A. Eliot A. Cohen’s new book The Strategist: How To Think About War & Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2026) is now out. It’s a concise, focused, realist guide to politico-military strategy that is a perfect Christmas stocking stuffer for the analyst, planner, or student in your family.
B. When I was in the former Strategic Foresight program at Swinburne University of Technology (in 2002-04), one unexpected lesson I learned was about high-profile corporate failures and economic / financial bubbles (I did case studies on Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the Dotcom era’s ending in 2000 which you can find under the Masters Essays section of my Academia.edu profile). The Guardian has a great podcast episode on Australia’s David Jones department store which faces bankruptcy. Club of Rome member Ugo Bardi’s book Before the Collapse: A Guide to the Other Side of Growth (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019) is an advanced research text that explains the complex adaptive systems dynamics involved. Bardi has a Substack. He also has an excellent interview on the Club of Rome’s infamous Limits to Growth report (1973).
C. The New Yorker’s Nick Berardini has a profile of US basketball player Jontay Porter and his addiction to the sports betting platform FanDuel. Very cautionary - and a microhistory snapshot of where the United States economy is going.
D. Salon Magazine is ceasing publication. I used to read it during my Disinformation period (1998-2008) and later moved to Slate Magazine, instead. I remember Salon’s original publisher David Talbot being in serious financial trouble for years: this was one of my introductions to reading US company financial reports. Salon lasted for 31 years - and I found its content now to have degraded to clickbait. Its goodbye message reads to me like a boring, generic, soulless message written by Public Relations and Strategic Communications staffers: it’s so safe. Sadly, Pud’s Fucked Company site which was so popular and essential to the Dotcom era (1995-2000) has also long ceased publication, otherwise Salon’s death would have been hilarious to read there.
E. PBS has an interesting documentary on US President Ronald Reagan.
Part 1.
Part 2.
F. Tesla’s Cybertruck is also ceasing production. Elon Musk’s vision reminded me of those 1980s science fiction action films with evil, neo-authoritarian transnational conglomerates. The Cybertruck didn’t translate to a viable consumer market.
G. The RAND Corporation releases Inverted Rook: a new wargame that involves the US fighting an overseas war, whilst dealing simultaneously with domestic based disruptive threats. It’s like the Vietnam Syndrome, yet for the contemporary era.
H. Stanford University’s economist Professor Ilya Strebulaev explains venture capital as an investor asset class. Strebulaev has coauthored with Alex Dang the popular book The Venture Mindset: How To Make Smarter Bets And Achieve Extraordinary Results (New York: Portfolio, 2024).