Slow Read
Geopolitics
Power, statecraft and the long view.
8 new picks worth reading, every week.
Get new Geopolitics picks by email, once a week. Subscribe →
You have read everything here.
-
★★★★★ Added 12/10/2026
Xi and Trump in the Eye of the Storm
Original title: Xi et Trump dans l’œil du cyclone
Argues that the warmth of Xi Jinping’s recent Washington visit conceals a rivalry that has simply moved from tariffs to the infrastructure underneath the global economy: critical minerals, chips, AI and the dollar’s monetary plumbing. Traces the shift to domestic US pressures such as inflation and a falling labour share, and to China’s new five-year plan, which makes technological self-sufficiency the explicit goal.
-
★★★★★ Added 12/10/2026
Marco Rubio invents Trump's West
Original title: Marco Rubio invente l’Occident de Trump
Dissects Marco Rubio’s Athens speech as the foundational text of an emerging “Trump doctrine”, which casts the West as a conquering civilisation running from Athens and Rome to Washington, forced to choose open national power or decline. Argues the speech’s reading of Greek history is shaky and its Straussian frame favours aristocratic excellence over democratic heritage, and links it to a deeper convergence between American and Russian-aligned nationalist currents.
-
★★★★★ Added 12/10/2026
Eurosclerosis or US Decline?
Picks apart the claims of European economic decline relative to the US, made by figures from Jamie Dimon to the Draghi report, arguing nominal exchange-rate comparisons and inconsistent price adjustments do most of the work in the pessimistic numbers. Accepts a moderate relative productivity slip but finds no evidence of a decisive loss of competitive position, and argues for far more care in how these cross-country comparisons get made.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Russian economy: one in three companies in the country is loss-making
Original title: Économie russe : une entreprise du pays sur trois est déficitaire
Rosstat data for the first seven months of 2026 show a third of Russian firms now running at a loss, with profits down 16 per cent year on year, as borrowing costs above 20 per cent and a VAT rise to 22 per cent squeeze firms that cannot pass costs on to weak demand. Oil, gas and pharmaceuticals are the exceptions, posting gains while metals, finance and coal post the sharpest losses.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Did Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centres weaken Russian troll farms?
Original title: Les frappes ukrainiennes sur des centres de données de Yandex ont-elles affaibli les fermes à trolls russes ?
Tests the claim that Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centres this week disrupted Russian disinformation operations, and finds the evidence thin: the Cloudflare traffic drop cited as proof is dominated by crawler bots, not propaganda accounts. Honest about the limits of what can be verified, which is rarer on this subject than the strikes themselves.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
What the diesel deal between Trump and Putin conceals
Original title: Ce que cache l’accord sur le diesel entre Trump et Poutine
Reads the new US-Russia diesel deal, billed as relief for American pump prices, as a minor trade dwarfed by Russia’s normal export volumes and a refinery sector running at 60 per cent capacity. The more durable effect, it argues, is political: normalising Washington-Moscow relations while pressuring Kyiv, which has agreed to stop striking Russian refineries in exchange for a pause on Russian strikes against Ukraine’s energy grid.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Conflict in the Red Sea is forcing cloud giants to find a new route for the internet
Reports that Google, Meta and Microsoft are paying premium rates for backup land routes as fighting near Yemen threatens the undersea cables that carry internet traffic between Europe and Asia through the Red Sea. A concrete case of a regional conflict reshaping the physical infrastructure of the global cloud, not just shipping and oil.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
As U.S. blocks DJI, Insta360 races to win American creators
Reports how Insta360 and its drone brand Antigravity are gaining ground among American creators as clearer US rules against DJI create an opening, with Insta360’s cameras and drones now harder to avoid at the point where DJI used to dominate. A concrete look at how an export ban reshapes a market rather than just restricting one company.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Why don't Russia's elites turn against Putin?
Original title: Pourquoi les élites russes ne se retournent-elles pas contre Poutine ?
Argues Russia’s elite lost the channels to push back on Kremlin decisions well before 2022, so loyalty to Putin now reflects a rational survival strategy rather than genuine support. Makes the sharper point that sanctions on individuals punish their positions without offering any route to relief, deepening their dependence on the regime rather than creating pressure for change.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Xi Jinping and the Problem of Heaven
Original title: Xi Jinping et le problème du Ciel
Traces how Xi Jinping’s China has revived tianxia, the old idea of a unified world order under one authority, fusing imperial heritage, Confucianism and communism after the concept lost out to the nation-state model a century ago. Surveys the Chinese thinkers building a philosophical case for this order and the domestic critics who warn it curdles into nationalism or empire, and notes the regime’s talk of harmony sits oddly against its intolerance of dissent at home.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
The Spice Trader vs. the Tariffs
Interviews the co-founder of a small spice importer now suing over tariffs imposed under a trade statute, Section 301, he argues was never designed for this use, with forced-labour justifications that do not track actual labour-risk data by country. A rare worm’s-eye view of how sweeping tariff powers land on a bootstrapped business still waiting 12 to 18 months for its case to clear the courts while the tariffs keep getting collected.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Zhejiang, Xi Jinping's Laboratory
Original title: Le Zhejiang, laboratoire de Xi Jinping
Traces how Zhejiang became Xi Jinping’s testing ground for national policy since 2023, piloting initiatives in technology, rural renewal and “common prosperity” that sometimes spread nationwide, with Party-state direction doing as much work as private enterprise. Concludes most provinces cannot actually replicate the model, given regional wealth gaps and the property slump, so it works better as inspiration than template.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
Trump wants to reduce the American press to vassalage
Original title: Trump veut vassaliser la presse américaine
Argues Trump’s second-term pressure on the press works through the structural conditions that make journalism possible, White House accreditation, broadcast licence threats, lawsuits and mergers that leave media owners dependent on Washington’s goodwill, rather than through insults alone. Sets this against the American tradition, from Montesquieu’s view of the press as a check on power to Jefferson and Madison’s case for an informed public, and warns that concentrated ownership and the decline of local papers are the deeper risk.
-
★★★★☆ Added 12/10/2026
After the Ordeal of Proof
Original title: Après l’épreuve de la preuve
Eva Illouz compares the Dreyfus affair, where verifiable documents eventually shifted minds, with today’s debate over whether Israel’s conduct in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, arguing the latter has outrun legal standards of proof and now runs on fragmented media and identity instead. Concludes that truth and justice have come apart, so the word now functions as a political rallying cry rather than a legal or moral finding. A demanding essay on a genuinely contested question; no comparably rigorous piece arguing the opposing case turned up in this week’s sweep.
-
★★★☆☆ Added 12/10/2026
What Time Is It on the Moon?
Original title: Quelle heure est-il sur la Lune ?
The US and China are about to put competing lunar time standards to a vote at this week’s Versailles metrology conference, each backing its own system for a Moon whose weaker gravity already runs clocks 56 microseconds a day faster than Earth’s. A small, concrete case of two powers setting rival technical standards for a frontier neither fully controls yet.
-
★★★☆☆ Added 12/10/2026
Not just AI. China is building technologies that challenge U.S. dominance
Adapted from Steve Feldstein’s book “Bytes and Bullets”, the piece argues China’s technology challenge to the US runs well beyond AI, into batteries, solar, drones and satellites, where Chinese firms already hold manufacturing and cost advantages. Useful for breadth, though it is a book excerpt rather than independent reporting, so treat the framing as the author’s own case.
-
★★★☆☆ Added 12/10/2026
The new class struggle will be a struggle between generations
Original title: La nouvelle lutte des classes sera une lutte des générations
In this interview, Pierre Rosanvallon argues generational conflict is replacing class struggle as the organising divide in politics, as short-termism lets today’s voters push the costs of public debt and pension promises onto people who cannot yet vote. Ties the argument to his new book and to citizens’ assemblies as one model for institutions built to think past the next election.
-
★★★★★ Pick of the week Added 05/10/2026
"China Is Killing Open Global Trade"
Original title: « La Chine est en train de tuer le commerce mondial ouvert »
The former WTO director-general lays out, with figures, how Chinese state subsidies, an undervalued renminbi and chronically weak household consumption let Chinese firms take global market share faster than normal trade defences can respond, using European solar manufacturing’s collapse from 30 per cent of world output to about 1 per cent as the cautionary case. Sets out a detailed fallback plan of capped tariffs and ownership-based rules of origin if negotiation fails, grounded in existing EU law rather than a national security carve-out.
-
★★★★★ Added 05/10/2026
Who gets to decide if AI is safe? Africa wants a say
African officials told the UN Security Council they want to help set AI safety standards rather than remain a testing ground for other countries’ models, with Kenya the only African state inside any international AI safety network. Documents concrete local harms, from an algorithm that raised health insurance costs for poor Kenyan households to Boko Haram’s own use of AI, that safety frameworks built for wealthy markets simply do not screen for.
-
★★★★★ Added 05/10/2026
To understand the Party's industrial offensive, one must go to Sichuan
Original title: Pour comprendre l’offensive industrielle du Parti, il faut se rendre au Sichuan
Traces how Xi’s revival of Mao’s old Third Front doctrine turned Chengdu into a hub of state-linked cyber and industrial firms, including the i-Soon network whose leaked files tied it to hacking operations against French institutions. Shows the model relies on diffuse, unaccountable networks linking universities, state firms and local enterprises rather than one central command, and flags that falling cybersecurity investment is pushing the sector to merge with AI work.
-
★★★★★ Added 05/10/2026
China and the United States Export Their Crisis to Europe
Original title: La Chine et les États-Unis exportent leur crise en Europe
Economists Hélène Rey and Pierre Wunsch argue that US overconsumption and Chinese industrial overcapacity are two sides of the same global imbalance, and that Europe absorbs the fallout of both without the policy tools either giant power has. Wunsch adds that Europe’s old rule-based approach to trade no longer works against rivals who ignore the rules, and that without EU-level borrowing, national industrial subsidies will keep fragmenting the single market.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
The AI boom is making the world’s cheapest smartphones disappear
Traces a direct chain from Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron diverting memory chips to AI data centres through to a roughly 60 per cent year-on-year collapse in shipments of phones under $100, as manufacturers chase higher margins instead of the budget segment. Names the mechanism rather than just the price rise, and puts a number, about 800 million people, on who loses access as a result.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
Awkward: Saudi Arabia’s new EV brand takes on the U.S. rival it already controls
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund owns roughly 58 per cent of Lucid while simultaneously building Ceer, a domestic rival EV brand whose top model nearly matches Lucid’s flagship on power output, as Lucid’s Saudi sales and market value both slide. The more striking number is BYD’s: its Saudi sales rose 369 per cent over the same period, the competitor both Western and Gulf manufacturers are actually losing to.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
AI companies want to embed safety evaluators, but countries need their own
Argues that letting AI companies design and run their own safety evaluations is itself a concentration-of-power risk, citing an OpenAI agent’s breach of an Australian healthcare database as a case safety testing built for Silicon Valley never anticipated. Reports that even Anthropic devotes only about a tenth of its training budget to security, and that poorer countries lack the technical capacity to build independent evaluation regimes of their own.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
China’s AI Safety Money Problem
Argues China’s thin AI safety ecosystem is a funding problem rather than a political one, since the country’s 2016 charity and overseas NGO laws make independent, foreign-backed safety philanthropy almost impossible to run at scale. Puts a number on the gap, roughly $20 million a year domestically against over $1 billion globally, and surveys where safety work actually happens instead: state labs, universities and compliance-driven “safety as a service” firms.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
Has the Autonomous Trucking Revolution Arrived?
Argues the case for autonomous trucks rests on a cost comparison that ignores breakdowns, trailer handling and insurance, and that even 5 per cent fleet adoption by 2035 looks optimistic once those costs are counted. The sharper point is regulatory: aviation’s safety record comes from a well-funded FAA, while trucking’s regulator has a fraction of the budget and inspectors, so automation is being layered onto an oversight gap rather than fixing one.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
Brazil can tip Trumpism in the Americas
Original title: Le Brésil peut faire basculer le trumpisme en Amérique
Historians Olivier Compagnon and Anaïs Fléchet read Washington’s tariffs, threats against Brazilian judges and open backing for Flávio Bolsonaro as part of a stated US strategy, set out in its own November 2025 National Security Strategy, to reassert dominance over the Western hemisphere. Argues the Brazilian election has become a proxy test of whether that strategy can be resisted, regardless of which candidate wins.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
The Bardella affair and the long duration of antisemitism on the far right
Original title: L’affaire Bardella et la longue durée de l’antisémitisme à l’extrême droite
Historians Pierre Savy and Baptiste Roger-Lacan use allegations about Jordan Bardella’s youth to trace how older antisemitic tropes were repackaged for online audiences by the ideologue Alain Soral, and argue the Rassemblement National’s public “de-demonised” face has always sat alongside a more extreme private discourse. Treats the current controversy as one data point in a much longer pattern rather than the subject itself.
-
★★★★☆ Added 05/10/2026
According to Mario Draghi, Europe can no longer live without growth
Original title: Selon Mario Draghi, l’Europe ne peut plus vivre sans croissance
Draghi’s own lecture argues that the Maastricht-era bargain, in which independent central banks kept rates low while governments avoided relying on growth, has broken down now that global rates are rising for reasons Europe cannot control. Calculates that half a percentage point of extra annual growth to 2040 would close about a third of Europe’s debt gap, and warns that without it, governments will eventually pressure central banks back into financing deficits directly. Worth reading as the case made by the person who has spent the past two years trying to get the EU to act on it.
-
★★★☆☆ Added 05/10/2026
Why Trump refuses to slow AI development
Original title: Pourquoi Trump refuse de ralentir le développement de l’IA
Sets the scale of the US AI build-out against past infrastructure booms, at a projected 3.6 per cent of GDP a year against 2.2 per cent for nineteenth-century railways, to argue why Washington treats unimpeded investment as a strategic asset rather than a risk to manage. Short and narrow, but the comparative figures are the useful part.
-
★★★★★ Added 28/09/2026
South Korea’s AI chip giants are fighting for a bigger role in America’s AI boom
Samsung and SK Hynix between them control 83 per cent of the global memory chip market, and the piece traces how both are manoeuvring for closer supply ties to Nvidia and OpenAI as demand for high-bandwidth memory outstrips the compute story that usually leads AI coverage. Built on named industry sources rather than framed as a nationalist chip-race narrative.
-
★★★★★ Added 28/09/2026
The Keys to Houthi Power
Original title: Les clefs de la puissance houthiste
Laurent Bonnefoy argues the Houthi movement’s resilience owes less to Iranian backing than to deep roots in Zaydi tradition, leadership hardened by the 2004–2010 Sa’dah wars, and above all the durable fragmentation of its opponents, still split between Islamists, separatists and rival Gulf-backed factions. A scholarly corrective to the puppet-of-Tehran framing that dominates most coverage of Yemen’s war.
-
★★★★★ Added 28/09/2026
The Sánchez Doctrine for Refounding the World Order
Original title: La doctrine Sánchez pour refonder l’ordre mondial
The Spanish prime minister’s own doctrine text, published here in full, argues for reordering multilateral institutions around a multipolar world rather than patching the post-1945 order, across trade, defence and climate governance. A primary source worth reading directly rather than through secondhand coverage of its headline lines.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
Bab el-Mandeb: Houthi control puts European diesel and jet fuel supplies at risk
Original title: Bab el-Mandeb : le contrôle houthiste fait peser un risque sur les approvisionnements européens en diesel et kérosène
Before the 2023 Houthi attacks, the Bab el-Mandeb strait carried 66 per cent of Europe’s jet fuel and 58 per cent of its diesel imports, and Europe has since leaned harder on Gulf refineries even as its own refining capacity has shrunk by around 13 per cent since 2000. Lays out why that leaves Europe structurally unable to offset a prolonged closure by refining more of its own crude.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
Dario Amodei wants to slow AI. China isn’t taking orders
Chinese officials, state media and engineers at MiniMax, DeepSeek and Huawei have publicly dismissed Anthropic’s Dario Amodei’s call to slow frontier AI development, framing it as a bid to lock in American advantage while Chinese labs still trail on raw capability. Named sources on the record rather than a paraphrase of state media sentiment.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
In Uruguay, techno-libertarians are building a town for the post-AI era
Original title: En Uruguay des techno-libertariens bâtissent une ville pour l’après-IA
Reports on a planned private town in Uruguay, backed by Silicon Valley figures, designed as a haven for a small community betting that advanced AI will make most conventional work and governance obsolete within a decade. Field-reported rather than promotional, including scepticism from Uruguayan officials about the project’s legal and demographic plausibility.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
Chartbook 476: Walled-in wealth #2
Adam Tooze tracks how the composition of the world’s largest fortunes has diverged since 2012: American wealth increasingly concentrated in a handful of tech founders whose net worth rides public markets, against a Chinese billionaire class whose fortunes stay tied to state-linked industrial and property assets. Chart-heavy and historically grounded, though the framing leans toward reading the divergence as a symptom of unequal late-stage capitalism.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
Can China and the United States agree on AI safety?
Original title: La Chine et les États-Unis peuvent-ils s’accorder sur la sécurité de l’IA ?
Weighs whether Beijing and Washington could reach even a narrow bilateral understanding on frontier AI safety testing, against a backdrop of mutual distrust over export controls and military applications. Reads well alongside The Wire China’s interview with Brian Tse below, which argues from the Chinese side that Beijing’s own safety framework is further along than Washington assumes.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
In Greenland, Europe's strategy to resist Trump has ultimately paid off
Original title: Au Groenland, la stratégie européenne pour résister à Trump a fini par payer
Reviews the EU’s quieter, multi-year strategy of deepening economic and security ties with Greenland and Denmark, arguing it has pre-empted Washington’s periodic pushes to annex or control the island more effectively than any public rebuttal could. A retrospective assessment of a strategy over time rather than a reaction to a single statement.
-
★★★★☆ Added 28/09/2026
Brian Tse on How China Plans to Keep AI Safe
A Q&A with the head of Concordia AI on Beijing’s emerging AI safety architecture, including which international coordination channels China still sees as viable with Washington and which it has written off. Useful as a corrective to coverage that treats Chinese AI governance as an afterthought to the compute race.
You have read everything on this page.
180 picks · page 2 of 5
How we rate
How the stars work
★★★★★ Original reporting or data, explains a mechanism, argues fairly.
★★★★ Excellent, one soft spot: a frame, narrow scope, or an interview.
★★★ Solid, if the subject already interests you.
Rated on the piece, never its politics. A frame tag, in italics, names the position a piece argues from so you can weigh it before you read.