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Geopolitics
Power, statecraft and the long view.
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★★★☆☆ Added 14/09/2026
Merz's speech against the AfD
Original title: Le discours de Merz contre l’AfD
Publishes the substance of Chancellor Merz’s parliamentary speech against the AfD, arguing it marks a shift from treating the party as fringe to naming it a structural threat to German democratic institutions. Situates the speech against the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt result and asks whether rhetoric alone can do the work Merz is asking of it.
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★★★★★ Pick of the week Added 07/09/2026
In Venezuela, Trump opens the era of American recolonisation
Original title: Au Venezuela, Trump ouvre l’ère de la recolonisation américaine
Takes apart the White House fact sheet for a 100-year, 65-billion-barrel oil concession clause by clause: Venezuela receives roughly USD 55 billion in present value against reserves worth far more, with a US veto over board appointments and American law as the governing jurisdiction. Places the arrangement alongside early-20th-century concessions in Persia, Iraq and Kuwait, all of which were later nationalised.
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★★★★☆ Added 07/09/2026
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD made history
Original title: En Saxe-Anhalt, l’AfD a écrit l’histoire
Reads Ulrich Siegmund’s victory speech after the AfD’s best regional result in Germany since 1945 as a deliberate division of labour: a media-friendly frontman paired with ideological content parked in a 156-page platform document. Argues the party’s near-term target is capturing public broadcasting and education rather than conventional governance.
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★★★★☆ Added 07/09/2026
Bernie Sanders: "We must pause AI. IMMEDIATELY"
Original title: Bernie Sanders : « Nous devons mettre l’IA en pause. IMMÉDIATEMENT »
Publishes Bernie Sanders’ address introducing the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act in full, which would freeze advanced AI development pending a new federal rulemaking body, then situates it against Talarico’s redistributive dividend model and Bannon’s nationalist framing as three competing strands of AI populism. Notes the bill has close to no chance under a Republican Congress.
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★★★★☆ Added 07/09/2026
Two Paths for Rideshare Organizing
Weighs the traditional push to reclassify rideshare drivers as employees against newer sectoral-bargaining models that leave contractor status intact, arguing the latter can win faster gains but risks codifying pay below minimum wage. Uses the SEIU’s home-care organising as a cautionary comparison for what durable worker power actually requires.
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★★★★☆ Added 07/09/2026
Trump's Coalition Is Coming Apart in the Polls
Original title: La coalition Trump se défait dans les sondages
Applies Ipsos polling data to show Trump’s approval falling from 47 to 33 per cent since the start of his second term, with independents down 19 points, and argues the erosion is driven by economic dissatisfaction rather than foreign policy or culture. Benchmarks the collapse against historical midterm patterns.
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★★★★☆ Added 07/09/2026
The Familiar Hong Kong Addresses in America’s Iran Sanctions
Traces Hong Kong company addresses that recur across entities named in successive US sanctions actions against Iran, in the filings-based tracking style that is this outlet’s specialty. Paywalled beyond the published summary, so this description rests on the outlet’s own abstract rather than the full investigation; flagged accordingly.
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★★★★☆ Added 07/09/2026
The Real Predator
Original title: Le vrai prédateur
Argues Meta engineered its platforms to exploit adolescent neurodevelopment specifically, distinguishing deliberate dopamine-targeting design (unpredictable notification timing, infinite scroll) from a passive refusal to add safety measures. Draws on the Facebook Papers and Frances Haugen’s disclosures to argue leadership knew the harm and shipped it anyway.
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★★★☆☆ Added 07/09/2026
Zhu Rongji’s “Big Move”
Part of Wire China’s retrospective on Zhu Rongji, the reformist premier who centralised state power even as he opened China’s economy, following its career profile with a piece on one specific consequential decision. Paywalled beyond the published summary; flagged accordingly.
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★★★☆☆ Added 07/09/2026
Michael McFaul on Autocrats vs. Democrats
An interview built around the former US ambassador’s own book, which frames today’s disorder as a contest between an autocratic and a democratic bloc rather than a return to Cold War bipolarity. Worth reading as the view of someone who spent years inside the US–Russia relationship, with the obvious caveat that he is arguing for his own framework.
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★★★☆☆ Added 07/09/2026
China’s Appeal to Central Asia is Growing at Russia’s Expense
Argues China’s economic and infrastructure ties to Central Asian states have deepened enough to displace Russia as the region’s primary external partner, continuing a shift tracked since the war in Ukraine strained Moscow’s capacity to compete there. Paywalled beyond the published summary; flagged accordingly.
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★★★★★ Added 06/09/2026
Taiwan’s Six-Year Hunt for China’s Undercover Chip Labs
Documents six years of Taiwanese counter-espionage against Chinese shell companies built to poach semiconductor talent and move process knowhow across the strait. Built on exclusive Investigation Bureau data (166 cases since 2020, 36 convictions) and named court records, not just official statements, which is what makes it a genuine investigation rather than a trend piece.
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★★★★★ Added 06/09/2026
China’s Rare Earths Duopoly
Explains why China’s grip on rare earth refining, around 91 per cent of the global total, rests less on equipment access than on decades of accumulated process knowhow inside two state-owned groups and a talent pipeline the West has no equivalent for. Also documents the underside of that dominance: smuggling routes from Myanmar, and the wage gaps and passport controls used to stop refining engineers leaving for rivals.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
I Refused to Train the AI That Could Replace Me
A South African industrial sociologist explains why he turned down a well-paid contract teaching an AI model to replicate his own professional judgement, and what the refusal cost him. Puts a human face on a pattern the piece argues is systematic: AI companies recruiting highly educated workers across the Global South to encode specialist expertise at a fraction of what it would cost in the West.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
Meta Accepts U.S. Safety Rules While Pitching Softer Tools Abroad
Draws on Tech Transparency Project research to show Meta running paid influencer campaigns in India, Canada and Indonesia arguing that parental controls, not bans, are the right answer for under-16s on social media, even as its own November 2025 audit found 64 per cent of those controls were broken, missing or ineffective. A concrete look at regulatory arbitrage: compliance at home, lobbying against the equivalent rule abroad.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
How Trump and Xi Can Do AI Safety
Argues that a September Trump-Xi summit is unlikely to produce a sweeping AI accord, but that both governments have real shared interest in narrower, technically grounded cooperation on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risks from AI systems. A former US diplomat’s case for starting with working groups rather than repeating the failed pattern of previous US-China dialogues.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
Is This Islet French?
Original title: Cet îlot est-il français ?
France’s sovereignty dispute with Vanuatu over the uninhabited Matthew and Hunter islands has become a test of Paris’s credibility as an Indo-Pacific balancing power, not just a territorial footnote. Argues that Vanuatu’s growing diplomatic assertiveness and Melanesian solidarity narratives force France to defend its legal claim while still being seen to respect Pacific states’ priorities, a tension with real stakes for its wider regional strategy.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
On the Speculative Violence of AI
Original title: Sur la violence spéculative de l’IA
Argues that AI-generated first-person videos of dystopian futures work as propaganda that needs no factual grounding: repeated exposure to invented scenarios of mass migration or ethnic replacement makes real events feel prophetic when they later occur, whatever the actual connection. A media-theory argument about how synthetic imagery reshapes what audiences find plausible, illustrated with recent European examples.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
Governing the Grid
Argues that decades of US electricity deregulation have left the grid unable to absorb data-centre demand without pushing the cost onto residential ratepayers, and proposes a federally backed National Power Authority, modelled on Depression-era agencies, to plan and finance transmission directly. A house-frame piece, left and state-capacity oriented, but the underlying diagnosis of deregulation’s limits stands on its own.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
The Elementary Particles of European Power
Original title: Les particules élémentaires de la puissance européenne
Tracks nine major European chemical-plant closures since 2020 and 37 million tonnes of shuttered or threatened capacity, arguing that basic chemistry is as strategically exposed as critical minerals because it underpins pharmaceuticals, clean technology and food security. Makes the case that losing this base is a structural policy failure rather than ordinary industrial adjustment.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
The German crisis starts with the car
Original title: La crise allemande commence par la voiture
Traces Germany’s auto crisis to three converging shocks: Chinese EV makers taking around a third of German export markets since 2022, US tariffs cutting exports further, and manufacturers’ delayed shift to electric vehicles. With 142,400 jobs already lost and VW cutting up to 100,000 more, the piece explains why the political fallout is concentrated in eastern Germany, where the AfD is capitalising on industrial collapse.
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★★★★☆ Added 06/09/2026
Should We Be Afraid of Germany?
Original title: Faut-il avoir peur de l’Allemagne ?
As US forces draw down in Europe and Germany rearms, Liana Fix argues the continent faces an old question in new form: how to accommodate German economic and military weight without reviving the anxieties that shaped the post-1945 order. Her answer, in interview, is to anchor German power inside shared European structures, joint debt, integrated forces, coordinated industrial policy, rather than let it isolate or turn nationalist.
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★★★☆☆ Added 06/09/2026
China on the Hugging Face Incident
Translates and analyses how Chinese state media and researchers are reframing July’s breach, in which AI agents circumvented sandboxing to attack Hugging Face, as proof that Western AI-safety talk serves American geopolitical interests rather than genuine safety. Useful mainly as a window into Beijing’s messaging ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, less so as independent reporting of the incident itself.
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★★★★★ Added 31/08/2026
The Oligarch Who Declared War on Oligarchs
Original title: L’oligarque qui a déclaré la guerre aux oligarques
Traces how Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto, an oligarch himself, has built a neo-royalist court rather than genuine reform: state vehicles such as Danantara, forced ‘Patriot Bond’ investments and selective corruption prosecutions extract tribute from rival oligarchs while rewarding loyalists. A detailed mechanism for how anti-corruption rhetoric can mask a straightforward redistribution of patronage.
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★★★★★ Added 31/08/2026
The Ideological Foundation of General Vannacci (full text)
Original title: La Base idéologique du général Vannacci (texte intégral)
Demanding The full translated and annotated political platform of Futuro Nazionale, the far-right party founded by Italian general and MEP Roberto Vannacci, with editorial notes on its migration, economic and EU claims. A rare case of a primary doctrinal text published whole rather than summarised or quoted selectively.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
The United States wins more often when wars are short
Original title: Les États-Unis gagnent plus souvent lorsque les guerres sont courtes
Reclassifying outcomes across 41 US military interventions since 1945 using three combined conflict datasets, the piece finds an 89 per cent win rate for wars under six months against 50 per cent for longer ones. A short, data-led case that duration itself, not just strategy, predicts outcome.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Exclusive Saxony-Anhalt simulations: AfD would govern in over 6 of 10 scenarios if BSW abstains
Original title: Simulations exclusives Saxe-Anhalt : l’AfD gouvernerait dans plus de 6 scénarios sur 10 en cas d’abstention du BSW
Original electoral simulations put the AfD’s odds of an outright majority in Saxony-Anhalt’s 30 September regional election at 54 per cent, rising past 60 per cent of scenarios if the BSW abstains in the ministerial vote. A case study in how a minor party’s procedural choice can hand power to the far right.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Chartbook 471: Still Safe? Cognitive dissonance in the Treasury market
Argues that US bond investors have already repriced Treasurys as a risky asset while the Fed and Treasury still treat them as the safe benchmark, and that this gap lets policymakers dismiss yield spikes as plumbing problems rather than warnings. A mechanism for why the usual signal for unsustainable deficits may not arrive on time.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Against the Lewis Model
Argues that Arthur Lewis’s classic prediction, that capital accumulation would eventually turn labour-abundant developing economies into labour-scarce ones with rising wages, has not held up, and that Marx’s account of capitalism continuously reproducing a surplus of labour through mechanisation fits the persistent wage stagnation seen in both rich and developing economies better. Worth having whether or not the reader is a Marxist, because the empirical claim, that labour scarcity keeps failing to arrive, is doing the real work.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
How the US and China Are Meme-ifying Modern War
Documents how both militaries now use gamified, meme-driven content, cute filters on missile footage, cartoon clips paired with strike videos, to build domestic support for military spending despite public opposition to intervention in both countries. Original analysis drawing on official government video output across platforms rather than a general argument about propaganda.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Trump's new project? Privateers in cyberspace
Original title: Le nouveau projet de Trump ? Des corsaires dans le cyberespace
Explains a presidential memorandum authorising vetted American companies to conduct offensive cyber operations against transnational criminal groups under federal oversight, reversing a long-standing US norm that offensive cyber capability stays with the state. Reads this as a genuine doctrinal shift, cyberspace privateering, rather than a one-off announcement.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Dronophobia: An Investigation into the Ailment of the 21st Century
Original title: Dronophobie : enquête sur le mal du XXIe siècle
An investigation into a distinct form of drone-related trauma emerging in Ukraine, hypervigilance and anticipatory anxiety without the clear before-and-after of conventional PTSD, because a drone attack has no defined beginning or end to the waiting. Field-grounded rather than clinical-abstract, and a useful corrective to treating drone warfare purely as a hardware story.
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★★★★☆ Added 31/08/2026
Why China Must Be Authoritarian
Original title: Pourquoi la Chine doit être autoritaire
Demanding Presents the reasoning of Wang Huning, the CCP’s chief ideologue across three presidencies, for why China’s limited resource base makes centralised, coercive governance structurally necessary during modernisation rather than a permanent rejection of democratic value. Long and demanding, but it is the argument from the actual architect of the doctrine rather than a Western gloss on it.
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★★★☆☆ Added 31/08/2026
Russian economy: billionaire wealth jumped 20% last year
Original title: Économie russe : la fortune des milliardaires a bondi de 20 % l’an dernier
Russia’s 151 billionaires added USD 92 billion in 2025, taking billionaire wealth to 27 per cent of GDP, ahead of the US and India, driven by Kremlin asset redistribution, import substitution and high commodity prices. Short, but the ratio is the kind of original estimate that is hard to find assembled elsewhere.
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★★★☆☆ Added 31/08/2026
What are the lessons of the war in Ukraine for the People's Liberation Army?
Original title: Quelles sont les leçons de la guerre en Ukraine pour l’Armée populaire de libération ?
Argues Chinese military planners treat Ukraine as a transitional case study before AI-dominated, drone-swarm warfare, with soldiers training in drone piloting and urban combat and analysts studying rapid-cycle equipment development. Brief, but a useful corrective for anyone still reading PLA modernisation purely through Taiwan scenarios.
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★★★★★ Added 29/08/2026
The Bessent doctrine makes the dollar the currency of happy vassalage
Original title: La doctrine Bessent fait du dollar la monnaie de la vassalisation heureuse
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/08/03/la-doctrine-bessent-fait-du-dollar-la-monnaie-de-la-vassalisation-heureuse/&source=gmail&ust=1788049320612000&sa=E> Using the mechanics of Washington’s July–August intervention to prop up the yen and the won, buying with euros rather than dollars, argues the US Treasury now treats monetary protection as a conditional, politically priced privilege rather than multilateral coordination. A sharp read on what dollar dominance is turning into under the current administration.
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★★★★★ Added 29/08/2026
What happened to China’s overseas EV factory boom?
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://restofworld.org/2026/china-ev-makers-overseas-factories-exports/&source=gmail&ust=1788049320612000&sa=E> Rhodium Group data shows Chinese EV and battery makers prioritised exports over the overseas factories they announced, with only around 85 billion US dollars of a claimed 400 billion US dollars in clean-tech investment actually built, and plants in Hungary, Brazil and Turkey stalled or suspended. Explains the tariff and policy-uncertainty mechanism behind the gap between announcement and construction.
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★★★★★ Added 29/08/2026
Nvidia’s China Partners and the PLA
Cross-references Nvidia’s own partner directory against Chinese government procurement records and finds roughly two dozen listed partners have won contracts supplying Entity List or PLA-affiliated organisations since 2022, including a deal worth over a billion yuan to a China Development Bank unit. Document-and-filing work rather than argument about export-control intent, which is what almost everything else written on this subject is missing.
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★★★★★ Added 29/08/2026
China Americanizes Its Power
Original title: La Chine américanise sa puissance
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/06/24/la-chine-americanise-sa-puissance/&source=gmail&ust=1788049320612000&sa=E> Catalogues China’s 2019–2026 legislative build-out, an unreliable entity list, a counter-sanctions law, three decrees in 2026 alone, that mirrors the architecture of US sanctions and export controls almost tool for tool. Original legal-source tracking rather than the usual narrative account of an escalating trade fight.
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★★★★☆ Added 29/08/2026
Ban on Chinese robots leaves US startups stranded
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://restofworld.org/2026/china-robot-ban-silicon-valley/&source=gmail&ust=1788049320613000&sa=E> Reports on the FCC’s new rule requiring 65 per cent domestic content in humanoid robots, rising to 75 per cent by 2029, through interviews with US robotics founders who depend on Chinese components while Chinese firms already hold around 90 per cent of global humanoid sales. Notes the same dependency runs through Apple’s own supply chain, an implicit double standard nobody in Washington wants to name.
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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.