The Art of the Steal, Seizing Power by Stealth. Palestine – From Two-State to Real Estate. Digital Dollar Own Goal. Plus more! #241

🔥 American power dumpster fire edition.

Adrian Monck

Feb 06, 2025

Grüezi!

While DC pundits freak out about coups, the real takeover is happening in IT – turns out you don’t need storm troopers when you have system permissions.
As American power verbally implodes, the real action is moving to mineral rights and digital currencies – welcome to geopolitics’ quiet rebrand.
Meanwhile, a farewell interview from the Biden administration reminds us that intellectual inertia can be as damaging as open mic diplomacy…

1️⃣ 🚨 The Trump-Musk Treasury Takeover Crisis 🚨

Another stress test for an over-stressed democracy…

*This wasn’t a Nazi salute. This isn’t a coup.*

Much ink has been spilled by alarmed Americans worried their nation is being subverted from within.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman referenced “a 21st century coup,” economics commentator Nathan Tankus called it was an administrative Reichstag Fire. “The rule of law hangs in the balance…” writes the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.

It’s bizarre watching people talking about something grave without actually appearing to act. As if somehow, later on, it will be possible to triumphantly remind people that – yes, you were right. When if you were right, you may find yourself having to explain exactly what you meant to one of Elon Musk’s DOGE-troopers.

So what has happened?

Private citizens given unprecedented access to critical US government systems;
Normal oversight and security protocols bypassed;
Congressionally mandated spending potentially interrupted;
Career civil servants ousted.

What we’re seeing isn’t the dramatic authoritarianism of the 1930s that haunts some liberal imaginations. It’s something more prosaic and effective: the transformation of public infrastructure into private networks of loyalty and patronage. This isn’t a coup so much as a leveraged buyout of the administrative state. The FT’s Joseph Cotterill compares it to Jacob Zuma’s “state capture” of South Africa.

The people writing worried op-eds are still thinking in terms of constitutional crises and dramatic confrontations. Meanwhile, the work of transforming government happens in memos and IT system read/write access.

The same newspapers running opinion pieces about constitutional crisis have front pages treating this as routine political transition.

It’s not that they’re wrong – it’s that our entire framework for understanding how power could be seized hasn’t caught up to how power actually works now.

Commentators are still searching for dramatic moments of confrontation, while the real action happens in system permissions and database access. The question isn’t just whether this is a power grab – it’s whether Americans even know how to recognise one anymore.

2️⃣ Idea-less in Gaza

Two-state solution to real estate solution.

Nothing captures the current state of American power quite like Trump’s Gaza takeover plan.

A real estate developer president, inspired by photos from a real estate developer diplomat, casually announcing plans to “take over” Gaza during a press conference. The fate of millions casually brushed over for a beach condo brochure.

It captures America’s moment. A presidency so convinced of its own main-character energy that it thinks it can just announce territorial takeovers like a hostile corporate merger.

The Defence Department doesn’t know the plan, the State Department can’t explain it, and Arab allies watch decades of careful diplomacy dissolve in real time.

The administration can’t coordinate messaging between its press secretary and the Pentagon, yet somehow it’s going to:

Convince multiple countries to take 2 million displaced Palestinians;
Clear a war zone of unexploded ordnance;
Attract private investment to a conflict zone;
Transform 140 square miles of rubble into a Mediterranean Dubai.

The administration insists American taxpayers won’t foot the bill, but Palestinians will pay the price.

3️⃣ The New Resource Wars Aren’t About Oil

Why critical minerals are reshaping global power.

While the world focuses on traditional security concerns in Ukraine, a new great game is emerging around rare earth elements and critical minerals.

Trump’s recent remarks about Ukraine’s rare earths aren’t the usual unrehearsed rhetoric. They’re a window into three counterintuitive trends in global power dynamics:

Military aid is evolving into resource partnerships. The traditional donor-recipient model of military support is being replaced by something more complex. Ukraine’s “victory plan” explicitly includes resource-sharing agreements. This isn’t just about help – it’s about long-term strategic positioning.
The real China competition isn’t about trade. Headlines may focus on tariffs and trade deficits, but the critical battlefield is rare earth elements. China controls over 80% of global processing capacity. Every iPhone, Tesla, and F-35 depends on these materials. Ukraine’s deposits could change this equation dramatically.
Future alliances will be built on minerals, not missiles. Countries with critical mineral deposits are becoming the new strategic prizes. This explains why Trump expressed interest in both Ukraine’s resources and Greenland’s deposits. The new geopolitical map is being re-drawn in rare earths, lithium, and cobalt.

🤔 The business implications?

Supply chain strategies need to account for this new resource nationalism;
Strategic partnerships may need to include mineral access considerations;
Investment opportunities are emerging in critical mineral development;
Risk assessments will need to consider resource-driven geopolitical shifts.

The deeper question? We might be witnessing the end of purely security-based international relations and the emergence of explicitly transactional diplomatic relationships that could reshape how global business operates.

#Geopolitics #CriticalMinerals #GlobalBusiness #FutureOfTrade #InternationalRelations #SupplyChain #Strategy

4️⃣ The Biggest Own-Goal in US Financial History Just Happened

And almost nobody noticed.

While everyone’s focused on Treasury takeovers, tariff talk, and Gaza gaffes, Trump’s ban on US digital currency development could prove far more consequential.

Why? Digital currency isn’t just about tech – it’s about the future of global finance itself. And the US just decided to sit out the revolution.

Consider what’s currently happening:

China’s digital yuan is gaining real-world traction;
Gulf states piloting new digital payment platforms;
Global traders seeking faster, cheaper settlement options.

And America’s response? “No thanks.”

In the name of protecting American financial power, the Trump administration is accelerating its erosion. Because here’s what happens next:

Countries adopt Chinese payment systems (because they’re available);
Network effects kick in;
US banks fall behind on crucial innovation.

This isn’t about grand strategy. It’s about basic market efficiency. When you make it faster and cheaper to trade in yuan, guess what traders choose?

Prediction? Five years from now, we’ll look back on this as the moment America voluntarily ceded its financial technology leadership – not because of China’s strength, but because of its own choices.

#GlobalFinance #DigitalTransformation #Geopolitics #Banking #Fintech #Leadership

5️⃣ Over-Intellectualised Inertia

A critical look at Jake Sullivan’s out-the-door interview

The FT’s exit interview with former US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is a bleak window into the moral failure of the Biden administration.

The confident headline – “The Core Engines of American Power are Humming” – quickly collapses when it comes to Gaza. Trump’s crassness above is perhaps accidental. Sullivan’s well-calculated callousness has no such excuse.

Despite the “immense human suffering,” the engineer of American power claims helplessness on Gaza – “I’m not sure how I could have justified” changing course.

Three points of failure:

Abdication of Moral Agency Sullivan frames Gaza policy as something that happened to the Biden administration rather than choices it made. This subordination of moral decisions to “technical constraints” is a failure of leadership at the most fundamental level.
Institutional Cover for Individual Choice While Sullivan points to limitations, he had the power to raise alarms, force debate, or – as others did – resign in protest. The choice to remain was his personal decision, not a system failure.
Retreat from Consequence Sullivan’s planned departure from Washington for a comfortable teaching job in New Hampshire seems less healthy work-life balance and more internal exile.

Sullivan’s exculpatory exit interview offers a warning about how institutional processes can become masks for moral abdication.

#Leadership #Ethics #MoralResponsibility #InstitutionalAccountability

6️⃣ Be Careful What You Wish For…

A Lesson in Anti-Immigration Backfire from Bulgaria.

In 1989, nationalist hardliners in Bulgaria got exactly what they wanted. They successfully drove out nearly half a million ethnic Turks in their “Revival” campaign for ethnic “purity.” The result? A smack in the face from unintended consequences.

Fast forward to today: Bulgaria’s population has plummeted from 9 million to 6.8 million. Schools built for hundreds now echo with dozens. Villages that once bustled with life now struggle to keep a single bar open. The UN projects the population will halve from its peak by 2070.

The irony? That initial act of forced emigration normalised the idea of leaving, triggering waves of departures when borders opened. Young Bulgarians fled west, taking with them their future children and grandchildren. The same nationalist mindset that drove out “foreigners” now makes it tough to attract new immigrants who might help reverse the decline.

To anti-immigrant nationalists everywhere: Population “purity” comes at a steep price. While you’re busy “protecting” your nation from immigrants, you might just be orchestrating its collapse.

#Demographics #Immigration #PolicyFailures #EconomicDevelopment

7️⃣ Ever Wondered When Data Visualisation First Changed the World?

Wonder no more…

In 1788, a Plymouth draughtsman created what might be history’s most influential infographic: the Brookes slave ship diagram – a hand-drawn revolution in how to use data to drive change.

The innovation? Expressing a moral outrage as simple technical drawings:

Precise measurements and scale;
Cross-sectional views;
Clear visual hierarchy.

The result? As one abolitionist noted: “an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it.”

Key lesson for today’s data professionals: Sometimes the most powerful message isn’t an argument – it’s just showing the numbers and letting them speak.

Thanks for reading!

Best

Adrian