The Disruptive Innovation-Geopolitics-Warfare Nexus
The late Clayton M. Christensen's pivotal work on disruptive innovation influenced Dotcom era Silicon Valley. Now, its thematic insights are reshaping contemporary warfare and geopolitics.
A. Armin Krishnan, P.W. Singer & others have written for over a decade about the disruptive innovation potential on the battlefield of killer robots. Now in the Russia-Ukraine War, killer robots are becoming a combat reality.
B. Drone warfare has also emerged as pivotal in the Russia-Ukraine War. Now, the McKinsey consulting company’s mid-aughties tagline of a “war for talent” takes on a new meaning.
C. The later period Wilhelm Reich promoted cloudbusting. In the 1980s, US LTC Thomas Bearden promoted Soviet weather modification as a late Cold War era disruptive innovation gap / missile gap comparator. Now, as geoeconomics and geopolitics creates a more unstable world, weather modification has returned as both a fear and an experimental, scientific frontier.
D. Today’s MIT OCW free course is the History of Science created by Professor Robin Schleffer.
E. Robert Kagan on President Donald Trump.
F. Sports gambling is taking over the United States: a plausible sentiment indicator of irrational exuberance and retail consumer-driven herding behaviour (cf. the Nobel laureate Robert Shiller). Consequently, sports gambling firms are looking to big tobacco to both understand and to operationalise the Black Arts of regulatory arbitrage and value capture.
G. Seth G. Jones on United States preparations for a likely war with China.
H. Francis Fukuyama on the United States as a declining power.
I. A free online course on Commodity Derivatives and Risk Management. An example lecture on Crude Oil Price Determination.
J. Orson Welles and Peter O'Toole on Hamlet.
K. A Dr James Orr lecture for the Peterson Academy on the philosopher Plato (and the Platonic / Socratic current in primarily Western intellectual history - including Plato’s Myths).
L. Bloomberg Podcasts on why the bond market is very important in the current financial market, and likely forecasts of inflation in the United States. A new edition (11th) of the Frank Fabozzi authored textbook Bond Markets, Analysis, and Strategies (Boston, MA: MIT Press Academic, 2026) is out on 23rd June 2026.
M. The Council on Foreign Relations on the future of American power.
N. An interview with the legendary Australian investor Geoff Wilson AO of Wilson Asset Management.
O. Australia’s 4 Corners investigates in The BHP Files the mining conglomerate BHP and its (perceived) rollback of its ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) projects.
P. X platform comments on economic statecraft, geopolitical investor Marko Papic, why Indonesia has banned Polymarket (with a nod to Edward N. Luttwak), why Japanese retail traders have shifted from forex / currency markets to AI stocks and OTC derivatives, and an excellent documentary on Black Wednesday (16th September 1992).