The Ukraine Paradox. Why Geopolitics is Now PC vs Mac. Its Silicon Curtains For AI Co-operation. If You’re a Lumberjack – You’re OK. Plus more! #242
Grüezi!
The US is ripping up “The West.” Now it’s just America’s grudging arms customers, resentful tariff victims and some old spy deals.
Europe gets a triple humiliation whammy: Vance (AI), Hegseth (NATO) and Trump (Ukraine). But is US dumpster-fire diplomacy going to deliver?
From Meta’s “inhuman” performance reviews to China’s $250B industrial transformation, the machines may be taking over – but they still need humans to throw the switches.
And as the US closes its Silicon Curtains, SoftBank’s ambitious $500B Stargate project reminds us of the globalised AI future we could have had... if we weren’t too busy choosing operating systems for civilisation.
Good news for lumberjacks – while democracy cracks, at least someone still needs to swing an actual axe. Take that, ChatGPT! 🪓
1️⃣ Dumpster-fire Diplomacy: The Ukraine Peace Talks Paradox
Don’t cut deals you can’t enforce…
A fascinating contradiction is emerging in US foreign policy that deserves a closer look. The Biden-Trump transition has revealed a fundamental paradox in America's approach to European security.
Washington is simultaneously trying to do two incompatible things:
Negotiate a ‘grand peace’ deal with Putin over Ukraine, over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians;
Signal its intention to significantly reduce its European security commitments.
You can’t credibly guarantee peace terms while announcing you’re walking out the door. This creates the kind of dangerous vacuum that Russia, historically, has been quick to exploit.
European leaders – in between spending too little defending themselves and trying to shrug off the triple humiliations delivered by Vance (AI), Hegseth (NATO) and Trump (Ukraine) – see this pretty clearly.
The strategic reality? Any sustainable peace requires credible security guarantees. If America steps back, Europe must step forward – dramatically. This means a fundamental restructuring of European defence capabilities and spending.
The alternative? A peace deal that’s really just a pause button, giving Russia time to regroup while America quietly slinks away.
Don’t expect Europe to unstick itself while it remains a “council of mice.”
#Geopolitics #InternationalRelations #Strategy #Defense #EuropeanSecurity #Leadership
2️⃣ Welcome to PC vs Mac World! Geopolitics Used To be About Values
Now we know it’s just capitalism with two competing operating systems.
The future of geopolitics? PC vs Mac. Which brand do you want on desktop? Or rather whose boots do you want to hear on your doorstep?
As globalised capitalism fragments, China is building out its brand. It’s spending $250B to change its economic model and build an alternative industrial architecture.
The scale is staggering:
$250B annual investment in industrial policy;
Dominating EVs (48% of passenger car sales);
Controlling global shipbuilding (from 5% to >50% market share);
Flipping from $40B chemical trade deficit to $34B surplus.
But this transformation comes with massive costs and contradictions. For every success story (BYD overtaking Volkswagen), there’s a challenging reality (semiconductor self-sufficiency stuck at 30% vs 70% target).
What’s truly fascinating is the deliberate tradeoff Beijing is making:
Accepting “burnt capital” and inefficiency;
Choosing industrial policy over social safety net development;
Risking international pushback from factory overcapacity;
Prioritising strategic security over economic efficiency.
Look at daily life in China – Huawei phones running on a domestic OS, WeChat, BYD electric cars, high-speed trains, local tech platforms. It’s a preview of the self-sufficient industrial ecosystem they’re building.
The most interesting case? DeepSeek’s AI success shows an alternative path – private sector innovation achieving what massive state investment struggles to deliver.
We’re watching the emergence of a new model – not just “Made in China” but “Brand China” – where they’re simultaneously:
Moving upstream in global supply chains;
Building their own domestic alternatives;
Accepting massive costs for strategic independence;
Reshaping global trade patterns.
The implications for global business and the rest of the world are profound.
#GlobalTrade #China #Manufacturing #EconomicTrends #InternationalBusiness #SupplyChain #TradePolicy
3️⃣ Four Ways Democracy’s Decaying in the United States
Institutional erosion guaranteed…
Like surgeons tasked with cutting off their own fingers, US political scientists have been analysing the democratic stress their country is experiencing, before such unpatriotic behaviour has them quietly shown the door.
Here are four ways they see democracy crumbling.
Administrative Weaponisation – Systematically deploying state institutions against political opponents. Unlike previous episodes of political abuse of power, current efforts appear broader and more institutionally embedded.
Public-Private Power – Tech capability + financial independence + quasi-governmental authority = unique challenges to democratic accountability.
Elite Adaptation – Elites accommodate fast to authoritarianism. Principled GOP politicians led the way – business leaders, media orgs, and others follow. The effect? A cascade of silence or submission that weakens democratic norms before any formal institutional changes occur.
System Uncertainty – Deliberate creation of ambiguity about lines of authority and rules of engagement is a threat multiplier. This affects both domestic institutions and international relations, potentially creating destabilising feedback loops.
International distrust → domestic institutional stress → more international distrust
Elite accommodation → weakened opposition → more elite accommodation
System uncertainty → defensive behaviour → more uncertainty
What can be done?
Several factors continue to hold back authoritarian consolidation:
US federal structure provides multiple centres of independent checks;
Independent judiciary with lifetime appointments;
Diverse media landscape, resistant to centralised control;
Autonomous private sector with international ties;
Robust civil society traditions.
However, these ‘safeguards’ may be more vulnerable than previously assumed…
4️⃣ The Great AI InAction Summit
Why Paris ushered in the Age of the ‘Silicon Curtain.’
The global AI landscape dramatically shifted this week. US VP Vance’s speech in Paris rejecting multilateral AI governance, didn’t so much unveil a new world order as draw a new curtain across it.
Here’s what business leaders need to understand. First the scale of spending:
US: $320B AI infrastructure investment
Europe: $27.4B (just 7.7% of global investment)
SoftBank alone: Planning $500B investment despite $82B existing debt
Three seismic shifts make this more than numbers:
The End of Cooperation
US and UK refuse to sign AI safety declaration;
Direct US warning against European regulation;
Clear signal that AI is now about dominance, not collaboration;
SoftBank caught between competing powers.
A Silicon Curtain
US promising to dominate AI development;
Europe pushing its own investment in domestic capacity;
China accelerating through DeepSeek;
Risk of incompatible standards and systems.
Europe risks becoming a “digital colony:”
Lost its tech crown jewels (DeepMind, ARM, key robotics firms);
Lacks massive-scale tech financing mechanisms;
Missing critical AI infrastructure;
Declining operational investment from US tech giants.
The historical pattern is clear. Just as 19th-century railroad financing shaped industrial power, AI infrastructure investment will determine 21st-century economic winners.
What must Europe do?
Create a “Digital Airbus” – pool resources across countries; unified regulatory environment; sovereign tech investment fund
Infrastructure First – data centres; chip fabrication; high-performance computing networks
Leverage European Strengths – industrial automation; precision engineering; strong research institutions.
Reform Capital Markets – unify fragmented markets; create tech-focused investment vehicles; enable project financing at scale.
The last 25 years of economic growth came primarily from tech. Without urgent action, Europe risks permanent technological dependence.
Meanwhile, it’s not just the US and China. The Middle East, India, ASEAN, and parts of Africa are seeing opportunities to leap ahead…
#Technology #Europe #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #AI #TechPolicy #EconomicGrowth
5️⃣ Stargate – The AI Future We Could Have Had?
Ever wondered what a globalised AI world might have looked like?
SoftBank’s $500B Stargate Project is actually too significant to be just another player in this geopolitical landscape – but it isn’t bigger than politics. Here’s why it represents a globalised world we seem to be losing:
Scale
At $500B, it's larger than most countries’ entire AI investment
Would create more AI infrastructure than currently exists globally
Could determine where AI computing power resides
Strategic Position
Partnership with OpenAI (US);
Japanese base but global reach;
Deep ties to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth;
History of working with Chinese tech.
Infrastructure Reality
No one country can easily replicate this scale of investment;
Even the US government would struggle to match it;
Creates potential “must use” infrastructure.
Can SoftBank’s globalised vision survive the new Silicon Curtain? It will have to adapt…
6️⃣ Lessons From Meta’s Transformation
Oh, the humanity…
Having tried to make sense of what’s happening in the US, it wasn’t a political story that set me thinking but a business one – Mark Zuckerberg’s “Orwellian” transformation of Meta.
It started me thinking about the “freakishness” of successful leaders. It isn’t incidental but fundamental to how our institutions work.
Why? Because these institutions aren’t really designed for humans to “flourish.” They emerge through competition, accumulation, and survival imperatives.
The people who rise to the top are often those most adapted to these “inhuman” traits – which makes them appear strange or damaged to those of us still holding onto more human values.
We talk about “we” should design better systems – social, democratic, economic – but there rarely is a “we” at the crucial moments. Instead, organisations emerge through countless small decisions, power struggles, market forces. By the time there’s enough collective awareness to think about deliberate design, the core patterns are already set.
This explains why reform efforts so often fail. We’re not really dealing with “designed” systems that can be “redesigned,” but with emergent phenomena that have their own evolution and momentum.
Take Meta’s performance review system. Nobody sat down and said “let’s create a system that damages human dignity.” It emerged from the interaction of quarterly earnings pressures, scaling challenges, management theories, competitive dynamics. The inhumanity isn’t a bug – it’s an emergent property.
This makes me rethink “institutional sociopathy.” Institutions don’t actively oppose self-actualisation – they’re just completely indifferent to it because it wasn’t part of their evolutionary creation and reproduction. A river doesn’t care about the towns it floods.
The “freakish” leaders succeed precisely because they’ve adapted to this institutional indifference. They’ve internalised the logic of systems that didn’t evolve to serve human needs. Their apparent dysfunction is actually optimal adaptation to dysfunctional systems.
We then try to derive leadership lessons and organisational principles from these unusual individuals. We try to systematise their adaptations, creating a feedback loop that further embeds institutional indifference to human wellbeing.
The governance challenge becomes clearer. We’re not really designing systems, we’re trying to influence evolutionary dynamics already in motion. There’s no central point of control, no moment of conscious creation.
This is why the most human-centred organisations often stay small or local – they’re swimming against powerful evolutionary currents. Scale itself seems to select for institutional patterns that are indifferent to our very humanity.
7️⃣ I’m A Lumberjack And I’m OK!
AI can’t cut down trees.
Anthropic analysed millions of AI conversations on its Claude platform to see which jobs are being hardest hit by AI. And guess what? Good news for lumberjacks – only 0.1% of forestry-related tasks had any AI involvement.
While software developers and writers are seeing AI usage in up to 75% of their tasks, those of us working with our hands in the physical world remain largely untouched.
Key findings for the “can’t be automated” club:
Physical labour jobs show minimal AI usage
Construction, maintenance, and equipment operation tasks rarely involve AI
Jobs requiring ‘environmental manipulation’ (like felling trees!) remain human-dominated.
So while my tech friends are debugging code with ChatGPT, I’ll stick to debugging trees with my trusty chainsaw. Some jobs just need the human touch (and strong arms)!
#AIResearch #Forestry #PhysicalJobs #FutureOfWork #LumberjackLife
Thanks for reading!
Best
Adrian
Links
China’s Xi Is Building Economic Fortress Against U.S. Pressure
Deep-seated reasons for US-China Trade Disputes
The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown
Softbank Weighs Debt-Heavy Financing in $500 Billion AI Push
Which Economic Tasks are Performed with AI? Evidence from Millions of Claude Conversations