the constitutional question: who holds the keys to law and order in a divided America?

Finally, right now China is squeezing its rare earth metals. Always wear gloves if you do that at home, but if you do it at a geopolitical level, just get ready for some serious blowback.

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This week, we’re going as big picture as imaginable. Philip Pilkington has a thesis about liberalism itself:

1. That it is bad.

2. That it is ending. 

That’s the nub of his new book, released this week.

He argues that the modern world order is based on a doctrinaire and unrealistic form of liberalism and has given rise to hollowed-out financialised economies and disintegrating societies that can barely even reproduce their population or meet their energy needs. 

Only by abandoning our liberal delusions and adopting hard-headed post-liberalism can the West survive.

In this special edition, Andrew Collingwood interviewed him in front of an online audience on a live Twitter Spaces. 

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China is planning a new version of its Made In China 2025 industrial strategy. Just as America is punching holes in its own science funding budget, we'll be reporting from the output gap. 

Meanwhile, the new US ambassador to Ankara has declared that he's against carving up Syria in a modern Sykes-Picot, the treaty that drew up the Middle East modern borders. Is this an important anti-colonial action or just a license for Erdogan to gobble up his own Ottoman empire?

Finally, Harvard continues to come under shelling by the US government. Not content with disbarring international students, Trump said on Monday that he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money and giving it to trade schools. Is this a case of frightening them to with an inch of their lives or is Trump genuinely guillotining the credentialed aristocracy that runs the United States? 

To hear the full episode (and the whole back catalogue of our special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity) go to Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

Two audio essays, half a world apart. 

Nixon went to China first. Now, Philip Pilkington is there; to see what fifty years of openness to the West has done for the place. Turns out, quite a bit. He’ll be sharing his impressions: North Korea-style police state, or Singapore-style authoritarian wonderland?  

While Philip is playing tourist, our very own Andrew Collingwood is crossing the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, taking the temperature on America’s deteriorating relations with both Canada and Mexico. After all, collectively, they have it surrounded. 

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More ordnance in the Middle East. Rumours are that Trump is agreeing to a two state solution; Israel is out in the cold; Netanyahu is not having his calls returned, and a trillion dollar deal is incoming with the Saudis. We’ve had shuttle diplomacy… but this is Challenger Space Shuttle diplomacy?

Meanwhile, Pakistan has apparently shot down as many as three Indian Rafale fighter jets in recent clashes over Kashmir. The culprit? A chinese-made BVR system. To some, this unexpected win apparently means that in the future, BVR-equipped jets will shoot each other down from tens or even hundreds of miles away. But past a certain point… why do we even need the jets? 

Finally, the eye-watering hundred percent tariffs on China are about to be peeled back down to a manageable thirty percent. A victory for someone. But in the longer term, isn’t this Liberation Day turning into De-dollarisation Year?

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No one imagined that Romanian elections would become a big spectator sport, but they’ve really proved us wrong. Remember the TikTok Secret Police Election? Well now Romania is back with a sequel: Ethno-Nationalist Hooligan for President.

The question smart observers are asking is: why can the powers that be live with one, not the other? The smartest are keeping the answer to themselves.

Meanwhile, if you’re passing through Ben Gurion International Airport, hang onto your drink. You wouldn’t want a slice of Houthi rocket in your arak.

But bad news for the duty free counter is even worse news for the next twenty years in the global air defence industry.

Finally, the AfD has been officially designated as 'right-wing extremist' by Germany’s spy agency. It’s eyes down for a full ban. Who knows, one day, Germany could even aspire to the democratic standards of Romania?

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Three months ago, Pierre Poilievre was going to take 50 per cent of the total vote, a historic generational landslide. Now, he’s a pub trivia question. 

What happened in Canada? 

Did it warp beneath the enormous trade gravity of the Trump Presidency? 

And why did Canadians think that turning to a milquetoast former central banker would turn off the US electromagnet dismantling their country one bolt at a time? 

India and Pakistan are at it again. 

Early in the week, reports were of World War 3. Vishnu and Allah duking it out with nukes at the gates of hell. 

So far, it’s all sparks and no light, but this week’s rift shows how the region is both increasingly important and ever more a pawn of bigger powers. 

Finally, on Saturday Foreign Ministers from five central Asian countries met with China’s Wang Yi to talk over deepening trade ties.

It may seem like just a bunch of bros jawing over the agree-to-agree communiquê, but this is the dawning of the Middle Corridor. 

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Gold is going to the moooooooon. Fantastic news for gold bugs. Until someone works out that this is a short against America, and the Wall Street types celebrating are effectively blowing the kazoo for the end of their own industry. 

After all, if gold remains on the moon, they’ll have to figure out whether they still need financial services consultants in space. 

Meanwhile - it’s a day ending in Y so someone in the Pentagon must be plotting an attack on Iran. 

It seems incredibly illogical and stupid. Which makes it all the more probable, by Pentagon standards. 

Finally, China has raised tariffs on American goods to 125 %, restricted the supply of rare earth metals, stopped investment in US private equity, and cut off its natural gas terminals. 

Tit has given way to tat - we’ll be weighing up who has cut off more of their nose to spite their face.

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This week, in a special experiment, we've gone live on Twitter Spaces.

As Trump's tariffs bite, and the current account deficit zooms to the front of modern political economy, we're revisiting the idea of a new Bancor, a complete resetting of the global monetary system.

This week we scrubbed the decks and sounded the five bell alarm.

Donald Trump had only gone and done it. Tariffs. Thousands of them.

What could the greatest regression from the norms of globalisation since 1945 mean for a show called Multipolarity?

Even better: what would it mean for the world?

With the MAGA base both boisterous and uneasy in the face of this dawning reality, we wargamed out the answers.

Until, at 20:10 local time, news came of a stunning reversal...

Coming up this week: an audio essays special edition. 

Philip and Andrew, going head to head, a half hour each, on two big stories that have a more medium-term feel than the usual weekly news pegs. 

In the red corner, Mr Pilkington takes on the bear market. Is an icy wind coming for global stocks? How it could play out? From the bottoming out of NVIDA to the coming age of tariffs, what are the key triggers? 

Then, Andrew Collingwood will be taking on medium-term Europe. As the US shrinks from its hegemonic duties, will the EU seize the moment, to attempt to federalise through the stalking horse of re-armament? And given recent trends, could this laager mentality also come with a doubling-down on its own unique brand of autocracy?

Was the editor of the Atlantic actually accidentally included in some rangy groupchat among bros that included a denunciation of European defence policy? 

Are you stupid? Have you recently had an aneurysm?

Leaving aside this obvious straw dog, what is Washington actually signalling here? 

Meanwhile, the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans are getting together to sign declarations of mutual support: pledging increased economic co-operation – and gently letting the whole Taiwan thing slide. 

When nations with rape slaves level of historical beef are making nice, you know something is shifting.

Finally, is Martin Bormann alive and well and living in Argentina? No. But as Milei’s government releases the papers on the Third Reich, the historical mythology of World War 2 is under attack as never before. 

What happens when the post-1945 world order has to deal with the messy reality of the pre-1945 world?   

All coming up this week, only for the people who pay. 

You don’t pay, you don’t get. That’s the brutal economic logic behind 1 in 4 episodes of Multipolarity. Spend five Euros, Pounds or Dollars, and join the beautiful people. Just go to Patreon.com and put in your details. You can cancel any time.

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The British right is starting to fracture on the Ukraine issue. Where once they would reliably be called upon to paint themselves blue and yellow and raise a whip-round down the dog & duck    for more MANPADS – now, as the endgame approaches, a group of the plugged-in are leaving the big tent. The civil war that follows may be its own Donbas. 

Meanwhile, further evidence is in that US firms are quietly reorienting their capital expenditure away from data centres and chips, and towards efficiency gains. Some say this is down to the DeepSeek effect. So will the hardware lite business model this implies end up driving a slow puncture into Silicon Valley?

Finally, have you heard of the Trump Put? A backstop against the crazy risks the Trump regime might be running. One that relies entirely on assuming that at some point the government intervenes to arrest a Wall Street bloodbath. It worked in the Greenspan era. But is this a bungee cord without a tether? 

Tesla is tanking. On the NASDAQ, the Magnificent 7 have become merely the 7. The talk is all of quarterly earnings in Musk towers. But is this just a smokescreen for the fact that DeepSeek has DeepFound Silicon Valley in DeepDooDoo?

Meanwhile, in Europe, the dream of rearmament is still alive and well. Two weeks in, we’ll have a report, direct from the frontlines of an unreachable fantasia.   

Finally, do Jihadis make good pets? For a few Washington and Brussels liberals, they have become the accessory du jour. But after the appalling scenes from Syria this week, well it turns out that befriending beheaders in flatbed trucks might not be such a good idea. More as we get it.

***

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As the world blows up, again, Andrew Collingwood has a dread cold.

Gavin Haynes fills in as best he can, with a soft Newcastle brogue.

We cover everything - from the rumble in the White House to the cultural amnesia coming up the pike.

***

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It's cheap and you can cancel any time.

In Germany, there’s been an election.

And The Reichstag is on fire - with a new cohort of AfD members . 

Will Keiser Merz see this as his opportunity to seize total control? 

After all, on Saturday, the incoming Chancellor decided that Germany can quotego it alone.Whatever that means. Is the real threat to European democracy about to come from besieged Christian Democrats? 

Meanwhile, what exactly is Donald Trump up to? In the past few weeks, America’s Sun King has sprayed the geopolitical flak a mile high. From Gaza-a-lago to dropping his piledriver on Zelensky. 

In four years everyone went from assuming him merely mad to assuming method in all his madness. Still, no one has yet discerned exactly what that method is.

Of course, this is a PayWall edition. So if you’re not feeding us coins, not only will you be left with a vague miasma of guilt, you’ll also be leaving us in 15 minutes time. 

That means leaving without 45 minutes of primo audio in which we reveal, plain as day, the TRUTH of Trump’s grand strategy. 

Would be a hard one to miss out on. You’d really feel kinda bummed. 

A piece of our time: a special edition covering the Vance speech, the Ukraine peace plan, and the EU response.

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. But what if you’re a germ? As the USA.I.D demolition continues, we’re beginning to see the outlines of what might be a network of real corruption - and it's not just the tinfoil hats saying it. How will the US public deal with having the wool pulled from their eyes? And will the Beltway liberals ever recover? 

Meanwhile, Britain has agreed to the deal of the century. The Mauritians get: £18 billion. We get: to give them a strategically important series of islands. The Chagos saga must already rank as the most tawdry fiasco since Suez. What no one can understand is: why? 

Finally, while it’s retreating from aid, the US imperium is once again reasserting itself over the periphery when it comes to tech. With the Silicon Valley set signed up behind Trumpism, Europe is being asked to bend the knee, not just on market access, but on their much eroded rights to online free speech. What can you say? 

USAID is being dismantled brick by brick, the bricks are being pulped, the pulp is going in the blower, the dust is being scattered to the four winds. 

R.I.P, U.S.A.I.D. 

We’ll be sharing the surprising implications for independent anti-government bloggers in Moldova. 

Meanwhile, DeepSeek has beggared the US stock market and set NVIDIA on fire. Have the Chinese pulled off their Sputnik moment? Or just the ordinary shooting of a fox? 

Finally, the frenzied abandon of Donald Trump’s tariff blitz often feels like a version of Oprah’s You Get A Car. Except: You Don’t Get A Car. But is this more than a phoney war of sound and fury? 

No European who saw it would have avoided a pang of dread, when a meme appeared online this week, in the wake of the DeepSeek AI phenomenon.  

It pictured three dragons. One, ferocious, on its chest the logos of OpenAI, MetaAI, Gemini AI, and the US flag. 

The other, just as ferocious: featured the Chinese flag, and the logo of DeepSeek. 

The third, looking like the kid in primary school who eats the crayons, featured the EU logo, and the emblematic grafted-on plastic water bottle lid that has become totemic of the EU’s failure to do anything but regulate itself out of existence. 

The message was clear. Europe is increasingly at a crossroads. Between the coming eastern powers, and the declining western powers. And if it isn’t at the table, it will be on the menu. 

Which way, European man? 

Glen Diesen is professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway. 

He has a very popular Substack, and is a regular guest on a range of podcasts, including The Duran. We’re very glad to have him here today, to talk about Europe, Trumpism, the end of the Ukraine War, and beyond. 

This week is a paywalled premium episode.

***

Joe Biden spent his final week minting pardons like Mugabe minted bank notes. In fact, his last act in office was to pardon his entire family. What does this unprecedented use of the seal of office portend for America’s future – and what has it got to do with the Russian word for roof? 

Meanwhile, it’s been a rollercoaster week for zombie-eyed American Zoomers. TikTok was shut down. Then it was reprieved by Trump. In between, Red Note gave them a glimpse into the parallel universe of zombie eyed Chinese Zoomers. Many of whom seemed to have better standards of living in their communist hellhole. What are the geopolitical implications of this collision of worlds? 

Finally, after looking at the quality of Chinese youth, we’re discussing the quantity. New demographics numbers are in. And they paint an extraordinary picture.  Those Zoomers are humping. Join us as we find out more. 

***

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Britain is under attack by the world’s two worst entities - rape gangs and bond market speculators. As Starmer mounts a last stand, we’re reporting from the tattered remnants of old blighty. Is Musk just messing with Starmer’s tiny mind - or are the Americans serious about sinking HMS Britannia. 

Meanwhile, just as the world is thirsting for AI, the Biden regime has decided it will titrate the market for the specialised NVIDIA graphic chips that are vital to building AI systems. 

It’s like sanctions - but for everyone else in the world. So will this make America more friends?

Finally, we’re revisiting a Multipolarity tin foil hat classic: Trussification – the process of targeted financially dynamiting of a political regime. As Biden squeezes the oil market, is he looking to leave a tightly coiled inflation turd on the desk of his successor? 

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

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