The (Present) Iran War, Disruption, and Deeptime

How the second Trump administration's declinist narratives are expediting via the Iran War the geoeconomic shift to a (multipolar) postliberal future (world order).

A. The re-emergence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Australian politics.

B. Has Russia won the Russo-Ukrainian War?

C. Jeffrey Epstein and the Gates Foundation.

D. On Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology of feared elite decline.

E. Wartime versus Deeptime.

F. The US and China are fighting over talent. It’s actually in Singapore, enjoying a hawker-style delicious lunch.

G. Why Iran’s disruption of the Strait of Hormuz matters. “Move fast and break things”?

H. How actively managed funds work. Also called a research product that promotes your think tank’s philanthropic funders from finance.

I. Data is now the frontline of warfare.

J. Setting the rules for AI warfare.

K. Iran’s escalation strategy won’t work, RAND claims. Tehran (obviously) didn’t hire RAND to run Herman Kahn scenarios and stress tests.

L. A recent thrift store purchase: James Rickards’ The New Case for Gold (London: Penguin House UK, 2016) that foresaw today’s “crisis alpha”, “safe haven” and “de-risk behavioural herding” gold bugs.

M. Tyler Cowen and Harvey Mansfield talk about Niccolo Machiavelli’s realpolitik and Leo Strauss’s elitism.

N. The initial post Cold War period (called the interregnum) was meant to bring us the “peace dividend.” The Council on Foreign Relations explores why this actually never happened.

CFR also considers the Iran War’s ripple effects in geoeconomics.

O. Stephen Kotkin (Hoover Institution) considers how strong Iran’s decision elite is.