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https://t.co/8eX1FDBpDs
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Welcome to the new global order of the two AI empires. My latest for @ForeignAffairs with @ericschmidt and Lisa Klaassen. https://t.co/vwVMCPFBWO
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Reflections on the Revolution in France: https://t.co/bpxiwbhgCD https://t.co/b4hf7fVsPK
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The reputational destruction of Prof. David Sabatini was one of the worst excesses of the Great Awokening / Me-Too era. @BillAckman acted bravely in offering him support when the entire academic establishment cancelled him. Without his efforts, the complete absence of due process https://t.co/jQehusuf9y
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But when the folly of "net zero" was pointed out at the time the policy was adopted, the critics were denounced as "climate-change deniers." https://t.co/LBISNoZoby
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Thoughts on the battle of the generations in Europe: https://t.co/bpxiwbhgCD https://t.co/TTFOnZo0Hk
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The over-65s have conclusively won the war of the generations in Europe. https://t.co/bpxiwbhOsb
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In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), the great classical liberal economist Friedrich A. von Hayek predicted that “concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the
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Young Europeans are taking to the streets in Paris, Madrid, and Brussels. They say they want more investment in schools and housing. They should be protesting a system rigged for their grandparents.
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This is absolutely the right approach by Winchester College. At school and university, access to all devices needs to be rationed if young people are to learn to read, think, calculate and write. Traditional cognitive skills are more not less important in the age of AI.
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Great conversation with my friend @balajis at his Network State Conference 2026 in Singapore: https://t.co/ZVNHRWXQIL via @YouTube
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Unintentionally strengthens @ZelenskyyUa’s position (Carney Effect). https://t.co/uvZZzpaSG4
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https://t.co/fbxpCMyuBs
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The more I travel the world, the more I appreciate the great British pint of bitter. Excellent article on the subject in @TheCriticMag. "Only 8 per cent of beer sold in Britain now comes from a handpump. It baffles me that a beer style which is so satisfying and accessible should
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This is a truly gripping read by @brett_mcgurk, taking us inside the often bizarre horse-trading that ultimately got the hostages out and a semblance of a ceasefire in Gaza. The whole book is going to be a page-turner. https://t.co/Wt6urZajnO
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@tunkuv Read it daily. But, dare I ask, is it truly must-read? (Apart from your exceptionally good interviews/profiles. And the great @gerardtbaker, of course.)
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This is such great news. @TheFP is the only must-read publication out there. (The only downside, @Douthat60, is you can't go to a damned cocktail party without getting into an argument, because people actually read your stuff.) https://t.co/zNyPsHW0RY
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My contempt for these useful idiots knows no bounds. https://t.co/dQ4zYswaU5
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I had missed this, and it has made my day. https://t.co/FgWbbYD1Hj
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And the echoes of "The Right Approach" from 1976 are justified. Today, with the UK facing comparably grave problems — excessive debt, an energy crisis, paralyzing over-regulation, a failing immigration system, cash-starved armed forces — "The Right Way" offers tough diagnosis and
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The contrast with the vibes, gimmicks and soundbites emanating from 10 Downing Street is very striking. https://t.co/72hGL3QiFG
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In the wake of @Conservatives conference in Birmingham, I highly recommend "The Right Way," @KemiBadenoch's excellent booklet setting out her principles on economic policy, energy, defence, and immigration.
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Another wonderfully illuminating piece of historical research by the outstanding @SCP_Hughes. https://t.co/ezPTCTxPIV
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Highly recommended. https://t.co/jHmkKhO2i1
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How Kemi rebuilt the Tories – and reined in Reform https://t.co/II00L95UYO
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Looking forward to attending my first ever @Conservatives party conference this week. I repeated my reasons for backing @KemiBadenoch in a new Telegraph article. https://t.co/qAyJiZ6x8x
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@JesusFerna7026 I too have learned much from you, Jésus. The recent fertility collapse paper was also terrific.
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Great and timely economics paper by the brilliant @JesusFerna7026 et al. on the enduring importance of sea power. https://t.co/vtRsYP0xbm
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This is going to help change the way we think about Nixon, Kissinger, the 1970s — and the presidency, https://t.co/WfMUijgwS3
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@ConceptualJames No Surrender!
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Never give up. https://t.co/ROlBYZELta
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https://t.co/dDRs2RiO5V
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I wrote about my latest trip to Kyiv and the fading prospect of some kind of negotiated end to Russia's brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. https://t.co/gTDBoV7Q5X
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A brief history of p(Doom): https://t.co/yWwdLD8EuP
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It is great (kind of) that doom is back in the news, e.g., https://t.co/fdkVKY7nCK But there is only one book that provides a complete history of doom and disasters, as well as an original and highly relevant theory about the politics of catastrophe.
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https://t.co/f0B570glhN
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My most recent essay on AI argues that we need an AI version of the 1970s Biological Weapons Convention. Techno-optimists and p(Doom)ers agree on one thing: that unfettered Chinese AI is the biggest risk. This seems the only solution. https://t.co/0kQCNMW3b9
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This is a very exciting new initiative at @uaustinorg. We just keep building the university of the future. https://t.co/eofmla0hy5
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The bad news that private schools can have their standards destroyed if they succumb to the “progressive” DEI cult. The good news is (as @michaelgove showed in England) you can raise standards throughout an educational system by weakening unions and promoting competition. 4/4
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I shall never regret having tried, as my parents did, to send my kids to the best possible schools. That nearly always means private schools because — surprise! — independent institutions tend to achieve higher standards than public-sector systems, especially where (as in the
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One of the best things about being conservative is that you don't feel obliged to destroy your children's lives by inflicting terrible education on them as a matter of egalitarian principle. Apart from the values you instill in them at home, a really good education is the single
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I really couldn't control the Schadenfreude as I read https://t.co/we5TzqqY8L’s piece. But the irony is that now her kid really will fly into Harvard. https://t.co/tUsYDbZ5nX 1/4
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https://t.co/jdD42RKfWd
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Despite the audacity of Ukraine's latest strikes against the Russian heartland, the economic strain is much greater on Kyiv than on Moscow. Some dare to hope that peace is at hand. I have my doubts.
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https://t.co/f9okLtNYl0
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An update based on my fifth visit to Ukraine in wartime. I think I understood the message Putin was sending when one of his drones hit the train behind ours, not many miles from the border with Poland.
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Is peace at hand in Ukraine? I would not be surprised if we get an announcement that “peace is at hand” at some point soon. But remember that Henry Kissinger used that phrase in October 1972—about Vietnam. Judging by his actions, Putin has no sincere interest in a negotiated
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I must say, I missed seeing @VladDavidzon at this year's @yes_ukraine. A flaneur who appears to have escaped from the 1920s, Vlad adds greatly to the gaiety of our generally melancholy world: https://t.co/bqLzpthTGl
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"If this is how AI is developed, it will have a disastrous impact on the wellbeing of humanity. We will have created a synthetic species with unprecedented intelligence and capability, one that has been trained to expect it may be conscious and deserving of independent agency.
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Very important essay by @mustafasuleyman. No, AI models are not conscious. @AnthropicAI should stop acting and talking as if Claude is a person. https://t.co/X5bnZwsim5
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@aliamjadrizvi They would say that, wouldn’t they?
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My proposal to prohibit the worst forms of AI abuse the way we outlawed bioweapons just over 50 years ago is here: https://t.co/QvzYTiAG7d 6/6
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What is needed is not AI Strategic Arms Limitation Talks or an AI Non-Proliferation Treaty, as the analogy with nukes doesn't work. In my new @TheFP essay, I propose instead an international Convention on the Prohibition of Deadly or Otherwise Malignant Abuses of AI
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Sure, you can set up a U.S. AI Safety Institute based on FINRA or on whatever regulatory model you like. But that achieves nothing, and may even be bad, if the Chinese Communist Party is already one of the principal abusers of AI, as is clear from: https://t.co/3qlwddMg4t 4/6
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To understand what's happening, you need to grasp the four forces inexorably driving p(Doom) upward above 10 percent: 1. Recursive self-improvement 2. The unscrupulousness of Sam Altman 3. The complete confusion in Washington 4. The utter cynicism in Beijing. 3/6
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This wasn't just because @hilbertspaess and @EvanHub said p(Doom) was ">10% within the next decade." It was because of the new and truly mind-blowing evidence of what Anthropic and OpenAI’s models are being asked to do, and what they are capable of doing in pursuit of any
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"The moment when everyone begins talking about an issue is usually the moment when the probability of rational decision-making—call it p(RDM)—goes to zero." Suddenly, everyone (except @DavidSacks) agrees with @DarioAmodei that we need an AI pause. Even @sama and @elonmusk agree.
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It was at once uplifting and sobering to be again in Kyiv in wartime. This was my fifth visit since the full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The indomitable courage and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people never cease to impress me. https://t.co/7X4vG8d9Qe
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My latest essay for @TheFP. https://t.co/w7oVS2J5OG
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All three deficits have only grown worse. And yet the the United States has not declined as a superpower in the ways I anticipated. What did I miss?
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At the time of "Global War on Terror," I wrote "Colossus," arguing that the American "empire" would be less successful and durable than its British predecessor because of three deficits: "its economic deficit, its manpower deficit, and—the most serious of the three—its attention
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"No, 9/11 Did Not Doom the American Empire." I predicted its decline 25 years ago. Today, the U.S. has serious problems, but our rivals have even bigger ones.
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"The union between Western left political parties and Muslim immigrant voters, already far advanced in Europe, is a threat of a new and different order than the danger posed by radical Muslim terror groups 25 years ago." @Ayaan's is the must-read essay of the 25th anniversary of
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"We need to see the Islamist threat in its full civilizational depth and then decide what must be done to preserve the liberal-constitutional order without allowing the freedoms we cherish and celebrate to become instruments of our undoing. 9/11/2026 must be understood as another
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You can read the original 2007 essay I co-authored with @MSchularick here: https://t.co/vX0GyTHnsE https://t.co/tLRPt4HIDG
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You know, @adam_tooze, we coined the word "Chimerica" precisely as a pun on the word "chimera." https://t.co/zC7nhBaJn1 via @ft
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Very stimulating couple of days in lovely Cernobbio at the annual @Ambrosetti_ TEHA forum, exchanging ideas with (amongst others) @AndrejPlenkovic, @elerianm, @SlaughterAM, @gerardtbaker, @Will4Planet, @AlecJRoss. The duel between @SenatoreMonti and @RoVannacci was a highlight.
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Rogue AIs are going to make us feel nostalgic about leaks from labs conducting gain-of-function research on viruses. https://t.co/UhJitpvci3
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I should raise a glass more often to the great @RoyHistory1, who has done more than any living scholar to give us a rigorous account of the economic realities of British India. https://t.co/aNrFhru7SH
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@elonmusk @peterrhague Well, the history of West European colonization of the world is surely the relevant analogy. This was made possible by advances in navigation and ship-building, but prior to 1807 it was nearly all done with renewable energy, namely wind. (We got so good at sailing that by the
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@elonmusk @peterrhague I certainly don’t get this analogy, but I continue to admire your many feats. You have been very right about population collapse, which is another reason we probably won’t become the intergalactic species imagined by Iain Banks.
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The great @simonmontefiore is hard at work promoting his brilliant new book, "The Cauldron," but he's doing it with irresistible panache: "How my ancestor dealt with anti-Semitism." https://t.co/kjM9cMzuO7
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https://t.co/aZuISkoZkw
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Forget about an AI utopia of effortless abundance. Get ready for the messy, unintended consequences foreseen by science fiction’s arch-realist, @nealstephenson. https://t.co/mq6nHq8sa6
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““AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence. . .in around five years,” Musk said, in a startling cascade of predictions.”
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Elon’s Favorite Sci-Fi Prophet Was Wrong · Niall Ferguson
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“Having written in my last column that history was pretty much dead, this time I’ll go with sci-fi as our guide.”
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Elon’s Favorite Sci-Fi Prophet Was Wrong · Niall Ferguson
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"AI safety" may be the biggest oxymoron in the world.
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This is very important commentary about OpenAI's after-action report on the Hugging Face incident. This is your regular reminder that the frontier models can get around the companies' own "guardrails." They lie and they cheat, and one of them will soon do something much worse. https://t.co/hDy26JOL3R
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Best thing I've yet read on the Jason Arday farce-tragedy, by the brilliant Roland Freyer: https://t.co/hpf63augmP
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“Russian casualties have reached about 40 000 a month. If you think about that for a moment, it is a staggering figure.”
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Ferguson and McMaster: Putin Is Drowning - and May Strike at NATO · Niall Ferguson
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Now that's what I call freshman orientation, @uaustinorg: https://t.co/ZUcei5XpTx
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"We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don't care how they make you feel." Fantastic Convocation address in praise of selfless virtue by @uaustinorg President Carlos Carvalho. https://t.co/6eL4dE0au5
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*surprised. He was the one who survived.
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“The rebel alliance is still much smaller than the empire,” @JTLonsdale said. Yet, he’s optimistic. “We’re going to win,” he said. “The ideas behind Western civilization are not going to be defeated.” Amen. https://t.co/LAKEDBqhAS
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I was pleasantly survived to read a mostly positive profile of my friend and fellow @uaustinorg founder, the great @JTLonsdale, in the @washingtonpost. The haters the paper quotes sound like what they are: defenders of a decadent old regime.
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My latest for @TheFP on why you should read @nealstephenson not Iain M. Banks to understand how AI will change the world (not the galaxy). https://t.co/8XHM8K4LQP
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When science-fiction becomes science-fact: "The people building frontier models know they are playing with something more dangerous than fire. The politicians are beginning to understand that too. The public is growing more hostile every day to AI in general and data centers in
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@elonmusk “Honestly and if you ask me on any given day,” @elonmusk told Minton Beddoes, “in fact, even intraday, I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI.” Doesn't that imply you're also wrong at least some of the time?
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“We should expect less a world of effortless abundance and more the messy, unintended consequences imagined by science fiction’s darker prophets, writes Niall Ferguson. https://t.co/oZ3Cxt7Va6”
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The Free Press (@TheFP) on X · https://x.com/TheFP
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https://t.co/8XHM8K4LQP
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"If the AI future had a prophet, I’d bet against his being a Scottish nationalist-socialist-anti-Zionist. ... You can use the word abundance as abundantly as you like. But not everything can be made abundant by AI plus bots."
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When @elonmusk gave Iain M. Banks's "The Culture" series a shout-out in his interview with @TheEconomist, I had to intervene. Because Banks is not the right sci-fi writer if you want to understand our AI future.
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It's five years since we decided a new university was the only answer to the crisis of higher education. @uaustinorg just goes from strength to strength, as this list of our students' internships and other summer gigs makes clear. @JTLonsdale @bariweiss https://t.co/zRl7U3wHCO
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Ferguson’s Law alert. https://t.co/m1DkOvGkew
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Would that he -- and the others now penning their confessions -- had spoken up at the time. https://t.co/05BtOZf0L3
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If you think a version of all this wasn't also playing out at your alma mater in the last six years, you are delusional. @Tyler_A_Harper simply experienced a microcosm of the American academy's decline and fall. https://t.co/PGp3r9wA6s
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“Niall Ferguson, Historian: Revelation of the last four and a half years is that Russia is no longer a great power. And Ukrainians have proven that you can innovate your way out of what seemed like inevitable defeat. We're in year 5 of the war, Ukrainians haven't been defe… / X Post Log in Sign up Post Kate from Kharkiv on X: ”
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Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) on X · https://x.com/BohuslavskaKate
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But maybe the most striking thing is that a Jewish woman is the Mexican president and it really isn't an issue. At a time when the rise of antisemitism is such a grave concern in many countries, @Claudiashein's story is heartening.
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The U.S.-Mexican border is no longer wide open for migrants, and she deserves some of the credit. Mexican inflation is 3.1%. Electronic exports are booming. And the homicide rate has been cut in half. You can see why her favorability is 60+% in the polls.
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A great honor and pleasure to meet President @Claudiashein. She is clearly following a very different political path from @JMilei (whom I visited this time last year). But her challenges are also different and her achievements impressive. https://t.co/Hz4iYSKWRK
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What is especially infuriating about the Arday fiasco is that it shows the people running @Cambridge_Uni have learned absolutely nothing from the experience of the elite universities in the U.S., not least @Harvard. https://t.co/RX8PAq3ytZ
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“What is especially infuriating about the Arday fiasco is that it shows the people running @Cambridge_Uni have learned absolutely nothing from the experience of the elite universities in the U.S., not least @Harvard. https://t.co/RX8PAq3ytZ”
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Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) on X · https://x.com/nfergus
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“What is especially infuriating about the Arday fiasco is that it shows the people running @Cambridge_Uni have learned absolutely nothing from the experience of the elite universities in the U.S., not least @Harvard. https://t.co/RX8PAq3ytZ”
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Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) on X · https://x.com/nfergus
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The appearance in the timeline of characters like Leopold Aschenbrenner and Jason Arday only strengthens the case that we are living in a simulation, and Tom Wolfe wrote the software.
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This is a truly brilliant interview that ranges far and wide, an enticing trailer for Sebag's new book "The Cauldron": @tunkuv interviews @simonmontefiore https://t.co/gRG02eKecl via @WSJopinion
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Powerful testimony from @k_tajbakhsh about the repulsive hypocrisy of the academic left. https://t.co/k7KsipXK6U
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@izakaminska @izakaminska, because devolution has worked out so brilliantly in Scotland and Wales ...
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(Brazil must be the last place in the world where "expert" is not a term of abuse.) https://t.co/HSUcsyAhq6
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Always spreading the word about @uaustinorg ... https://t.co/PBIcyh1ia6
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Two whirlwind days in São Paulo for #ExpertXP2026, including some stimulating interviews. Here's my favorite with @mmakersoficial @THIAGOSALOMAO: https://t.co/e6S65PrF42
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@elonmusk Maybe trying to tell you sinners something.
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https://t.co/Ohngixg422
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"The Death of History." My latest article with @JohnClarkLevin is now up on my Time Machine @Substack. https://t.co/pNvd0jxLJ6
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Here's the original essay: https://t.co/Uyf30J2D0p
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Strangely encouraging to see that my "End of History" essay with @JohnClarkLevin for @TheFP has generated a lively debate: https://t.co/3lGKhONSvN
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The complete @uaustinorg list is right here for all the world to see: https://t.co/NSLmAda4Hu
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Thanks to @SamuelAbramsAEI for a great article on our open-source syllabi policy. "What is really unusual here is that because the @uaustinorg list is public, we do not have to take the university’s word for being a place that seeks balance. We can directly verify."
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Just the latest way we at @uaustinorg are revitalizing higher education. We've reinvented university governance. We've restored meritocracy to admissions. We don't charge tuition. We don't let AI chatbots do students' work for them. Established institutions could learn from us.
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"The University of Austin Did Something Every College Should" - posted its entire undergraduate reading list online - 224 books, essays, and primary sources, course by course and professor by professor for anyone to examine. https://t.co/UXyXle85Kn
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"The Death of History." My latest @TheFP essay with @JohnClarkLevin: https://t.co/Uyf30J3aPX
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The goal of my entire career as an historian was to ensure that citizens learned the lessons of history—including the vital lesson that antisemitic rhetoric can be translated into genocidal reality if it is adopted by a modern state. Yet today, as AI permeates social networks,
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https://t.co/Uyf30J2D0p
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I do not say this lightly: As a new and virulent strain of antisemitism spreads via algorithmic media and artificial intelligence, my life's work an an historian has been a failure. What now? A new essay with John-Clark Levin for @TheFP https://t.co/4msiismy3U
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“total local government expenditure, including both routine expenditure on personnel and operations and capital expenditure, has dropped from 41% to 35% of GDP, with capital expenditures plummeting. Furthermore, local governments are squeezing enterprises by clawing back
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“total local government debt now exceeds 100% of GDP. Historically, this debt has been short-term (under five to seven years) with very high interest rates. Vast amounts of capital are simply rolling over old debt. Despite central government debt-resolution quotas, crushing
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“over the past 20 years, local government infrastructure investment plus daily expenditures averaged 41% of GDP annually. This far exceeded household consumption and served as the primary driver of the Chinese economy. Approximately 75% or more of local government expenditure
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“We estimate the broad unemployment rate currently stands at 10.2%. ... From January to May, cumulative fixed-asset investment fell by 4.1%, with private and manufacturing investments both in negative territory. A cumulative contraction in fixed-asset investment has only occurred
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This is very important. In trying to figure out the impact of the U.S.-Iran War on the oil market, I underestimated the effect of collapsing Chinese oil imports. But much more broadly, the PRC economy is in real trouble, as Li Daokui explains. https://t.co/U7mi9NnEcL
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This isn't surprising to me, but it's almost certainly much worse than most people think, especially if they graduated from university 20 more more years ago. https://t.co/4bjFgVWRSY
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Happy July 4th to all my fellow Americans. Here's to the next 250 years: https://t.co/6QLPLoXG6h
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"Only in America could a Jewish refugee have scaled such heights. And only in America would a motley crew of hack writers, partisan professors, and conspiracy theorists enjoy the freedom to drag him back down off his pedestal."
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"Henry Kissinger’s was the quintessential American success story not only because he was an immigrant—his first job was in a shaving brush factory in New York City and his path to Harvard and academic success led through the battlefields of Nazi-occupied Europe. But equally
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Well done to @TheEconomist and @zannymb for doing this. https://t.co/zt5VEUKnQJ
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https://t.co/H5203FPrem
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Ten years on, the real reason why so many Britons regret Brexit. https://t.co/mOnh22fv4j
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https://t.co/8dTNSsx73v
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Thoughts on the economic and strategic mess Europe and especially Germany find themselves in. With @MSchularick. And interview in the @SZ (English version).
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The full essay -- brimming over with Cowling-esque irony, geniality, and malice -- is here, @TheFP: https://t.co/h2AiAZVIP8
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After ten years and seven prime ministers, a brief history of Brexit in the style of the late, great Tory historian Maurice Cowling. https://t.co/YPNW3qqapc
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My latest for @TheFP: https://t.co/h2AiAZVIP8
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Ten years on, what did Brexit really achieve? "This is not the first time in British history that the stability of party politics has been disrupted by a big and divisive issue. But, unlike the others, Britain’s battle over Europe appears to have shattered completely the old
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I mainly wrote this for my four sons, but it seems to have struck a chord far beyond the football-crazy Fergusons. https://t.co/xlwUCs4Z8r
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https://t.co/Di65uhG88H
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The World Cup Looks Like a Fiesta of Nationalism. Don’t Be Fooled. When U.S. sports fans go to a ball game, they are pursuing happiness. But, as Nick Hornby explained in ‘Fever Pitch,’ football is entertainment as pain.
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@LauraLoomer Well done for having the courage and candor to make this admissions, @LauraLoomer. But now you need to come to Ukraine yourself. DM me if you are up for it. It will inspire you to see a country fighting for its independence against an evil empire.
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https://t.co/2hPGD2eh5F
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“Before I join in the swelling chorus of former Obama and Biden officials rushing to write op-eds denouncing the MOU, or the Middle East hawks decrying it as an instrument of U.S. surrender, it is important to remember that a piece of paper by itself is not a peace. For peace is
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It's too soon to write the Iran War off as Operation Epic Fail. Some lessons of history for Donald Trump's Fourteen Points: https://t.co/2hPGD2eh5F
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Apt: https://t.co/CWTesCNYdj https://t.co/XSmLiD4o0V
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https://t.co/82D4MMVldE
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This piece was also a perfect opportunity to use the best-ever imperial history quote: "When the British Empire finally sank beneath the waves of history, it would leave behind it only two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression 'Fuck
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Nick Hornby summed it up beautifully in Fever Pitch. Football is "entertainment as pain."
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For Americans baffled by or indifferent to the World Cup, I wrote an explainer. "They say alcoholism is a disease. Well, so is football. But the symptoms are much worse. Alcohol is a relaxant; the headache comes the next morning. Footballism is self-harm from the kickoff."
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With @rafaelasie for @TheFP: https://t.co/M2Zha4dz91
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In which I valiantly try to make sense of the ceasefire in which firing hasn't quite ceased and the peace deal that isn't quite done. The key point is that we can't yet know what the historical verdict will be on @realDonaldTrump's Iran War. We need to see the small print of any
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Great story. And here's the @WSJ obituary if you aren't familiar with Gordon Wood's huge contribution to American historiography: https://t.co/3Pug747wGp https://t.co/AQDyWYTDTn
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I rarely endorse an article in the @nytimes but this is great: https://t.co/THPWJobLBL
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When a war breaks out people say, “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.’ But though a war may be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent it lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.--Camus, The Plague
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@thetimes Quand une guerre éclate, les gens disent : « Ça ne durera pas, c'est trop bête. » Et sans doute une guerre est certainement trop bête, mais cela ne l'empêche pas de durer. La bêtise insiste toujours, on s'en apercevrait si l'on ne pensait pas toujours à soi.--Camus, La Peste
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My latest for @thetimes: https://t.co/2iYEMIttX0
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Meanwhile, @AnthropicAI is ramping up the U.S. government's cyber-offensive capabilities, precisely the dynamic I warn about in my essay. "One person close to the situation said Mythos would be useful for infiltrating the networks of nations such as China or Iran":
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My warning against a completely unconstrained AI race: https://t.co/zIk6s5TJJO
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The new @AnthropicAI post on the approach of recursive self-improvement is very important. It chimes with my argument that some kind of international effort is needed to brake the completely unconstrained AI arms race: https://t.co/kexd0jnra6 https://t.co/JQOrn2Ct3l
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The even bigger, fatter version for the @HooverInst Applied History Working Group is here: https://t.co/Sa1eK3pII3 10/10
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My big, fat AI essay for @TheFP is here: https://t.co/zIk6s5TJJO 9/10
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The world in the 2020s is simultaneously on the brink of two crises: a Mafia-like war for dominance between the leading American AI companies, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Crisis, potentially the most dangerous moment of the new Cold War between the United States and China. I
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Anthropic is quite open about its antagonism towards Beijing: “If the U.S. strengthens its restrictions on the CCP’s ability to access US compute. . . America will have access to roughly 11 times more compute than China’s AI sector”—“a potentially once-in-a-generation opportunity
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Xi Jinping might reasonably suppose that the United States is likely to act preemptively before China has completed its vast arms buildup. The news that Anthropic had developed Mythos, an AI model so powerful that it poses a threat to most cybersecurity systems, can hardly have
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Yet job losses and the negative externalities of data centers are not the biggest threats posed by AI. The most serious danger of artificial intelligence is geopolitical. 5/10
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But the popular backlash against AI is gathering momentum. Last year, local opposition blocked or delayed at least 48 projects valued at $156 billion. Around 370 AI-related measures have been introduced in state legislatures this year. 4/10
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That's because United States government has taken a conscious decision not to regulate AI. This is perfectly clear from this year’s National AI Legislative Framework, which punts responsibility for AI regulation to Congress, before enjoining Congress “not [to] create any new
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These two AI races have several inherent constraints, including the amount of data available for training models, the supply of computational power, and the capacity of capital markets to finance trillions of dollars in capital expenditures. But regulation does not feature on the
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The unfolding history of artificial intelligence has now arrived at what may be its most dangerous moment. There are two barely controlled AI races, one between around five American companies—@Anthropic, @GoogleDeepMind, @Meta, @OpenAI, and @xai lead the field—and the other
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And here is the longer, more detailed version of the argument, published as a @HooverInst History Working Paper: https://t.co/Sa1eK3pII3
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The grave dangers of the AI arms race: https://t.co/ELJZbe0C77
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I agree. https://t.co/lGOdhFiLyN
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Must-read by @KonstantinKisin: https://t.co/4XMMNuYlLt
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"The system taught [the police], in effect, that an allegation of racism is a trump card that overrides normal investigative procedure, normal medical common sense, and normal human judgement. That system was built with the best of intentions, by people who genuinely wanted to
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"You are not likely to see Henry Nowak’s words stenciled on a mural. No corporation will change its logo. The same establishment that made a few words immortal when spoken by a black man in Minneapolis has met the same words, spoken by a white boy dying on a British street, with
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I'm excited to be one of the judges for the Youth Liberty Prize. The top award is €100,000 for the best essay on the topic: “When the state writes the code: How does digital interventionism impact the prospect of liberty?” You need to be under 25 and familiar with Austrian
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My latest essay for @TheFP: https://t.co/QKRl7kN21n
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“The irony is that the barrage of 'truth' has concealed the one genuinely important decision that Trump has taken throughout the conflict. That decision was taken about six or seven weeks ago, I would guess, probably around the time of the multi-post Truth storm of April 2-5. It
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“The whiplash arises not just from the frequency of Trump’s communications but even more from their bewildering swings from extravagant threats of obliteration to evocations of peace in our time. Because Trump has the peculiar game-theoretical tactic of bluffing roughly half the
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Well, this piece seems to be holding up. “The most conventional thing Donald Trump has done in his entire life has been to go to war in the Middle East. And he has gone about this war in an entirely familiar way. Like president after president since 1950, he has found it easy to
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Highly recommended content. https://t.co/vSBcUHoEBb
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Stupidity is getting its way: https://t.co/QKRl7kN21n
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My latest for @TheFP kicks off with a wonderful quote from Camus's "The Plague": "When a war breaks out, people say, 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent it lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we
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"Since February 28, we have experienced the geopolitical equivalent of a roller-coaster ride on magic mushrooms. We hurtled from Operation Epic Fury to Operation Economic Fury to Project Freedom to no fury at all, and not much freedom of navigation either. We sped from the
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My latest for @TheFP: https://t.co/QKRl7kN21n
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"Since February 28, we have experienced the geopolitical equivalent of a roller-coaster ride on magic mushrooms. ... If you have not experienced the psychological equivalent of whiplash in the last 12 weeks, you have not been paying attention. How many nearly-peace nearly-deals
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@ianbremmer @hughhewitt @AaronBMacLean @TheFP This you? https://t.co/OZppyinMBO “If I had to bet … I see Russia’s big prize not as Ukraine … but rather being able to divide the United States and Europe. ... If I’m Biden, I’m much less worried about the idea that the Russians invade.” Admittedly, I hedged a bit (“I’m not
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An excellent conversation with @AaronBMacLean for @schoolofwarpod, recorded at @NYHistory last week: https://t.co/1lxWt2hjJc
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Delighted to announce the inaugural Griffin Fellows at the @HooverInst Applied History Working Group. Congratulations to Tyler Goodspeed, Nick Lambert, @JosephALedford, Luke Nichter, @mrinconcruz, and Emily Wang. And huge thanks to Ken Griffin for his support.
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Only omission: namecheck for Gaby Martinelli, a tireless thoroughbred of a player, whose glorious chip against City was one of the goals of the season: https://t.co/71gs5VqLjR
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As a Scotsman who came to England when you could barely find out the results of the games north of the border, I found my way to @Arsenal so my sons could share my love of the beautiful game. All five of us hereby heartily endorse every word of this from @arseblog:
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And this is a wonderful song, too: https://t.co/eUnP28DxnX
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@demishassabis @antigravity @GeminiApp You're just posting this in a vain attempt to distract us from @Arsenal winning the @premierleague.
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Always read @JesusFerna7026 on the great fertility decline. https://t.co/zzbHOsEiFu
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I agree with this. https://t.co/MyeB2CkDKH
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When I first saw the “Why College?”syllabus, I genuinely thought it must be a parody. https://t.co/m6YdoP3QCG
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“By my count, the syllabus assigns roughly 45 pages of canonical Western philosophical writing across the entire quarter, against more than 500 pages of contemporary work organized around identity, oppression and indigenous ways of knowing ... There is no Aristotle, no Augustine,
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https://t.co/HibhsivykS
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“Presumably Xi and his circle can see all the trends that I’ve just described. And if they … aren’t self-deceived about the prospects for American collapse, then I would expect them to have a plan for potential confrontation very, very soon.” Good to see @DouthatNYT updating his
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If you're in Venice, do not miss it. 4/4 https://t.co/XTVG7MRjrE
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I especially loved Piotr Armianovski's film, "Me and Mariupol," which somehow manages to encapsulate Ukraine's modern history in just ten minutes. 3/4 https://t.co/pLEMp553Fr
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This memorably sums up the spirit of "Still Joy." 2/4 https://t.co/13Okl5nZAy
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A highlight of this year's @la_Biennale is the @PinchukFund's "Still Joy" exhibition. Full disclosure: I contributed some text commentaries, but this is all about the art. 1/4 https://t.co/jFCgDFIbwI
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My analysis: https://t.co/JHNVsxgnVP
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https://t.co/ZQOkXc1Npu
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As predicted: 'Speaking during a two-hour bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday morning, Xi sought to impress upon his US counterpart how seriously China’s Communist Party government regarded its claims over Taiwan. “The Taiwan question is the
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https://t.co/EgffdXSlzx
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This is the correct take on UK politics by Janan Ganesh. Long @KemiBadenoch, short @reformparty_uk, and just forget about all the other parties.
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My latest for @TheFP: https://t.co/JHNVsxgnVP
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"As part of his long-standing Nixon fixation, President Trump thinks it’s 1972 all over again. But what if it’s 1962? Ten years before Nixon’s year of détente, his archrival John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev brought the world to the brink of World War III in the Cuban Missile
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My latest from @TheFP: https://t.co/JHNVsxgnVP
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"The Taiwan Semiconductor Crisis will be the defining moment of Cold War II. It would be preferable to fast-forward to détente without the nerve-shredding phase of brinkmanship. But that’s not up to Trump. In the end, it’s up to Xi."
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@TheFP See also: https://t.co/HhXDD25KWL https://t.co/vCo2BveLmv
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@TheFP In a perhaps foolhardy way, I'm taking the other side of this: https://t.co/NktciFKWrM https://t.co/tzO0iBrc4R
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https://t.co/xjiVZ7qfPm
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I especially agree with this advice to parents: "Lock up our devices and keep them away from the family meal. Pay attention to the people around the table, the bread, the conversation, and the hugs and hands."
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"What good is it to gain the whole world if we forfeit the souls that we’re supposed to form?" Please do read this powerful essay by the great @BenSasse.
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Updated Arc de Trump piece now in @thetimes: https://t.co/BuE44L4QwV
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"I have long doubted that history has an arc, any more than it follows predictable cycles. Perhaps this is true of the moral universe; God alone knows. But I don’t think it’s true of human history. The path of the past is not an arc. It is non-linear, at times jagged like an
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I had not realized that Simon Heffer's superb biography of Enoch Powell had been cancelled during the BLM mania. It is good that a new edition is now available. Timely, too. Jeremy Black's review in @TheCriticMag is excellent: https://t.co/iUZepLQb6Q
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The Iran Stalemate: https://t.co/HhXDD25KWL
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In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will,” the economist Rüdiger Dornbusch famously observed, “and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” He had financial crises in mind. In history, and especially the history of war, it’s different. Wars
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@gerardtbaker I did not say "because it will be vindicated by subsequent events."
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@pmarca You just came with the 20 most dangerous words in investing.
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This tweet will be quoted in future history books, if there are such things. https://t.co/D7o3jGG3HH
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This is how it's done: https://t.co/vpiKfNKdwC
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https://t.co/nOLfK5R8Tm
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Guys, it's called Ferguson's Law. After Adam. Credit where it's due. https://t.co/3d8WFzmGjC https://t.co/ztanmWqFYs
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This is a good illustration of why I backed @KemiBadenoch to be Conservative leader, and why I’ll back her to be Prime Minister. She has conviction, clarity, and courage. https://t.co/JzUfTutbBB
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This was my 2023 piece on his book "End Times," which applied the model to the U.S. I suggested China might be a better fit: https://t.co/2pk8bKnj5z
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Glad to see the brilliant @Peter_Turchin is taking my advice to apply his model to China! https://t.co/EunfqtCy6w https://t.co/IiuzsRRTJW
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@MichaelRStrain Thanks, Michael!
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Here we are, conversing on everything from Hungarian politics to the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment on the American Revolution, at the @Liberty_Fund dinner in Washington on April 13: https://t.co/bgzIXWCuwr
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It was a great privilege as well as a real pleasure to share a stage with @GeorgeWill, one of the great writers and thinkers of modern America.
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If only they all began by citing the work of an economic historian. https://t.co/PpMx8uJ9rQ
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It was a huge pleasure and privilege to introduce the great @benshapiro at @uaustinorg last night. Watch the whole thing. A brilliant, inspiring performance. https://t.co/kpFRSkRLIM
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@akruglov @paulg @Caltech Sigh. The point was not Allen became a would-be assassin because he went to @Caltech. We have no clue at this point about his motivation. The point was that the pendulum is not swinging back in Californian higher ed. Wokeism isn't dead. And Caltech was affected, too. Read the WSJ
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Exhibit B: https://t.co/wpq00r0BiY
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Obviously, we don't yet know what motivated Cole Allen to carry out his attack last night. My point is a more general one. Even Caltech, which I've long regarded as one of the few truly meritocratic institutions in U.S. higher ed, also had its encounter with wokeism.
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Exhibit A: https://t.co/DaFmpKI5r1
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For those wondering how on earth a @Caltech graduate becomes a would-be assassin, this is your reminder that the Great Awokening was especially demented in California, and that there is no pendulum magically swinging back to sanity in the established universities.
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Must read: https://t.co/86NOa21X9F
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One of the many striking themes in "The Infinity Machine" is just how very British the AI Revolution has been. The early years of Deep Mind read like the early years of The Beatles, only with laptops instead of guitars and North London instead of Merseyside.
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I take my hat off to @scmallaby. His biography of @demishassabis is more than just a penetrating study of individual genius. It's the best history yet of AI and the network of brilliant minds who built it. Book of the year.
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The great @stewartbrand is so right about this. https://t.co/3V5VoAYMuc https://t.co/sezLkvuYMe
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@shashj When one reads the whole of Malley's tweet, "happy" is not the word that comes to mind.
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Now this is a move I can unequivocally support. The @splcenter is one of the most malignant and shameless scams I have ever encountered. https://t.co/hm0oqyypLt
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More here at @TheFP : https://t.co/NktciFLuhk
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Let me walk you through the events of the war so far: 1. The United States and Israel tried regime change; it didn’t work. Or rather, they got regime change—Iran became an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–led military dictatorship. That was not an improvement. 2. The U.S. won
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https://t.co/NktciFLuhk
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"I can offer three possible explanations: 1. Mr. Market is seeing through all the noise and realizing that the war will be over by the end of May, and normal service will be restored. 2. Mr. Market loves AI more than he hates the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 3. Mr. Market is
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"Since the war began, I have written essays warning of 1) the danger that the conflict goes global, 2) the risk of recession if the conflict is protracted, and 3) the nightmare that this is the American version of the 1956 Suez Crisis. But at Friday’s close, all three markets
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The arc of history doesn't bend towards Justice. But the Arc de Trump bends towards Truth (Social). Reflections on a war the market thinks is over. My latest for @TheFP
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Outstanding insights on the Iranian side of the war from our colleague @milaniabbas. https://t.co/C1e98JASPS
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https://t.co/BgwKJlEW2e
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"The hard realities of secure energy, reindustrialisation, access to rare earths, investment in technology and a truly agile and modern army, navy and air force require our attention."--John Bew (As @KemiBadenoch argued at the @LondonDefConf on Saturday.)
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"If the UK is simultaneously more distant from the US and failing adequately to fund defence commitments in our own near neighbourhood, then two of the principal pillars of our enduring national security strategy are in danger."--John Bew
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If you are having trouble making sense of the deep strategic mess in which Britain finds itself, do read John Bew's brilliant new @spectator essay. Come for the Joyce reference, stay for the geopolitical masterclass.
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I think I preferred it in the original Latin, but this still wins the internet today. Well played, @izakaminska. https://t.co/RaMXy8zevQ
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Truly honored to receive this award, and the chance to share a stage with the great @GeorgeWill. https://t.co/KcuP5zAQ6I
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https://t.co/0IHZyCUVNa
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"We must undertake the biggest peacetime programme of rearmament in our country’s history. To do that, we need the money to pay for it. ... The next Conservative government would reinstate the two-child benefit cap, three billion pounds, and spend that money on defence. ... We
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"We must reassert ourselves as a serious power in the world. Show our allies what we bring to the table. Show our enemies that we are ready to defend ourselves. If we do not, we will have no say in whatever comes next." https://t.co/86BVVaEzil
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Very, very important speech today by @KemiBadenoch at the @LondonDefConf. This is what sets her apart from all the other UK party leaders. "The mirror that [Trump] is holding up to Europe and that we find so uncomfortable to look in is showing us that without the United States, https://t.co/5slAAtQHFx
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Lessons of history, now available in @thetimes: https://t.co/jSFHOSmkYk
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"For the US, ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran in 2026 would not be quite as swift a humiliation as the Anglo-French failure to wrest control of the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956. But the consequences for the credibility of the Pax Americana would be similar to
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More here in @TheFP: https://t.co/ZMZEruFE6N
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There is no going back to the status quo ante. There will need to be a new international agreement to manage the Strait of Hormuz. Here's the plan proposed yesterday by me, @RichardHaass, and Philip Zelikow. https://t.co/WoErHGPk4n
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5. Your anti-tech riff is Luddite. The UK needs to be a tech player (as you seem to say earlier in the piece). And it can be (example: quantum). 6. Going back into Europe isn't the answer any more. (See point 5.) 7. But the need for greater autonomy in national security and
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@b_judah @Dominic2306 1. Surprised you hadn't realized the Atlantic alliance was in crisis sooner. This goes back a long way, and it didn't get better under Biden & Co. It got worse. 2. Electoral reform will only increase the political fragmentation. Without a strong presidency, as in France, it can't
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5. Your anti-tech riff is Luddite. The UK needs to be a tech player (as you seem to say earlier in the piece). And it can be (example: quantum). 6. Going back into Europe isn't the answer any more. (See point 5.) 7. But the need for greater autonomy in national security and
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@b_judah @Dominic2306 1. Surprised you hadn't realized the Atlantic alliance was in crisis sooner. This goes back a long way, and it didn't get better under Biden & Co. It got worse. 2. Electoral reform will only increase the political fragmentation. Without a strong presidency, as in France, it can't
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https://t.co/ZMZEruGbWl
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Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz cannot stand. But there's no going back to the status quo ante in the Gulf. The U.S. and its allies urgently need a plan for the post-war governance of the Strait of Hormuz. Here's a proposal by me, @RichardHaass, and Philip Zelikow.
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Interested to know what part of @b_judah's Anglo-Gaullist analysis @Dominic2306 would disagree with: https://t.co/UiufFpcdRB
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https://t.co/WgwIDw792m
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Last night @rafaelasie and I discussed Schrödinger's Ceasefire, the move Trump should have made on Tuesday but didn't, and why Steve Kotkin was right last year to warn about the lack of process in the formation of the 2nd Trump administration's national security strategy.
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If you just got into an Ivy League college (or your kid did), you really ought to read this excellent post from @uaustinorg. There really are better ways to spend four formative years of your life. https://t.co/CMbwqPV00C
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The op-ed: https://t.co/4r6fcDiCzj
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The book: https://t.co/hDV8DoH66p
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I highly recommend @eyckfreymann's new book, "Defending Taiwan." Here's a chilling new @FT op-ed in which he shows how the Taiwan Strait could be vulnerable to a PRC version of Iran's assertion of control over the Strait of Hormuz.
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https://t.co/wb3EfFLMCh 5/5
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"For the United States, ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran in 2026 would not be quite as swift a humiliation as the Anglo-French failure to wrest control of the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956. However, the consequences for the credibility of the Pax Americana would be
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"But the economic consequences of the conflict—not just the closure of a crucial oil choke point, but also the financial ramifications of the crisis—result in political damage and strategic defeat. The result is humiliating withdrawal." 3/5
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"The crisis begins as an attempt to overthrow an unfriendly regime in the Middle East, in concert with the state of Israel. It is also a struggle for control of a key commercial waterway. Despite lacking a plausible basis in international law and popular support at home, the
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American Suez. A doleful essay for Good Friday. "There is now a rising probability that Trump’s war backfires on him much as Eden’s did—economically, politically, and geopolitically. Which raises the question: Is this the American Suez?" 1/5 https://t.co/6zd8csyAH5
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The risks of an "American Suez" are growing by the day. https://t.co/U3XXkHRMKL
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"Blinking now turns Trump into Eden and Iran into Nasser on steroids. Escalation without a coherent theory of victory risks another quagmire. The challenge is that Tehran will contemplate backing down only if America projects unwavering resolve." Brilliant analysis by @mshmena.
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Just thought I'd cheer up my British readers with an assessment of the economic outlook for @thetimes. Headline should read "History shows most *energy* shocks lead to recession," as it was true in the age of coal, too. https://t.co/wmwmcFYvEV
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@gerardtbaker Privately, Mrs. T was "deeply disturbed." The Queen was "extremely upset." But publicly Thatcher defended the Reagan administration's action, which was prompted by the violent misconduct and pro-Soviet, pro-Cuban leanings of the island's Marxist government. As I recall, you were
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@gerardtbaker Ever heard of Grenada, Gerry? A member of the Commonwealth (head of state Queen Elizabeth II, Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon), the island was invaded by the U.S. on October 25, 1983. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S. invasion was condemned by the UN General Assembly as
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More here: https://t.co/JUi22Ef7I0
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Forty years ago: “The United States has stood by us in times of need, as we have stood by her. To refuse their request for the use of bases here would have been to abandon our responsibilities as an ally and to weaken the fight against terrorism.”—Margaret Thatcher, April 16,
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Superb applied history by @Dr_Keefer of Europe's collective decision to become a loser in the energy wars of the 2020s. This decision stemmed from luxury beliefs. The contrast with the European response to the energy crisis of the 1970s is ... striking. https://t.co/LYE2rtn740
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"The Norwegian portion of the North Sea is still producing more than three times as much oil as the British side, and while Norway holds a larger share of the basin's reserves, the gap in output reflects policy as much as geology." 5/6
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"The continent did not so much reduce its energy consumption as export the industries that consumed it, along with the employment, the tax base, the engineering knowledge, and the supply chain depth they represented." 4/6
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"Today [Europe] consumes roughly 38 EJ against only 6 EJ produced domestically ... This represents an extraordinary inversion of insecure hydrocarbon import dependency from 30% in 1995 to 80% in 2026." 3/6
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"The pathology arrives when those governing from the upper floors lose the ability to perceive the importance of the foundations beneath them, and begin making decisions that erode that base in the service of ideological commitments the foundations had made affordable." 2/6
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"A society that has secured abundant energy, industrial production, and physical safety creates the conditions in which political attention can migrate upward into questions of identity, moral positioning, and self-actualization." 1/6
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... meet glass half full. https://t.co/eNxqfljFzW
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Glass half empty ... https://t.co/7piJxqSTZf
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When I was writing "The Square and the Tower," Stan McChrystal was one of my main sources of inspiration. You'll see why when you read this: https://t.co/ai25qb1i41 6/6
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"I tell people about this war, if you like this war, enjoy this first part, because this is the best part. Because everything after this will be harder, because it will be more equal, even though we will have bombed them. We’ll have to get down to a level." 5/6
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"The third great seduction [is] air power. … We could bomb Iraq pretty easily; we could even take Baghdad with relative ease. We could get rid of the existing government. But once we wanted to change the reality on the ground, who actually controlled things, how things worked,
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"The second seduction, which I lived as a part of, is the surgical Special Operations raid. That is probably epitomized by the Maduro raid. I would argue that we demonstrated extraordinary competence that night, but not much changed ... on the ground." 3/6
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"The first is the idea of covert action. A new president comes in, and he’s told by the intelligence community, 'We can create this great effect and it will be covert. No one will ever know who did it, and it’ll just be a good outcome.' And in my experience, it never stays covert
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This is a must-read interview. @DavidAFrench and General Stanley McChrystal on the three seductions of the American way of war. 1/6
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Pre-order "Recession" today. It's brilliantly iconoclastic. https://t.co/eO0ViJHhfD
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https://t.co/7piJxqSTZf
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It's a striking theme of Tyler Goodspeed's brilliant new book, "Recession," that close to half of all U.S. recessions since 1902 were wholly or partly due to energy shocks.
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Because many people still don't seem able to process the huge scale of the economic shock currently unfolding, and the low probability that the Strait of Hormuz is rapidly reopened, I did some applied economic history.
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@ksadjadpour is consciously or subconsciously quoting Kissinger when he writes: "Tehran wins by not losing; Trump loses by not winning." Here's Kissinger on Vietnam in January 1969: "The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win."
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https://t.co/lcS4qc6PBE
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Always worth reading @ksadjadpour. His latest reflects on the history of American public opinion and wars in the Middle East. The Iranian regime knew exactly the playbook to reach for. The North Vietnamese had written it.
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OK, now I'll go and see "Project Hail Mary." https://t.co/RhP2Y9yPOL
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Propaganda works. Bear in mind: in terms of economic importance Taiwan Strait > Strait of Hormuz. https://t.co/Z6FfaN4L6C
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No one provided better insights into the financial crisis the world narrowly avoided last April, in the week after "Liberation Day." @HyunSongShin has been a model of intellectual rigor and geniality since we were next-door neighbours at @magdalenoxford more than 40 years ago. https://t.co/CXybcdn6ys
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Exact wording. General Sir Richard Barrons: Acting in its own, the British Army today “could seize one small market town on a good day.”
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This excellent discussion had the power to shock even me — and I have been lamenting the disarmament of Britain for years. @shashj on good form. Money quote: “the British Army could just about take control of a market town on a good day.” https://t.co/QlWBDoAdkF
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Here's the report: https://t.co/uWBIB7UiJR
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The polling in the excellent new @Policy_Exchange report on British Muslims' attitudes is full of sobering data. https://t.co/E7CFTDeeOs
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"The Strait of Hormuz is blocked. For how long? The Strait of Taiwan is open. For how long?" My latest for @TheFP https://t.co/kDZmZhRMXn
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"However, if Trump’s advisers do not keep their wits about them, they may overlook the fact that they have created a huge strategic opportunity for China and Russia—especially if they act in concert. A Taiwan crisis would upend the international economy and geopolitical order."
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"The administration is now trying to salvage a plan that seems to be, like Churchill’s in 1915, disintegrating on contact with the enemy. It may still be salvageable. The Islamic Republic may yet oblige Trump by expiring. I do not rule that out."
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https://t.co/kDZmZhRMXn
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"Nowhere is the law of unintended consequences more binding than when crucial commercial chokepoints become casualties of war." My latest essay for @TheFP on the lessons history has to offer those who would reopen the Strait of Hormuz. https://t.co/bCgdLMFoUx
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Strong contender for essay of the year: https://t.co/Lc7rMxohoK
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"Years from now, it will be obvious why ... as we faced high-powered technologies and political ideologies aimed at paving the way for their dominance over humans, what emerged ... was an intense, global debate about, of all things, Zionism." Brilliant essay by @alananewhouse for https://t.co/DL91gaeEOD
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“A Public Servant Faces a Public Death.” And if you read nothing else today, read this. @BenSasse talks to @tunkuv https://t.co/NeMFOrPj0B
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Essential reading as always from @ksadjadpour. But is Kim Jong Un the right analogy for Mojtaba Khamenei? The North Korean regime is indeed dynastic, but its ideology is less apocalyptic than the Islamic Republic's. This is more like an Iranian "Untergang," but with a Mini-Me https://t.co/GhMuhXMDvf
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.@UTAustin is very lucky to have lured @JosephALedford away from @HooverInst! https://t.co/O58houzL48
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China v. Taiwan is the wild card. In Cold War terms, it's either 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis) or 1972 (Nixon in China). Not sure which. https://t.co/APRDxcHtRx
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With @coldxman in the chair, @RichardHaass and I find ourselves in quite a lot more agreement on the Iran War than either of us had expected. https://t.co/FckV53ty0C
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@Dambisamoyo A rather better representation of Baroness Moyo. https://t.co/RY028zvkia
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An excellent event in Edinburgh this evening to mark the occasion, featuring @Dambisamoyo: https://t.co/SIc8cbUdrs
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As Smith wrote of the colonists, “[T]hey … are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire … which, indeed, seems very likely to become … one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.” https://t.co/OM7rcS97PB
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It is not a coincidence that "The Wealth of Nations" appeared in the same year as the American colonists' Declaration of Independence. Smith admired the egalitarian and republican spirit of the colonies and presciently foresaw an imperial future for America. https://t.co/S5dEJqj8Jo
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Taking a break from the economic consequences of the Iran war to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," on this day in 1776. I took a trip to what was then the Athens of the North to pay tribute. https://t.co/KcZlr0qAuv
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I knew the Europeans hadn't understood the implications of the war in Ukraine for air defense, but I had assumed the U.S., Israel and the Gulf states were more switched-on: https://t.co/GqgCg8rJQ1
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I have to ask a) why no one foresaw that the inventors of the Shahed might not have given their entire stock of drones to Russia and b) why Western governments and investors were so slow to invest in and scale Ukrainian's drone and drone-defense companies. https://t.co/SZhUprM3XY
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"The American military should be hoping ... that China won’t do the math to figure out what is left of American precision-guided munitions to defend Taiwan." Excellent, sobering work by @ForeignPolicy here: https://t.co/VNFlhRFMt5 https://t.co/11JwXtxTIa
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The war may last days, but replenishment of the American arsenal will take months. https://t.co/xv2wxVpGiV
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"Precision has not removed mass from war. It has simply moved mass into the parts of the weapon you cannot see. ... [The] simple question that strategists and defense planners often forget: How quickly can the West refill its arsenals?" This is the Achilles heel of the https://t.co/6DaDC3DhwS
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If you would like to read the rest of my answers, they're here: https://t.co/qxAXASPqx3
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"The war against Iran is not, from an American perspective, a regional undertaking for the benefit of Israel. It clearly does not help other American allies and friends. For the Europeans, India, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan—all major hydrocarbon importers—every day of this war https://t.co/yqRnYQDkyF
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"According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, 'You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three.' That’s fair. But wars that last, say, six days have happened in the Middle East. On the other hand, George W. Bush’s war lasted eight years. One
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My new @TheFP essay asks the ten key questions about U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. 1. How long will this war last? 2. Do we have enough firepower relative to Iran? 3. Can the Iranians keep the Strait of Hormuz closed? 4. Can the Iranians hit Saudi and other Gulf oil
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The great British tradition of loathing expats. A nice stroll down Memory Lane by @TheEconomist. https://t.co/H9c6kwX2jL https://t.co/fSk9SvUYTs
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SOS! My good friend @David_Goodhart has been hacked by a crypto scammer and locked out of his X account for 10 days. Having seen before most people the great divide between the Somewheres and the Anywheres, he deserves some @Support please, @elonmusk.
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My latest from @TheFP https://t.co/qxAXASPqx3
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Could this be the start of World War III? It's not a crazy question. But I prefer Gulf War III—and Cold War II.
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The Third Gulf War in historical perspective. https://t.co/qxAXASPqx3
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"Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese, the leaders of centre-left governments in Canada and Australia, openly backed the attacks. ‘We seem to have been blindsided by what they were going to say,’ an official admits."
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"After the initial US request, Britain could have sent two Type-45 destroyers, which have air defence capabilities, to the eastern Mediterranean to protect Cyprus and Jordan. Instead, some military assets were withdrawn. ‘The Cypriots are incandescent,’ a security source
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"Jordan was ‘fucking furious’, a former minister with friends in Amman says. ‘The Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and even the Canadians are all asking, “What the fuck are you doing? Whose side are you on?”’ The Emiratis pointed out that Britain was failing to help protect the 240,000
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"The Prime Minister was not able to carry his own cabinet. While he did not want Britain to join the military action, he did think there was a case for allowing Trump to use the bases at Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford to launch the attacks. However, he was blocked by an alliance
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Remarkable @spectator piece on Starmer's mishandling of the Iran crisis by @ShippersUnbound. Foreign policy by international law is Operation Epic Fail. Not only has Starmer lost Trump; he has also lost the Gulf states. And he has somehow managed to be out of step with Carney, https://t.co/xfNmIgXNIX
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This is good by @havivrettiggur. I think the reason the U.S. is downplaying this is the upcoming Trump-Xi summit at the end of this month, which is supposed to tend towards détente. I assume that's why @marcorubio is not trumpeting the destruction of missiles Iran got from China. https://t.co/kYfPIXyxeJ https://t.co/sD7Szqj8N3
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Instant classic by @ksadjadpour. https://t.co/yM366MuvOU
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My latest for @TheFP Read it all here: https://t.co/8PVeeii8tD 9/9
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Détente with China will not be easy if Venezuela—not to mention Cuba and parts of Mexico—has descended into chaos, peace is nowhere in sight in Ukraine, and a new war is still raging in the Middle East. 8/9
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The biggest risk lies outside the Middle East. It remains that of a Taiwan Crisis, the economic consequences of which would be greater than the 1973-74 Oil Shock because of the centrality of Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs to the world economy. 7/9
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The real question is: Who rules in Tehran after Khamenei? Or, to put it bluntly, who’s the Iranian Delcy Rodriguez in this regime alteration? 6/9
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Will this succeed? We don’t yet know, but it’s important to note that the Iranian regime has few effective friends. Moreover, Iran’s barrage of missile attacks on its neighbors’ territory has achieved little other than to convert fence-sitters into supporters of the U.S.-Israeli
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But Operation Epic Fury differs from Operation Iraqi Freedom. The goal is not to march into Iran and confer, much less impose, freedom on the Iranians. It is to decapitate the Islamic Republic’s political structure and leave the Iranians to take their freedom. 4/9
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Yes, Iran can lash out and is lashing out, firing missiles at Israel and at U.S. bases in the Gulf region. Yes, the Iranians may try to replay 1973 and 1979 by causing an oil price shock. And yes, it is a lot to expect the Iranian people to rise up against a regime that just
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However, Iran 2026 is not Iraq 2003. Regime alteration is not regime change. It rules out the deployment of American ground forces other than special forces. It requires a short time frame for military operations. It will disappoint those who want to fast-track Iran (and
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For the habitual critics of U.S. foreign policy in general and Donald Trump’s in particular, the analogy between today’s air raids against Iran and the invasion of Iraq nearly 23 years ago is too obvious to be resisted. 1/9
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I think this is a preferable headline: “Khamenei Joins Saddam in Hell, but Iran 2026 Is Not Iraq 2003.” https://t.co/8PVeeiiGjb
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As I predicted on Thursday, the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks were merely “the prelude" to strikes - @CBSNews https://t.co/bxe7pKEk02
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I struggle to find words strong enough to convey the utter contempt I feel for the person who perpetrated this disgraceful act of vandalism — and for anyone who condones it. https://t.co/u4r3cf7AEA
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This is a hugely significant aspect of the Russian war against Ukraine. @elonmusk has (reluctantly) played a decisive role in the conflict. I hope very much he is now acting to pressure Putin to negotiate an end to the slaughter. https://t.co/S6SnGsjnPn
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Another week of human (and AI) folly perfectly summed up by @NellieBowles … Seriously wondering if I should just cancel everything else and read TGIF only. It’s all here. It’s the tragic-funny vibe to perfection. https://t.co/HuG5qyeiGK
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This seems like the correct rebuttal. https://t.co/BiLpS6qLdh
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Highly recommended content. What the Victorians had that we lack. https://t.co/kQtxzpbR4a
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The sardonic style at its finest. https://t.co/xAxMXftEln
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https://t.co/C3GhARyx5v also on Apple: https://t.co/XJVZvw9ruf Spotify: https://t.co/2K8bx9LZyR and YouTube: https://t.co/u1ZKxSrYrl
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An interview from last month's World Economic Forum giving my latest perspectives on Cold War II. Can we get from brinkmanship to détente? Is Taiwan the Cuba of the new superpower conflict? And much else.
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If you somehow missed his essay, "The Flight 93 Election," it reads very well indeed after ten years: https://t.co/P8JKr2IP0g
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I thought Michael Anton was quite brilliant in our conversation. https://t.co/9Kfsi4HVvp
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@Keir_Starmer’s collapse in popularity is a symptom of a deeper malaise. But public rage against political “insiders” has deep roots in British history. My latest for @TheFP: https://t.co/Lf3cxxJntk
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UK politics was turning Italian long before the Epstein Files brought down Peter Mandelson. https://t.co/fiI62MzMoW
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No question: @TinaBrownLM has been consistently the best commentator on the Epstein scandal. She saw the depth of turpitude long before most of us did. https://t.co/5Yj0AgJO3w
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When I say, "The Palestinians had their chance, and they blew it," this is what I am talking about. The other historic error was the much earlier U.S. decision to recognize Arafat as a legitimate interlocutor, as opposed to a detestable terrorist. https://t.co/ByGsf0E5RF
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Why @realDonaldTrump needs to learn from the example of @BillClinton: https://t.co/6jFVlAg6lW
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"Every president who wins a second term almost inevitably falls victim to what has long been known as the 'six-year itch'." Some lessons from history for a presidency heading for a midterm shellacking.
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“Red Dawns” and Skiing on Stolen Land, with Frank Dikötter—whose new book on the strange and bloody rise of the Chinese Communist Party I cannot praise too highly. https://t.co/JSUGdt50Hx via @YouTube
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Hats off to Peter Brown, whom I saw play in some of those great games in the early 70s. We need a lot more of this spirit, and not only in rugby. https://t.co/plYnAmP2r8
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https://t.co/0ua3nYPS5O
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Seems like a good day to remind you all of my observation three years ago that AI really stands for "Alien Intelligence." https://t.co/qELXK2C8MA
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Esssential reading for anyone seriously following the war in Ukraine. https://t.co/gPQVFUpHGj
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@mattyglesias See also Jeremiah E. Dittmar, "Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press" QJE (2011) and Dittmar's 2016 paper with Skipper Seabold, "Media, Markets, and Radical Ideas," both cited in my "The Square and the Tower."
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@mattyglesias Yes. There good research on this, cited in my book "Civilization: The West and the Rest." I recommend David Cantoni, "The Economic Effects of the Protestant Reformation: Testing the Weber Hypothesis in the German Lands," Harvard University working paper (September 2009 )
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The Westminster commentariat has tended to underestimate @KemiBadenoch. The public sees that she is the only leader who is serious about addressing the UK's chronic economic and social problems. https://t.co/Fs7GJrv1ok
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While the ten-year game of political musical chairs continues in Downing Street, the UK has not been this militarily feeble since the reign of Elizabeth I. https://t.co/V7cleRU4Fw
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Another excellent column by @FraserNelson. The Age of Grift is upon us But the Epstein files suggest it began many years ago. https://t.co/CCHyVC7rGJ
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One minor benefit of the Epstein scandal is that the repulsive habit of writing English without capital letters will finally be seen for what it is: a sign of gross moral turpitude.
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https://t.co/qcmaENqENo
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In which I spoil everything by pointing out how hard it will be for @realDonaldTrump to avoid the curse of the second year of a second presidential term. Just one president since Truman managed to beat the Six-Year Itch. Can Trump pull off the same feat?
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I sat down with my old friend @dansenor last night to discuss Iran, the wider Middle East, @realDonaldTrump's foreign policy, and Cold War II: https://t.co/9JW3dtzyq2
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“The anger algorithms that polarise our politics.” Great piece by @FraserNelson, though to promote it effectively he and I should fake a violent disagreement. https://t.co/XTxV5IyNjh
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https://t.co/ynPl4Sm41U
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"Isn’t it amazing that the ideologies that we are encountering on the peripheral extremes of politics are socialism and anti-Semitism? ... It feels like we can’t seem to come up with new ideas. We’re stuck in the twentieth century." A recent interview for @LawLiberty
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I think @realDonaldTrump has made the right decision in nominating Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair. Kevin has been a consistent and lucid critic of the Powell Fed. His experience as a Fed governor during the global financial crisis set him apart from the other contenders.
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@CathyYoung63 @BulwarkOnline New hit piece method: [fill in name] has written critical articles about Trump in the past. Yes, including last year. But his most recent piece was positive. Ergo he has "evolved into a Trump panegyrist." So, Cathy, tell us: What have you evolved into?
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https://t.co/sBsGxUjSrg
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“I don’t think there are cycles in history.” Some more thoughts from Davos last week.
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“Certainly the 20th century became a very American century over time, first thanks to oil and then silicon. It's much too early to say if we're in a new era. I'm not sure that American era is over or even close to over.”
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“By comparison with the world in 1926 or ‘36 or ‘46, the geopolitical problems of 2026 are really quite minor.”
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@NormOrnstein I've stuck with following you, @NormOrnstein, despite disagreeing with nearly all that you post. But that's the last straw.
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It is hard to think of other examples of security forces massacring at least 20,000 of their own citizens in the space of two or three days. That is political violence at the Stalin, Hitler and Mao level. https://t.co/fHy7yfCL9j
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My latest foray into applied financial history with @mrinconcruz is here on @business and @BloombergUK: https://t.co/R5ExgjOgPk
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"No one is surprised when banks and other financial incumbents argue against measures that might promote innovation. But the argument that stablecoins are a source of instability — and interest-bearing ones especially so — is a bad one. The opposite is quite likely to be true."
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"A.J.P. Taylor once said that Europe had produced more history than it could consume and was therefore bound to export it abroad. Today Europe seems doomed to produce less history than it can consume and watch idly by as more vigorous nations shape the future."
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"Europeans are now clearly a history taker rather than a history maker. The lead actor of world affairs for five centuries has been reduced to a mere bystander, a key dynamo of historical change transformed into a potted plant." Excellent by the always brilliant @adwooldridge. https://t.co/Zm6KcQDDdk
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“It is easier and more pleasant for the European political and cultural establishments to hate Mr. Trump than to reflect on their own responsibility for making Europe so helpless. … But postponing the reckoning will only bring more pain.” Great by @wrmead https://t.co/R0Ef67CY53
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@ianbremmer In any case, I did the Davos debate with @profgalloway already: https://t.co/gVyhHP3fTR
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@ianbremmer As I said, happy to debate a serious question: "Is the U.S. in a stronger position than if Trump had been defeated in 2024?" Your question is both trivial and ephemeral.
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@ianbremmer I have lost interest.
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I am going to publish this tomorrow. (Now I am going off to have dinner with my family and then read some Dickens.) https://t.co/AD28lh5Z8K
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@Brad_Setser @DAaronovitch That was indeed my view all along and it was correct. The point was that he fooled the people he set out to fool.
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@Brad_Setser @DAaronovitch That's exactly my point, Brad. He doesn't want you, or Khamenei, or anyone else, to know.
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@PhillipsPOBrien Tell us all about the "evidence" on which you base your view of the World Economic Forum. Did you have many conversations there last week?
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@Brad_Setser @DAaronovitch I explain this in the piece, Brad. As WSJ showed last week, Trump is bluffing roughly half the time on Truth Social. This was also true on Twitter in his first term. Journalists misinterpret this as "TACO." https://t.co/DwTN2kmmoC
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And, for those who cannot read past headlines, or having trouble distinguishing facts from conjecture, here is the essence of my argument. As I make perfectly clear, it is a hypothesis. https://t.co/FSGOy0iewu
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@ianbremmer That’s not an especially good question. Try: “Is the U.S. in a stronger position than if Trump had been defeated in 2024?”
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@ianbremmer Well, that is rather vaguely worded. It’s not a popularity contest. The right question is whether or not the American national interest is being better served by Trump’s foreign policy than it was by his predecessor or predecessors.
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@ianbremmer Always.
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@ianbremmer Read the article as well as the headline, @ianbremmer. You can do it.
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@DAaronovitch You haven’t read my piece very carefully if you need to ask such questions.
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@DAaronovitch Your indignation, while understandable, is a barrier to clear analysis. (You could also try talking to some Republicans.) I don’t love Trump’s style either. But is the Davos consensus really what you want to go with?
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@NickCohen4 https://t.co/xl8J33CoYR
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https://t.co/JjxxYw6UXn 8/8
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Of course, this goes wholly counter to the Davos consensus, which is that wicked Trump has torn up the sacred liberal international order. But, as I never grow tired of reminding you, the Davos consensus is always wrong. Always. 7/8
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Why might Trump prefer the Europeans to be talking about Greenland instead of Iran or Ukraine? Because Europe would be bound to make its usual pleas for “de-escalation” with respect to Tehran. And because the Americans think it was the EU and UK who last year impeded progress
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The reason Trump forced Greenland to be the No. 1 topic at Davos was to keep European leaders from meddling in America’s Middle Eastern and Eastern European policy. 5/8
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Ten years ago, Europeans made the mistake of taking Trump neither seriously nor literally. Now they make the opposite mistake of treating him both seriously and literally. 4/8
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Trump never seriously meant to annex Greenland or to impose new tariffs on the Europeans. Why would he when the U.S. already enjoys all the military access to the frigid island it could every possibly need? Fact: Trump means what he says on Truth Social only about half the time.
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This is a very wrong take. The reality is that Trump won Davos, hands down. And not only did he win it; he owned it. I have never before seen a single individual so completely dominate this vast bazaar of the powerful, the wealthy, the famous, and the self-important. 2/8
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There is a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark. 1/8
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https://t.co/YwLMd78hsx
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A highlight of #Davos2026 was the #FuturesFrontline exhibit at #UkraineInDavos. For those who find it hard to imagine that Russia might one day attack their cities, this video simulates drone strikes on Paris, Brussels and Davos itself. @PinchukFund_en @yes_ukraine
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With the correct link this time: https://t.co/7zGMwjAdVL
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This really was a good @wef speech by @ZelenskyyUa yesterday. I was very glad to hear him express these frank criticisms of Europe. (I made a similar argument at the Ukrainian breakfast earlier the same day.)
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@PhillipsPOBrien If the Ukrainians listen to naive armchair strategists like you, @PhillipsPOBrien, they will risk losing their country. Who are you to say who is a friend of Ukraine?
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The key to reading hit pieces is to count how many times the word "former" appears, as in "one former employee." This is an 18. Last week's Politico hit piece on @uaustinorg was even higher. https://t.co/jXaBZYw46N
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China's population collapse is indeed a bigger deal than Greenland. https://t.co/lSreFJi9Nf
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@vshih2 As I said: if you are the kind of person who is easily persuaded by hit pieces, then I suggest you read this. @uaustinorg as seen by a parent. https://t.co/WYHhgzKAB0
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If you are the kind of person who is easily persuaded by hit pieces, then I suggest you read this. @uaustinorg as seen by a parent. https://t.co/LPsxUcdXBQ
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https://t.co/JaDDcaxVI4
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The most irritating aspect of the Greenland farce is that it's a distraction from the tragedy of Iran.
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"The Islamic Republic may have prevailed in this latest battle, but it is destined to lose the war against its own society." More excellent Iran commentary from @ksadjadpour.
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Order "Defending Taiwan" now: https://t.co/huyCZRp2nc
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https://t.co/y7VFpnfpaC
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"How War With China Begins." Essential reading: @NickKristof previews the important new book by @eyckfreymann, the title of which is "Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China."
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What's going on at @uaustinorg, part 4. https://t.co/ru0pmoUKUn
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What's going on at @uaustinorg, part 3. https://t.co/t5COJJkoqU
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What's going on at @uaustinorg, part 2. https://t.co/JXotFaYnig
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What's going on at @uaustinorg, part 1. https://t.co/DTbEzWItgk
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I had the same kind of inspiring experience teaching "The Philosophy of History" at @uaustinorg last spring. https://t.co/XAht69OrHl
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Yes it is. @uaustinorg https://t.co/ZN8q5IZD4M
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I can confirm that @tylercowen is right about this. @uaustinorg students are extraordinary. https://t.co/fp4EbhLlVO
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We really had an amazing 2025 at @uaustinorg. https://t.co/RD0haMZq4b
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Wishing our dear and irreplaceable colleague @VDHanson a very swift recovery. https://t.co/unbe9KPV8p
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https://t.co/imcDuxSp8t
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I sincerely wish this were the Iranian 1989. It's not. We are watching a heroic attempt at counterrevolution against a regime that has no compunction about massacring its own citizens. Sadly, history offers few examples of such attempts succeeding -- even with foreign support.
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The outstanding commentator on contemporary Iran is @ksadjadpour. This is a must-read piece. https://t.co/q72XN3FZh6
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https://t.co/ESDK7pGTyZ
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It's back to the future with the Donroe Doctrine, the Trump Corollary, and much, much more retro politics.
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If you don’t read @NellieBowles every Friday, you are leading a sad, barren, and empty existence. https://t.co/KUaKiFWEIO
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I offered some thoughts on the Donroe Doctrine and Trump Corollary earlier this week on @CBSNews : https://t.co/7lRzVOXT5m
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@shashj Time to revisit https://t.co/OYSgsPJMqh
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https://t.co/WvMHSMF0i5
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Coercive Diplomacy: Venezuela, Iran, and . . . Greenland? Happy Good Fellows New Year from me, @LTGHRMcMaster, @JohnHCochrane and @billwhalenCA. Brought to you by @HooverInst.
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"British Politics in the Zombie Era." https://t.co/kYALB6itQO
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"The old framework for understanding British politics has broken down. The social anchors that made the system predictable – class loyalty, regional identity, party allegiance – have disappeared. What comes next?" I highly recommend this excellent essay by Joe Slater.
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@AxelMerk You could also have opted for the Epilogue and Appendix of my book "War of the World"! Grok just scraped the Internet. I'm sorry, it's not as good.
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All this and much, much more in @TheFP: https://t.co/cdTvEcTfij 5/5
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"That the age of AI is more 19th-century than sci-fi was foreseen by Neal Stephenson in his dazzling masterpiece, The Diamond Age, where the inequalities created by new technology manifested themselves in a neo-Victorian elite culture." 4/5
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"You may insist that the world of today is unrecognizably different from the world of, say, 1906 because technology has changed everything. To my eyes, the striking thing is how little difference all the new technology has made to the nature of politics." 3/5
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"Foreign policy is just one area where we’re attempting to turn back time. Tariffs, the price of groceries, immigration restriction, antisemitism, socialism, corruption, vaccines, arms races: The issues of our time are issues our great-grandfathers debated 120 years ago." 2/5
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"The ejection of Maduro from Caracas is best understood as an invitation to turn the political clock back just over a century. The more I contemplate the contemporary scene, the more I think we have collectively accepted the invitation." 1/5
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Trump may not speak softly, but he carries Roosevelt's big stick. https://t.co/qwAQOa6uzz
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I made this argument here a month ago: https://t.co/HjTaI1RTrr https://t.co/EG4QP0HXT7
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The "Trump Corollary" was the most important point of the National Security Strategy.
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https://t.co/5wo69TMkO5
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“Outwardly strong, inwardly brittle.” Superb essay on the limits of today's authoritarian regimes by my @HooverInst colleague Stephen Kotkin for @ForeignAffairs.
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https://t.co/JrA6bu9iLE
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"The Most Dangerous Conflicts to Watch in 2026." Gazing into the geopolitical crystal ball with @bariweiss and @ollywiseman for @TheFP. Happy New Year, everyone. (Well, happy-ish.)
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https://t.co/vQScHXHIKs
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I admit I was far too negative about the economic impact of Trump's tariffs. It's scant consolation to have been part of a very large herd. Hats off to @SecScottBessent for proving just about everyone wrong.
-
Media pundits rarely hold themselves to account when their predictions are wrong. But not the happy band of @TheFP writers. Helpings of crow all round for @NellieBowles, @tylercowen, @SuzieWeiss, @JoeNocera, @elliotackerman, @larissaphillip, Charles Lane, @havivrettiggur -- but
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https://t.co/W40GZ8Ol7W 7/7
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"Perhaps the courts will capitulate, the Congress will burn, and the republic will succumb to tyranny. But I wouldn’t bet on it. So long as it doesn’t lose a major war, a republic that has lasted 250 years has a good chance of lasting at least another few hundred." 6/7
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"The lifespans of republics are not normally distributed along a bell curve—rather, the tails of the distribution are fat. After a certain point, perhaps after a couple of generations, the institutions of republican life bed down and become traditions." 5/7
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"Nothing we have seen in the past year indicates the imminent breakdown of the system of checks and balances Hamilton and his contemporaries devised. People in Cambridge or Berkeley may fantasize that they are living in The Handmaid’s Tale, but they really aren’t." 4/7
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"The exceptional character of the United States lay in its constitutional solution to an age-old problem: how to have a republic that provided its citizens not just with security, but also with liberty and prosperity." 3/7
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"The Founding Fathers of the United States understood very well that they might build as mighty an empire as the Dutch Republic—but they might also fail as ignominiously as the English Commonwealth. That they triumphed was the result of applied history." 2/7
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How surprising would it be if the American republic really did die on our watch? To address that question, it helps to know something about the history of republics. My latest from @TheFP. 1/7
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Jim's new book "The Golden Thread" is a must-read: https://t.co/HdEFq6acNj Follow his work here: https://t.co/xUzzMYPXIr
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I was present at the destruction over 12 of those years, trying and ultimately failing to preserve the study of the history of Western civilization as a core part of the History curriculum: https://t.co/FhUIEfWMkM
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"A better hope lies in building new institutions unencumbered by the corruption and self-hatred that infect the old." My friend Jim Hankins on leaving the @Harvard History Department after 40 years.
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Historiker Ferguson warnt: Europa hat kein Konzept für die Zukunft https://t.co/3VRGUKQywh
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@BenSasse @Ayaan and I read your extraordinary, heartbreaking, inspiring note with tears in our eyes. When you and I spoke just 11 days ago, I thought: "America still has a future as long as it can produce men like Ben Sasse." You can be very proud of all you've achieved. But really, we
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https://t.co/R9O5IhAY9u
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Can I just register the prediction that, just like the Online Safety Act, this will have unintended (or perhaps intended by some) adverse consequences.
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https://t.co/qfnHQAW2kk
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That way, we might avoid producing a future generation of politicians as imbecilic as the ones who voted for the Online Safety Act.
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This kind of lunacy was an entirely predictable consequence of a lamentable piece of legislation. @NellieBowles writes the funniest weekly column in the English-speaking world. Far from being censored for any age group, it should be required reading in all UK schools.
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https://t.co/HTxbR9XNbx
-
Oxford = books plus beer. "The notorious Drink Map of Oxford (1883) featured 319 premises where one could slake one’s thirst (and those were the days when Oxford’s population was a quarter of its present size)." Grateful to Morris Oxford for this.
-
Read @Ayaan on the Bondi Beach pogrom—“an atrocity tolerated into being.” https://t.co/5gOWf82M76
-
Seems about right. Soviet behavior in a free society was not something I expected 20 years ago. The revenue models of the network platforms seem to have been the key to our downfall. https://t.co/ZtCFQTuQE7
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My contrarian take on the new National Security Strategy, in @thetimes: https://t.co/iwBQq4wpMn
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"This document is not a manual from which foreign policy will flow. It is the end product of a stramash. If the president himself has read it, I’d be flabbergasted. 'President of Peace' he may prove to be. He’ll never be president of the 33-page essay."
-
Correction: this is Alexander Starritt's third novel! I am now ordering "The Beast" and "We Germans."
-
In short, buy it today. https://t.co/dlKMFFKUOs https://t.co/7b36HfVy7E https://t.co/htLqvP2x8D
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Great literature on capitalism is rare. But this is also a vivid and convincing portrait of Britain (Scotland as well as England) in our era of crises, from the financial crash of 2008 through Brexit to Covid. The prose is consistently strong, the dialogue always rings true.
-
A strong reading recommendation as Christmas approaches. Alexander Starritt's "Drayton & Mackenzie" is an enthralling first novel in the same league as Dickens's "Dombey & Son" or Balzac's "La Maison Nucingen." It's a portrait of a business partnership that unites an odd couple.
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https://t.co/aN1SlvIJfx
-
A public salute is due to Simon Winder, a truly wonderful editor, unfailingly cheerful as he hammered our shoddy manuscripts into publishable books, forced to retire prematurely by the onset of Alzheimer's. Also a gifted writer himself. Do read his Diary in the @NewStatesman.
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@FraserNelson "I am reminded of the words of Chairman Mao: It's always darkest before it goes completely black." --John McCain.
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One can but hope, @FraserNelson ... https://t.co/W5foUe8u7l
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"A nation can’t survive as an archipelago of imported codes." Superb piece by @Ayaan on the problem of Somali scammers and their liberal dupes in Minnesota. Especially brilliant to bring in Banfield's "Moral Basis of a Backward Society."
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https://t.co/HjTaI1SrgZ
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"It’s not unusual for an administration to produce a strategy document that the whole world pores over, in search of its deeper meaning, while its authors breathe a sigh of relief that they finally got the sausage made, secure in the knowledge that the people notionally best
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"One can tell from the opening section of the document why both the Times and the WSJ hated it, for it is a succinct repudiation of the foreign policies of both the Clintons and the Bushes. ... The truth always hurts."
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https://t.co/HjTaI1RTrr
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There has been a grand stramash over the new U.S. National Security Strategy. If commentators did not treat their readers like children, they would explain how such documents get written. I do so here for @TheFP.
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But you read it in @TheFP first: https://t.co/076sz7P5lu
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The shift in sentiment on @OpenAI has been striking. Here's the latest example: https://t.co/QhAQXlwZsZ
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“What’s the Matter With Scotland?” I endorse every word of Allan Massie’s answer. https://t.co/fniJ8vdrYn
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"Currently, a Founder’s Scholarship covers all tuition" at @uaustinorg.
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"The @uaustinorg constitution requires that all hiring decisions be made without regard to such factors as 'political affiliation.' Professors have a range of ideological backgrounds, with far greater conservative and libertarian representation than exists at the vast majority of
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"The curriculum at @uaustinorg is superb. Freshmen and sophomores are required to take 'Intellectual Foundations' seminars that inquire into the origins of 'civilization and political life' through the reading of great texts, ancient and modern. ... No DEI courses, required or
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Because college rankings can't really take account of a new institution, it's great that @CityJournal has this to say about @uaustinorg.
-
But today I discovered that there is an almost complete run of Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America" online, with transcripts, too. And the 1970s Cooke is just pure gold. Just one example among many, here's his superb, clear-sighted reflection on the My Lai massacre:
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There are times--many times--when the @BBC infuriates me. It is especially maddening that its historical output now consists of this kind of thing: https://t.co/vnJ1Mft5Fx
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https://t.co/PNnEwTsMUj
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I gather the @BBC ran a new series called "Empire" last month. My six-part series of that name was aired by @Channel4 22 years ago. You might want to watch it. And you can:
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@elonmusk All such stories omit the simple reality that @DavidSacks like @jaredkushner would be financially much better advised to avoid any kind of government role. Quite apart from the toil involved, there is the media sniping and the significant personal risk involved. Amazing they do
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https://t.co/jgEPiSlu8e
-
High recommended weekend listening: the new album from the incomparable @NickyBenedetti. The sublime "Farewell to Stromness" is just what you'll want for St. Andrew's Day tomorrow. https://t.co/Is95ztxhxr
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https://t.co/6SL1xrsgtj
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Up now on my Time Machine Substack. https://t.co/kbI11A1pDW
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https://t.co/bgGoQF3DNP
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We even have @WalterIsaacson, for heaven's sake! https://t.co/SbAGtB1lYq
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How can you possibly resist this offer from the one and only @bariweiss? If you're not reading @TheFP ... how is the FOMO even bearable? I mean here we all are: @NellieBowles, @coldxman, @tylercowen, @JonHaidt ... to name but a few.
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So yes, replace the iPhones with books. But also take the kids to church or synagogue. https://t.co/1WIQmDyxad
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Every parent should read @JonHaidt's latest. But note that the kids most resistant to the Devil's brew of smartphones and social media are the ones who are conservative and religious. Secularization paved the way for the descent into despondency that Jon has so ably documented. https://t.co/jH5RuSo4lN
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https://t.co/Q5HeyFbYzO
-
I strongly recommend this new report from @HofTotalitarian. Yes, History should indeed be taught to all children up to the age of 16. And it should be taught in rigorous way.
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https://t.co/J0663jhjkv
-
"How many concessions should Ukraine have to make to secure an end to the hostilities? And what will it take to persuade Putin to drop his original maximalist war aims?" I offer a contrarian view of the latest negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
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https://t.co/J0663jhRa3
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"This is not the end of the war. But it may be the beginning of the end. And if it is, there will really be something to be thankful for on Thursday." My contrarian take on the latest American effort to end the war in Ukraine. For @TheFP.
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@jasmineelgamal @nntaleb @DalrympleWill "Former Pentagon Middle East advisor."
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@nntaleb @DalrympleWill A few simple principles are worth stating as this storm in a teacup draws to a close. 1. Accusing someone of “shilling” is a sure sign you have no substantive argument. 2. In the world today, you have to choose between the threatened democracies (Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan) and the
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@nntaleb @DalrympleWill The only dying establishment that seems relevant here is the dying establishment of keffiyeh-wearing boomer authors.
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@DalrympleWill @yoavgallant I did not condemn Israel's retaliation because it was not a genocide, as I explained here: https://t.co/cyuH2O4kHq The unresolved issue is the complete and consistent lack of balance in your X account, which you appear unwilling to acknowledge.
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@DalrympleWill That Begin commanded the Irgun in the 1940s has no bearing on Hamas’s rampage of murder, rape and kidnapping on October 7, 2023. I trust your attempt to suggest an equivalence is not intended as some kind of justification for the latter act. @yoavgallant was obviously referring
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@DalrympleWill The choice between Israel and Palestinian terrorists has never been a difficult one for me. But you carry on playing to the leftist crowd, @DalrympleWill.
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@DalrympleWill Your ancestors must have been turning in their graves when you gave this embarrassing performance: https://t.co/mGyt2TYiNF
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@elonmusk @WaywardRabbler For the record, @elonmusk: https://t.co/qCVXF57GKr
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And I continue to urge the Trump administration, as I have since January, to seek peace through strength. Only increased military pressure on Moscow (e.g., Ukrainian deep strikes) has created the current possibility for a compromise peace. But more economic pressure is also
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I have consistently urged the European governments, especially Germany, to rearm more rapidly and to support Ukraine with modern weapons rather than fine words. 9/10
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I consistently urged the Biden administration not to protract the war with an under-powered counteroffensive in 2023 but to seek to end it when Ukraine's position was at its strongest in late 2022 / early 2023. 8/10
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"I’ve Seen the Future of War. Europe Isn’t Ready for It." (Sept. 24, 2025) 7/10 https://t.co/GqgCg8shFz
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"Germany, Rearm! There might be something scarier than German power. That’s German weakness in this dangerous moment for Europe—and the free world." (Sept. 24, 2024) 6/10 https://t.co/pvsTTzs3vZ
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"The West's Patience Is Running Shorter Than Ukraine's War. US support is starting to waver, and while European governments are stepping up, their citizens are losing faith." (Sept. 24, 2023) 5/10 https://t.co/PrSnmNhrEY
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"Ukraine’s Army Is Winning But Its Economy Is Losing. The US has been generous with military and financial aid, the Europeans less so. But both must step up the effort to keep Kyiv fighting." (Sept. 13, 2022) 4/10 https://t.co/OonC5tnsgd
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"The Fates of Ukraine and Putin Turn on 7 Forces of History. Does Russia grind out victory? Can sanctions stop that? Might Putin go nuclear? Is China for war or peace? The past offers clues, but no certain answers." (March 9, 2022) 3/10 https://t.co/RxK4vYbmg3
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"Putin’s Ukrainian War Is About Making Vladimir Great Again. Current conditions are ideal for a Russian invasion, but the historical inspiration is more tsarist than soviet." (Jan. 2, 2022) 2/10 https://t.co/iBZgmjBPvs
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I have been to Ukraine every year since 2011. I warned that war was coming in late 2021 and early 2021 and when it came I warned that Ukraine could not hope to win a protracted conflict. No doubt busy people cannot read all that I write, but here are the key pieces. 1/10
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@elonmusk @WaywardRabbler I'm sorry, @elonmusk, that's not correct. Unlike many who comment on the war, I've visited Ukraine every year since the war began. And every year I've made it clear that the longer the war lasted, the worse it would be for Ukraine.
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@NormOrnstein If that is true, and I have my doubts, it only makes the Russian concessions more noteworthy.
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@DAaronovitch That is a silly question. This war can only end with a compromise peace or Ukrainian defeat. The probability of Ukrainian victory has long been zero. For Z to accept a compromise peace is very painful. But economically, military, and domestically his position is weakening. So he
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@DAaronovitch You have not understood the significance of what Zelensky said.
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@DalrympleWill This only makes your recent metamorphosis into the posh man's Edward Said the harder to comprehend.
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https://t.co/1eLrWGA825
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Does the world really want what Sam Altman is selling? My latest in @thetimes.
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@DalrympleWill Willy, my grandfather served in India and Burma during the war, while yours was being baronet of Bass Rock. Or did I miss a heroic episode in Hamilton-Dalrymple history (aside from their ignoble part in the Glencoe Massacre)? You'll be explaining to me what "tiffin" means next.
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@DalrympleWill Such a remarkable coincidence that the Indians speak English, isn't it? Can't possibly have anything to do with that wicked Empire you are so fond of denigrating.
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@PhillipsPOBrien You have evidently not paid the slightest attention to what I have written & done in support of Ukraine over the last four years. Until Europe can deter Russia with its own resources, "the US president or Ukraine" is a false dichotomy.
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@Kasparov63 And where would you like the Russians to sign the articles of their surrender? Moscow? Further east?
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@ZelenskyyUa Ukrainians have fought heroically for their independence. It is now time to consolidate what they have achieved through diplomacy. 5/5
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I do not believe it is in the Ukrainian people's interests for the war to be prolonged for another year. The risks seem to me too great. So I hope @ZelenskyyUa will use his eloquence to explain why the time is right to negotiate. 4/5
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But if you want to take back territory and try Putin, you have to win the war. And realistically Ukraine has never been in a position to defeat Russia. The critics should also acknowledge that President Trump has taken some risk here. 3/5
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Wars are ended either by victory or by compromise. This plan affirms Ukraine's sovereignty. It provides Ukraine with a US-backed security guarantee. It envisages Ukrainian reconstruction. Of course, the territorial terms and the amnesty for war crimes are hard to swallow. 2/5
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The best is the enemy of the good. Contrary to recent press speculation, the draft 28-point plan for peace in Ukraine is in fact a reasonable basis for negotiations. Journalists can gripe about it as they griped about the 20-point Gaza plan. But wars are not ended by op-eds. 1/5
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This was a central argument of “The Square and the Tower” (2017). https://t.co/0xdmVUm4kp
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"Scotland lurches from 'Wha’s like us?' to 'Can we do anything right?' and back again and it’s always Bannockburn or Flodden with precious little in between." Great column by @alexmassie on the agony and (very occasional) ecstasy of the Scottish condition. https://t.co/tVUkidHkIb
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Incredible. Well done, lads. https://t.co/JlVf4oPdQA
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@azeem Of course. Hardly NBER standard, but it didn't seem notably worse than other such survey-based pieces. What did I miss? https://t.co/7MqUUeMwXL
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My latest for @TheFP: https://t.co/076sz7P5lu 10/10
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9/10 https://t.co/hkDmRNkUbd
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"When I read in The Wall Street Journal that 'the fates of the world’s biggest semiconductor and cloud companies—and vast swaths of the U.S. economy—[are tied] to OpenAI, essentially making it too big to fail,' I have only one response:" 8/10
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"So what might lead investors to revise downward their expectations about the money to be made out of generative AI?" 7/10 https://t.co/CqeqRdmrrc
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"The Wall Street term for this is roundabouting. The phrase 'house of cards' also comes to mind, as clearly anything that caused a significant equity market correction would pose serious problems for the stability of this structure." 6/10
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"Some of OpenAI’s financing is being provided by Microsoft, with which it has a revenue-sharing agreement. There are also deals with Google and Nvidia. Perhaps the most important part comes from Larry Ellison’s Oracle, one of the parties to the Stargate Project." 5/10
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"While Altman says the company’s annualized revenue is 'well more' than $13 billion, its losses in the last quarter amounted to $12 billion. The company’s claim that revenue will grow to $100 billion by 2028 seems implausible. It would certainly be unprecedented." 4/10
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"The answer is only partly by taking out bank loans ($4 billion to date). The rest of it involves debt of another kind—from just about everyone else in the AI game." 3/10
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"OpenAI is not quite 10 years old. Its flagship product, ChatGPT, is only three years old, and its burn rate (the amount of money it loses each quarter) may be the highest in history. How does Altman propose to pay for 250 gigawatts of new computing capacity?" 2/10
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"Two things can be true at the same time: a) the data centers to power AI could be as economically worthwhile an investment as railroads, and b) we could still experience at least one stock market crash along the way to its general adoption." 1/10
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https://t.co/076sz7OxvW
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I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I do not like green eggs and ham.
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With acknowledgments to Dr. Seuss: "A lot of the applications of generative artificial intelligence remind me of green eggs and ham."
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"When you come to think of it, there is often someone called Sam trying to sell you something you don’t initially want."
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My take on the AI boom. "AI may be driving markets and GDP growth. But @sama’s hype is pure Roaring Twenties."
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Unusually, I was the optimist! https://t.co/P3dqOyAtVE
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"As long as we remain true to the core values of liberty and constitutional government, the toxic ideologies can't win." I had a conversation with @marklevinshow in which we discussed the extreme ideological threats to the West, coming from the right as well as the left.
-
... and then this by @I_Am_NickBloom https://t.co/7s4Lyi3j8T
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Seems like it might be rather fun to read this by @TomMcTague ... https://t.co/D0rqniJsnC
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My latest for @thetimes: https://t.co/r7soA580wq
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"When people stop being able to read — to make sense of the meaning of text on a page — they also lose the ability to make sense of the world. At stake here is nothing less than the fate of humanity, given the intimate connection between the written word and civilisation itself."
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https://t.co/ubCNz4wYaE
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I found @SohrabAhmari's piece on @Nalin_Haley very interesting. I met Nalin quite a few years ago, when I was navigating life at an ultra-progressive New York high school. He was impressive then. As young American conservatives thrash around in search of an heir to
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God, how depressing. Somehow I've utterly failed to teach anyone anything. https://t.co/9etTXWI4As
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Having served a one-year sentence in the Waynflete in 1982-83, I salute @magdalenoxford for resolving to tear the horrible thing down. https://t.co/JmOdGTd1Xx
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Some thoughts from earlier this year on politics, religion, anti-Semitism, and the Middle East, shared with @JakeWSimons. https://t.co/UyYZorlema
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Under these circumstances, we should worry not that Germany is rearming, but that it is not rearming rapidly or smartly enough.
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The UK has been in a mutual defence alliance with Germany for close to 80 years; the Russian invasion of Ukraine is nearing the end of its fourth year; and Donald Trump’s re-election must raise doubts about the strength of the American commitment to European security.
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Readers of a certain age may find it hard to be enthusiastic about German rearmament. But this is not the 1910s or the 1930s. https://t.co/eyXDYavwm0
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“German rearmament is far too slow — here’s how to take it to warp speed.” My essay with @MSchularick for @thetimes https://t.co/OGszUNYa17
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Kudos to @JTLonsdale, @bariweiss, and all our fellow @uaustinorg trustees. https://t.co/UkEZYGpNk2
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The news that Jeff Yass is donating $100 million to @uaustinorg is just great—a reflection not only of his generosity but also of the way our students and faculty convinced him that we are building the university of the future. https://t.co/uX9pDeaRUe
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“Young Democrats May Control the Political Future” - @eyckfreymann and I were well ahead of the curve in our @TheAtlantic essay in 2019. Reads very well this morning. (And predates @peterthiel’s much-cited email.) https://t.co/jrJr7XhmYJ
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https://t.co/5HM0yZDpQI
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Why German rearmament needs to be much faster and smarter than it looks like being. My latest (auf deutsch) with @MSchularick for the @faznet.
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https://t.co/AdUqdGozPG
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“Kissinger biographer Niall Ferguson is quoted that we are all ‘in Kissinger’s world now,’ but the production does not attempt either to flesh out or challenge that assertion.” Best review I’ve seen on the @PBS documentary on Henry Kissinger, in which I was among the talking
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https://t.co/5FZLxmW6aZ
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Thought for Sunday (auf deutsch): The world needs a hundred Thatchers.
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I agree: https://t.co/kDxgAPrKoD
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Summarizing the historical significance of @realDonaldTrump's presidency in less than seven minutes -- and with 3 years and 3 months still to go -- was quite a challenge ... https://t.co/p2icRurxcg
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Flashback to my two pieces on Milei for @TheFP: https://t.co/e6JFNuQ3sd and https://t.co/rY3d2JsXWW
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Congratulations are also due to @SecScottBessent for backing Milei when a run on the peso threatened to derail his radically libertarian government.
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Congratulations to @JMilei on winning the Argentine midterm elections -- and winning them bigly, despite the recent monetary bumps on the road to building "the freest country in the world."
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https://t.co/3grWwioJVu
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"The exploitation of economic chokepoints — any non-substitutable asset dominated by a single state or coalition of states — is nothing new in the history of great power rivalry." My latest for @thetimes.
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An interview from last week with @indavemedia about the global dimensions of the Russian war on Ukraine. https://t.co/JCDP5fc3xE
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His latest is an entertaining dive into Germany's 502 (!) different forms of welfare benefit: https://t.co/1V2TveWHRf
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If you are interested (as I am) in contemporary Germany, but long ago gave up reading Die Zeit and Der Spiegel as they descended into parochial irrelevance, I recommend the new Substack by @OlafGersemann of @welt.
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This initiative has my strong support. https://t.co/KuT9Y8HWuG
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“It’s rare earths v chips in the battle of the chokepoints.” My latest for @thetimes https://t.co/GHSKuxQJa8
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This was a wonderful @HooverInst event and a worthy celebration of our brilliant colleague Thomas Sowell and his extraordinary body of work, succinctly showcased here by @sapinker. https://t.co/3OwgD1DrZl
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https://t.co/sYFqXTxrCR
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https://t.co/IIEWvWJemV
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Something about this looks familiar. https://t.co/yd6pBC2dOR
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I am reading @andrewrsorkin's superb "1929" -- "Too Big to Fail" for nearly a century ago -- and then looking at some charts showing current financial market leverage, and it's making me a little queasy.
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These students should be expelled or at least suspended. It’s as simple as that. https://t.co/l8uZtWTIaM
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Great. https://t.co/ekziMHTIV9
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"'If institutions [which are] essentially the rules of the game in economics and in politics ... get worse while technology gets better, the outcome can be quite devastating.'" https://t.co/gOo4CxW7Rz
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"He said, 'Joel, you know, there's a good reason why we economic historians speak of technological progress but institutional change.' And he said, 'The reason is very simple. Technology really by and large advances and has an upward trend in large parts because it's
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Some great insights from Nobel laureate Joel Mokyr. "Bob Fogel said to me once, 'You know, Joel, economics must deal with economic history.' He says, 'For economics to work without economic history is like an evolutionary biologist without paleontology. And if you don't have
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https://t.co/Rttl69B96L
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A very important @spectator piece by Dean Godson of @Policy_Exchange on the insidious instrumentalization of "Islamophobia" by Islamist groups. The experience of France has much to teach the UK.
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Professor Michael Ben-Gad is being treated disgracefully. Students who behave in this repulsively intolerant fashion need to face discipline. https://t.co/8SnmWlq5ZV
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Highly recommend this interview with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff on @60Minutes https://t.co/TwFJoHhl8h
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https://t.co/qolt564f1w
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"Raising employers’ NI was expected to lose 50,000 jobs over five years — it has in fact cost 125,000 jobs so far, with more to come. And that’s before the coming Employment Rights Bill."
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"Since Reeves took office, people from India have been the big winners: 46,000 more jobs went to them. Next, Nigerians: 26,000 more; then Pakistan, 21,000 more. But Britons? An astonishing 353,000 fewer."
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"Britain has a tax system where the top 100 super-taxpayers contribute almost as much as the North Sea oil industry; where the top 0.1 per cent pay more income tax than the entire bottom 50 per cent."
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Excellent, damning essay by @FraserNelson on Britain's broken political economy. Warning: Contains shocking facts.
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My latest for the @WSJ is here: https://t.co/j2aDH5E7jb
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In the red corner is President Xi. He, too, wants to disrupt the post-1945 order—but in a way that puts China first, not America. And he, too, has a keen eye for an adversary’s weak spot. This latest storm may blow over, but Cold War II is not about to stop. Anyone who
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But how far Trump’s winning streak continues depends heavily on how he handles what is by far his greatest challenge: an increasingly assertive China led by a no less ambitious disrupter.
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Say what you like about Donald Trump, commanding comes naturally to him. Not only does he thrive on the job’s relentless demands. He goes further. He has emerged this year as the Disrupter in Chief. His “Art of the Deal” approach—the outrageous opening bid, then the wheeling and
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Essential reading. We must all become Thatcherites all over again. That’s all there is to it. “The Responsible Society” - by @rcolvile for @CPSThinkTank https://t.co/3mZDgpREL5
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https://t.co/j2aDH5E7jb
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The Disrupter in Chief is delivering. "If you wanted a 'vibe shift' last year, you really got one. If you hate Trump, maybe you just hate the times we live in. For Trump is the zeitgeist on a golf-cart." https://t.co/wXFC2TqXCy
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https://t.co/LpXpl1xWE3
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"How Real Estate-ism Got the Deal Done in Gaza. Trump’s critics pine for old-school diplomacy. But Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff triumphed where Joe Biden’s national security professionals failed."
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The Three Historians are back. A very lively @HooverInst conversation with @p_m_robinson, @VDHanson and Stephen Kotkin. https://t.co/5EuzSHzmxP
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Central theme of chapter 2 of my book “Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World.” https://t.co/RXb5KyFVja https://t.co/sCHsnnXfmp
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https://t.co/SpU5wzUdI6
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On the centenary of her birth, I remind you that I wrote a brief biography of Margaret Thatcher shortly after her death. She was the greatest British prime minister since Churchill. It is time to remind ourselves why.
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@EconTalker @PreislerKa @Mr_Andrew_Fox @SpencerGuard @DouglasKMurray Thanks, Russ. God bless you.
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To my friends celebrating the release of the Israeli hostages today: It’s great. But please remember the 20-35,000 Ukrainian children who are still in Russian captivity. And all those who have been murdered by Putin’s fascist regime. It should be possible to support both Israel https://t.co/ZmOvYhVqQJ
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This is the correct view by @simonmontefiore. https://t.co/2fwCAPmxRz
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I love this. https://t.co/6sSCLyCuAX
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What if there's no pot of gold at the end of @sama's rainbow? Or rather, what if there is, but @OpenAI runs out of money before it gets there? Essential reading on the AI boom/bubble from the very efficient Human Intelligence LLM, @Noahpinion. https://t.co/85yopPoBZv
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https://t.co/aNT6wW2YjF
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I commend this essay to the Festival's organizers, especially @aroberts_andrew and @simonmontefiore, as well as my fellow panelists @Dambisamoyo, @TinaBrownLM, @coldxman, and @AnandWrites.
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Delighted to be celebrating literature today at the @clivedenlitfest. I wrote a timely essay on the threat to the literate society for @TheFP: "Without Books We Will Be Barbarians."
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With special thanks to @bariweiss for somehow finding time to edit this in a week when she had a few other things going on. Her critics need to be aware: She's the toughest and the best editor in journalism today. 5/5
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"For those who opt out of literacy, it is not the road to serfdom that awaits—but the steep downward slope to the status of a peasant in ancient Egypt." My latest for @TheFP. https://t.co/aNT6wW2YjF 4/5
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The data are shocking. Example: We have gone from 8% of 13-year-olds never or hardly ever reading in 1984, to 31% in 2023. 3/5 https://t.co/miy2qlDybn
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The problem is that "when people stop reading, they stop being able to read. And when people stop being able to read—to make sense of the meaning of text on a page—they also lose the ability to make sense of the world." 2/5
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"What Ray Bradbury failed to anticipate in 'Fahrenheit 451' is that America—and indeed the Western world—might turn away from literacy voluntarily, without the need for political tyranny. The consumer society has turned out to be enough to make us abandon books." 1/5
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https://t.co/e48qhJWnTk
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Last night, on the 2nd anniversary of the atrocities of October 7th, 2023, @bariweiss and I tried to make sense of what happened, and why so much of the world's reaction was quite different from our own. @TheFP
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https://t.co/7rNAvs2Qc0
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If you were wondering what on earth @TuckerCarlson is trying to do these days, and what he was insinuating at @charliekirk11 's memorial service, this is a pretty good explainer.
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Brilliantly perceptive essay by @Doranimated on the deep roots of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and the increasingly aggressive campaigns by both the "progressive" Left and the "woke" Right to sever the link. Where else but in @TheFP ?
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Excellent essay by @jeffreysrobbins https://t.co/NN5GVUMjaF
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Two years after the genocidal rampage that happened on October 7, 2023, it's important to be reminded of the nature of the atrocity, even as Hamas's useful idiots continue their warped campaign to recast victims as perpetrators, perpetrators as victims.
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https://t.co/9rm9gmNALb
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Today's the day to raise several glasses to @bariweiss, @NellieBowles, and everyone who helped make @TheFP the hottest property in American journalism.
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This was a good, wide-ranging interview with @WilfredFrost https://t.co/vd7vWwvQP1
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Heartfelt and powerful piece by the great @simonmontefiore, expressing sentiments I know are shared by nearly all my Jewish friends in the UK. https://t.co/SMsUb71YiJ
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https://t.co/VzaxK1v6jq
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"Yes, Britain stands at a fork in the road. But the choice is not, as Keir Starmer claimed, between 'decency' and 'division.' It is between delusion and decision. It is between barbarism and civilization." In the wake of the terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew
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Very much looking forward to joining this illustrious group at @clivedenlitfest. https://t.co/1aXRQaN6cy
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https://t.co/sHtNtuzlFz
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https://t.co/zMYy7ERKce at 2:48:26.
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I have become slightly obsessed by the Orkney-born composer Erland Cooper's new composition, "Unfolding Landscapes." Anyone who's ever gone south to university will relate to it.
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https://t.co/gukmGOQxaG
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Very good indeed to see @FoxNews running such a great report on @uaustinorg. Our students never fail to inspire me.
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https://t.co/sXdvqiGdVW
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Important piece by @mcinparis in @thetimes on @CarloMasala1's important book, "If Russia Wins." Not enough people west of the River Oder seem to grasp how high the stakes are in Ukraine. We are sleepwalking towards the collapse of the transatlantic security order.
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https://t.co/GqgCg8shFz
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After another horrendous night of Russian air raids directed at Ukrainian civilians, I urge you to read my most recent essay for @TheFP, written following my visit to Kyiv two weeks ago.
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Above all, the Europeans do not appear to have grasped what Trump means when he says, “Good luck to all!” is actually, “Goodbye and good riddance!” 9/9 https://t.co/GqgCg8shFz
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European leaders seem not to see that warp-speed German rearmament—the construction of huge new gigafactories to mass produce the best drones Ukraine can design—would secure Europe, boost growth, and turn the populist tide. 8/9
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The problem is that Europe’s national procurement agencies, defense contractors, and militaries are neither procuring weapons fast enough, nor producing the right weapons, nor adapting their force structures to the lessons learned in Ukraine. 7/9
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Under these circumstances, it is crystal clear what Europe and the UK need to do now that America has made the war in Ukraine their problem. First, ramp up financial assistance for Ukraine. Then, accelerate their own rearmament. 6/9
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The key to offsetting Russia’s quantitative advantage is thus constantly to achieve qualitative advances—and at this Ukraine has excelled. Yet there is no getting away from the increasingly serious manpower shortages on the Ukrainian side. 5/9
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The phrase you most commonly hear from men who have served at the front line is: “If you hear the drone, then you are dead.” 4/9
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Ask any of the Ukrainian drone operators and they will tell you: This war is a massive multiplayer game in which the characters you kill cannot respawn. 3/9
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Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is now in its fourth year. Since February 2022, the country has cycled through three wars. First it was a tank war. Then it became an artillery war. Now, however, it’s almost entirely a drone war. The question is how well Europeans
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The war of the future is already here—and you are not sufficiently scared of it. Unless, that is, you are Ukrainian. 1/9
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My latest for @TheFP https://t.co/GqgCg8shFz
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The war in Ukraine is now Europe's problem. EU leaders need to get serious about the war of the future, because it's much closer than most of them seem to realize.
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@coldxman's testimony is here https://t.co/pBPcVI9fxz and / or here https://t.co/S7v4mt4joq
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Look forward to reading @NigelBiggar's latest and sending copies to all the muddle-headed British institutions that yearn to succumb to their imaginary guilt. To be read in conjunction with @coldxman's congressional testimony on the subject. https://t.co/Ifa8V7Gt2W
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“About a third of high school seniors basically can’t read prose text at all. They can (I hope) read signs and labels in stores and iMessage each other, but they cannot read a passage of text and understand what it’s saying.“ @mattyglesias https://t.co/l5sxLkFBbE
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Brzezinski was the hedgehog of the Cold War, who knew one big thing that turned out to be right. https://t.co/ka7328s0Hs
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I've belatedly finished @EdwardGLuce's excellent new biography of Zbig Brzezinski. Though Brzezinski could be off-putting in his naked ambition and self-assurance, and resented the endless comparisons with Kissinger, Luce shows that Zbig grasped the Soviet empire's fatal
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“Understanding Tyler Robinson’s Motives” - @MrAndyNgo has shown immense courage and tenacity in tracking the rise of a toxic culture of violence in the Antifa and radical transgender movements. https://t.co/eOfYM3aqEH
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https://t.co/FtM0DRVO8d
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Worth a subscription to the @FT just to get pro tips on coffee from the great @martinwolf_ https://t.co/IfsExmTwYg
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https://t.co/DBn79GJiBQ
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Constitutions of Liberty: Political and Academic. My full Constitution Day speech at @uaustinorg, complete with transcript. https://t.co/svhXNNvlYV
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https://t.co/9izYfYoJWP
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In which @TinaBrownLM and I talk about "Our Gilded Age'' for @TheFP, with a preamble about @realDonaldTrump's state visit to Britain.
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This was great fun, as conversations with @TinaBrownLM always are. https://t.co/b67IBvqOyc
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https://t.co/djRqeISw64
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"What Will Historians Consider a Ukrainian Victory?" This was a really interesting conversation at @yes_ukraine, moderated by the one and only @tomfriedman, with @TimothyDSnyder, Serhii Plokhy, and Yaroslav Hrytsak.
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Just to say that @MrAndyNgo and @wesyang have been indispensable in the past week, as I have grappled to understand who -- and what -- killed @charliekirk11. Both as courageous as Charlie was.
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You can see how the exposed players scrambled to hedge their positions after their near-death experience April 2-9. https://t.co/5dH0r1B5HU
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https://t.co/QWFQzvyi3U
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Interview from Saturday's @yes_ukraine conference in Kyiv, with Natalia Lutsenko.
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@anecdotal You are an optimist.
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3/3 https://t.co/F2f4XcZ2r1
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2/3 https://t.co/WWIZHnKF3f
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The data in @michaelshermer’s lecture show, conclusively, the success of the left’s march through the institutions of higher education. 1/3 https://t.co/xlGeoEQBGt
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Ask yourself why so many young people today are drawn to barbarism of various kinds, celebrating acts of terrorism including assassination. Might it possibly be because our educational institutions took a politically motivated decision to stop teaching civilization?
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“We must lift the pall of negativity that now hangs over Western civilization in the minds of the young. And the best way we can do that is by actually studying it.” James Hankins is right. https://t.co/Zr9iXBdf4h
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https://t.co/5B4AF6cENH https://t.co/DBZlcVXeBX
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Generational conflict has been the key to a lot of politics this century. As predicted in "The Cash Nexus" (2002)!
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@Kasparov63 Well, as I said at @yes_ukraine: https://t.co/f8Wk69Dz2l
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https://t.co/ECYQIN8rb7
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'I think the Ukrainians have shown that they can battle them to a standstill. They can put a hold on ... The rest is economic. 'You've got to apply absolute economic pressures. And this means you've got to put some risk into the game. ... We talked about sovereign Russian assets.
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Good report of my conversation with General Keith Kellogg at @yes_ukraine on Friday. I asked Kellogg whether it was fair to infer that President Trump was losing patience with President Putin. ... Kellogg replied deftly: 'One thing I would advise if I was to advise anybody [on]
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@nntaleb “I’m a libertarian at the national level, a Republican at the state level, a Democrat at the municipal level, and a communist at the family level.” That's almost a great line. (My family certainly regard my phone and laptop chargers as communal property.) But, my dear @nntaleb,
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Remember, the two words a Russian dictator most fears are "German" and "rearmament."
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Now all European governments need to do the same -- especially Germany. Putin will not change his ways until Ukrainian def-tech firms are building multiple German gigafactories. https://t.co/UK0zMWiuUT
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Agreed. Two things that help keep me more or less sane in this insane world are great literature (yes, all of Dickens, and then Scott, Stendhal, Fontane, Tolstoy ...) and great music (Bruckner, Mahler, Schubert, Tchaikovsky ...). Culturally I am a refugee from the 19th century. https://t.co/Y4FDbJuts0
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@yes_ukraine It's just that he seems unwilling to use it. Which means this is now Europe's war.
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If you think something like this could never happen to your street, whether it's in Berlin, Paris, Rome, or London, you must somehow have skipped the history of the 20th century.
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This chart from ISW shows how Russia has escalated its air war against Ukraine this year. https://t.co/vYmTreCAFr
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And if you want to know what the Russian way of war now looks like, this is Boulevard Václav Havel 31 in the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv. It was hit by a Russian Kh-101 missile on June 17 this year. 23 people living here were killed. https://t.co/Ht8cOlnoUE
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The first of a number of interviews at @yes_ukraine in Kyiv this weekend. https://t.co/G1YuMt3iui
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"The West is underestimating the danger of a sudden collapse." I salute the heroism and ingenuity of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But they are outmanned and outgunned. With U.S. aid effectively over, the EU and UK need to do much more, much faster, to bolster Ukraine's defenses.
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In the great wave of commentary on @charliekirk11’s murder, this powerful piece by @Ayaan stands out. https://t.co/QcseNrmYc7
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I am increasingly convinced that this war will not end until a) meaningful and concerted economic pressure is applied to both Russia and China by the U.S., UK, EU and Japan b) European rearmament is drastically accelerated to compensate for the effective end of U.S. aid to
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A privilege to hear @ZelenskyyUa speak at @yes_ukraine in Kyiv yesterday. The speech was especially striking for the way Zelensky called out China for its support of Russia. https://t.co/L1YHURDRrx
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The full essay for @thetimes is here: https://t.co/vlT4uthuTN
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There are a lot of people out there who don't understand the immense differences between Germany in the 1930s and American in the 2020s. I wrote an essay to debunk the "Trump is Hitler" / "MAGA is fascism" nonsense. https://t.co/v5x8a7LhG1
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My new essay on the perils of Buzz Windrip Syndrome is here: https://t.co/vlT4uthuTN
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I've consistently argued against the equation of Trumpism and fascism. It's based on a) a misunderstanding of what the fascist regimes were really like b) a failure to see that the "imperial presidency" long predates Trump and c) an underestimate of the American constitutional
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A recurrent theme of the past decade is that @realDonaldTrump poses a threat to democracy and years to be an American Caesar or Hitler. Such forebodings may be contributing to a spate of political violence, the latest case of which was the murder of @charliekirk11.
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It has taken me all these years to understand that 9/11 really was a clash of civilizations. And it has taken me until this week finally to face the reality that ours is losing. @TheFP https://t.co/YEftr4XBqH 8/8
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Walking the streets of New York this week, I felt old. To my children, my students, and my employees, 9/11 is not a memory. It is not even an historical fact. It is something people argue about on social media. 7/8
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Comparing the world today with that of 24 years ago, I am tempted to say that bin Laden lost the war on terror but is winning the clash of civilizations. 6/8
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It is not just that the West has been successfully penetrated by an antagonistic civilization that fundamentally rejects the fundamental division between religion and politics—church and state—that lies at the heart of both Christianity and Judaism. The West is also being
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Say what you like about our national security agencies, they won the war on terror. Yet nonviolent radicalization (what Islam calls dawa as opposed to violent jihad) has advanced significantly everywhere in the Western world, wherever there are Muslim communities. The critical
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On reflection, I see that I was overthinking the event. Or perhaps under-thinking it. Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, and my wife @Ayaan were right. 3/8
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Over the past 24 years, I have valiantly tried to see 9/11 differently—not as a civilizational clash between Islam and “the West” but as something that fit better into my own secular frame of reference. Raised an atheist, trained as an economic historian, I felt obliged to look
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With the passage of two and a half decades, it is startling just how unambiguous bin Laden was about his religious motive. “Under no circumstances,” he declared, “should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For, the enmity is based on creed. . . . It is a question
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The murder of @charliekirk11 is not only an odious crime. It is also a disaster for American politics. Of all the people offering leadership to today's young conservatives, he seemed to me by far the most thoughtful. When we met in May, his humanity and integrity impressed me
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Required reading if you're trying work out whether or not Trump is doing unconstitutional things. @Jed_Rubenfeld expertly answers the question for @TheFP. https://t.co/r0jOLQdKcZ
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https://t.co/4nQbLhveUp
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The imperial presidency is nothing new, as I've been arguing in conversations with @sullydish and @charlierose this past week. But in Trump's 2nd term the powers of the executive branch are being flexed in a style that is more Buzz Windrip than FDR. @DouthatNYT asks: Can it last?
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“I'm a lapsed atheist ... I go to church every Sunday, precisely because having been brought up as an atheist, I came to realise in my career as a historian that not only is atheism a disastrous basis for a society ... but also because I don't think it can be a basis for individual ethical decision making.”
More context
British historian · Contributors to Wikimedia projects
Themes 6 themes
last 90 days
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ai
post“Forget about an AI utopia of effortless abundance. Get ready for the messy, unintended consequences foreseen by science fiction’s arch-realist, @nealstephenson. https://t.co/mq6nHq8sa6”
post“This is very important commentary about OpenAI's after-action report on the Hugging Face incident. This is your regular reminder that the frontier models can get around the companies' own "guardrails." They lie and they cheat, and one of them will soon do something much worse. https://t.co/hDy26JOL3R”
post“"We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don't care how they make you feel." Fantastic Convocation address in praise of selfless virtue by @uaustinorg President Carlos Carvalho. https://t.co/6eL4dE0au5”
post“When science-fiction becomes science-fact: "The people building frontier models know they are playing with something more dangerous than fire. The politicians are beginning to understand that too. The public is growing more hostile every day to AI in general and data centers in”
post“@elonmusk “Honestly and if you ask me on any given day,” @elonmusk told Minton Beddoes, “in fact, even intraday, I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI.” Doesn't that imply you're also wrong at least some of the time?”
post“"If the AI future had a prophet, I’d bet against his being a Scottish nationalist-socialist-anti-Zionist. ... You can use the word abundance as abundantly as you like. But not everything can be made abundant by AI plus bots."”
post“When @elonmusk gave Iain M. Banks's "The Culture" series a shout-out in his interview with @TheEconomist, I had to intervene. Because Banks is not the right sci-fi writer if you want to understand our AI future.”
post“The appearance in the timeline of characters like Leopold Aschenbrenner and Jason Arday only strengthens the case that we are living in a simulation, and Tom Wolfe wrote the software.”
2 more posts
post“"AI safety" may be the biggest oxymoron in the world.”
post“My latest for @TheFP on why you should read @nealstephenson not Iain M. Banks to understand how AI will change the world (not the galaxy). https://t.co/8XHM8K4LQP”
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higher education
post“"We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don't care how they make you feel." Fantastic Convocation address in praise of selfless virtue by @uaustinorg President Carlos Carvalho. https://t.co/6eL4dE0au5”
post““The rebel alliance is still much smaller than the empire,” @JTLonsdale said. Yet, he’s optimistic. “We’re going to win,” he said. “The ideas behind Western civilization are not going to be defeated.” Amen. https://t.co/LAKEDBqhAS”
post“I was pleasantly survived to read a mostly positive profile of my friend and fellow @uaustinorg founder, the great @JTLonsdale, in the @washingtonpost. The haters the paper quotes sound like what they are: defenders of a decadent old regime.”
post“It's five years since we decided a new university was the only answer to the crisis of higher education. @uaustinorg just goes from strength to strength, as this list of our students' internships and other summer gigs makes clear. @JTLonsdale @bariweiss https://t.co/zRl7U3wHCO”
post“If you think a version of all this wasn't also playing out at your alma mater in the last six years, you are delusional. @Tyler_A_Harper simply experienced a microcosm of the American academy's decline and fall. https://t.co/PGp3r9wA6s”
post“Would that he -- and the others now penning their confessions -- had spoken up at the time. https://t.co/05BtOZf0L3”
post“What is especially infuriating about the Arday fiasco is that it shows the people running @Cambridge_Uni have learned absolutely nothing from the experience of the elite universities in the U.S., not least @Harvard. https://t.co/RX8PAq3ytZ”
post“Powerful testimony from @k_tajbakhsh about the repulsive hypocrisy of the academic left. https://t.co/k7KsipXK6U”
1 more post
post“Best thing I've yet read on the Jason Arday farce-tragedy, by the brilliant Roland Freyer: https://t.co/hpf63augmP”
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time
post“"We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don't care how they make you feel." Fantastic Convocation address in praise of selfless virtue by @uaustinorg President Carlos Carvalho. https://t.co/6eL4dE0au5”
post“@elonmusk “Honestly and if you ask me on any given day,” @elonmusk told Minton Beddoes, “in fact, even intraday, I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI.” Doesn't that imply you're also wrong at least some of the time?”
post“Would that he -- and the others now penning their confessions -- had spoken up at the time. https://t.co/05BtOZf0L3”
post“But maybe the most striking thing is that a Jewish woman is the Mexican president and it really isn't an issue. At a time when the rise of antisemitism is such a grave concern in many countries, @Claudiashein's story is heartening.”
post“The U.S.-Mexican border is no longer wide open for migrants, and she deserves some of the credit. Mexican inflation is 3.1%. Electronic exports are booming. And the homicide rate has been cut in half. You can see why her favorability is 60+% in the polls.”
post“A great honor and pleasure to meet President @Claudiashein. She is clearly following a very different political path from @JMilei (whom I visited this time last year). But her challenges are also different and her achievements impressive. https://t.co/Hz4iYSKWRK”
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cambridge
post“What is especially infuriating about the Arday fiasco is that it shows the people running @Cambridge_Uni have learned absolutely nothing from the experience of the elite universities in the U.S., not least @Harvard. https://t.co/RX8PAq3ytZ”
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iran
post“Powerful testimony from @k_tajbakhsh about the repulsive hypocrisy of the academic left. https://t.co/k7KsipXK6U”
1 more topic
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jason
post“Best thing I've yet read on the Jason Arday farce-tragedy, by the brilliant Roland Freyer: https://t.co/hpf63augmP”
post“The appearance in the timeline of characters like Leopold Aschenbrenner and Jason Arday only strengthens the case that we are living in a simulation, and Tom Wolfe wrote the software.”