Multipolarity
Philip Pilkington, an unorthodox macroeconomist, and Andrew Collingwood, a skeptical journalist, discuss the decline of the US-led unipolar world order and the rise of a multipolar one. Each week, they analyze three off-radar news stories, explaining how economics and geopolitics are shaping this new reality. The podcast focuses on the intersection of trade, military power, and global shifts post-Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Episodes
Twelve Tankers Hit: The End of The Hormuz Narrative and the Start Of The Bond Wars
A record-breaking week down in Hormuz, where twelve oil tankers have been hit in a matter of days. Back on Wall Street, the cost of oil has pipped $100 a barrel. Last week, a third US aircraft carrier set sail for the region. It could mean that three carriers are in the region as early as the end of October.The narrative that the Strait is open and back to pre war oil flows is collapsing already.
Surfing the 'Oil Glut': Satellites, Transponders, and the Commodities Info War
What can we know about the oil that gets through Hormuz? Turns out most of what we know filters through a single data point: a company called Kpler. Before the war, Kpler's numbers were solid. They combined transponder tracking with loading and unloading records, following each ship payload from port to port. But then the shadow fleet tankers switched their transponders off. No one reports their c
Call Time At The Casino: Europe's Bad Bets Come Due
Lately, European leaders seem panicked. By the beginning of July, the EU had begun acting in an increasingly assertive, confident way. On China – they announced new anti-dumping, anti-subsidy measures. On Ukraine, they pushed forward with plans to release even more materiel to the front. On the question of democracy and centralisation, they were happy to roll over the Romanians, and put their thum
The Irish Kraken Awakens: British Interests After American Power
Donald Trump’s year of smashing things continues apace.Iran, Greenland, Canada… At some point, there is no more china in the shop for the bull to break. But not yet.With his comments that he wants to see a united Ireland, the President has jabbed the Special Relationship in the eye, kneed it in the balls, and burst its spleen. Breaking up the territorial integrity of an ally? Bad sport, old chap.
Super Size Me II: Malcom Kyeyune on The Burger Theory of History, Revisited
Super-Size Me II. 140 episodes ago, Malcolm Kyeyune launched a piece of verbal artillery into the mess hall of online discourse. The Burger Theory of History. It quickly became one of our most quoted episodes. The Burger Theory is the idea that, since the pandemic of 2020, the rising costs of basic necessities is feeding a malaise that is eating into our society. The sense not that we are in yet a
Special Edition: The Horizons
September is here. As the calendar page tugs away, the madness of the dog days of summer blows away. The madness of the autumn is upon us.With the Pina Colada mix in the recycling bin, the sense of happy impermanence is over, and all the bills we’ve rung up are about to fall due.Now, with the put-upon air of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s lawyers, we’re counting the cost. Taking the medium-range vie
Two Audio Essays: A Japanese Unwinding vs An Iranian Tightening
Two audio essays, one smouldering fuse. This week, Philip Pilkington takes on a financial cascade emerging from the Japanese Bond situation. Ever since its one-day bond market heart attack in March, Japan has been trapped: it can't raise rates, it can't let the yen fall, so it has sold the very US Treasuries that hold the US system together. Knowing how perilous things are, in the background, Scot
Multipolarity Dialogues: AI and the future of warfare with Steve Hsu
Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of special multipolarity interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical.In this episode, Steve Hsu.Where to start with Steve? He’s a member of that tiny sliver of humans who have managed to make significant contributions to mul
The Pod To End All Pods: Part 3
Coming up this week, last week, and the week before…A massive multi-part episode.The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order is with the death doula right now. The new one has yet to go through lamaze class.The only thing that can save us is podcasting. More of it. Longer. Harder. More esoteric. More riffs on the Thirty Years War. Bigger tangents into the exact mechanics of USAF rec
The Pod To End All Pods: Part 2
The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order dies of smoke inhalation in a dumpster fire. The new one has yet to be lifted out by C-Section. The only thing that can save us is podcasting. More of it. Longer. Harder. More esoteric. More riffs on the Thirty Years War. Bigger tangents into the exact mechanics of USAF recruitment in Tallahassee. As our old sense-making apparatus breaks
The Pod To End All Pods: Part 1
Coming up this week and next week and the week after… A massive multi-part episode. The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order dies of smoke inhalation in a dumpster fire. The new one has yet to be lifted out by C-Section. Iran, it is now clear, represents the smouldering conflagration that will consume US power. As its strength is sapped, this lumbering giant will make ever-poorer
All Your Base Are Belong To Us, The People’s Carcrash, Our Democracy
You’ve heard of de-Baathification? Now what about de-baseification? The gradual chipping back of US strategic assets in the Gulf as each in turn comes under pressure from drone and rocket fire… till only a handful of super-bases remain.Iran’s president says country is in ‘full-scale war’ after an expansion of US attacks. They’ve struck US interests in Bahrain, Kuwait - and the Houthis are blockadi
Iran: The Oil Price War With Conventional War Characteristics
This week: two audio essays, on one big Iran cluster-frig. In the Collingwood corner: Donald Trump has become an unreadable politician. His credibility has burst through various levels of ‘madman theory’ negotiating prowess, into a place where it may not even be clear to his most intimate subordinates where his true intent begins and ends. The result is that US policy is now a broken sail, flappi
Slipping and Sliding, Spit and Polish
It’s an oil rush. Fill your boots, fellers, America is releasing its strategic petroleum reserves, ostensibly to see down Iranian pressure. Good news for voters, great news for foreign countries who want to sponge of the US teat. But in its ducking and diving haste, has the Trump administration inadvertently drunk its own milkshake? Then in the second half of a two-parter, we’re digging into the b
Pilkington Vs Collingwood: A Multipolarity Q&A Special
This week on Multipolarity, we’re taking your questions.It’s a Q&A episode, involving queries sent in by our loyal listeners.Questions like:How did you guys meet?(Drunk, at a party).Which EU country will be first to do its own deal on Ukraine?(The first to fall to the populists)Where should young Euros emigrate to if Europe is ‘screwed’?(Find your bliss in the emerging world)Is the Rouble over
No Deal Is Better Than An Islama-bad Deal, The Godmother, Two Year Keir
Iran’s 14 points: making the world safe for Shia Theocracy. Obviously, Donald Trump putting his John Hancock to the Islamabad Memorandum at Versailles carries absolutely no historical resonance. But after the occupation of the Ruhr and the abdication of the Kaiser, what else could the Mullahs possibly put on their shopping list? We’ll be picking through the carcrash, looking for signs of life in D
Multipolarity Dialogues: The Other Superweapon - Adventures In Chinese AI, with TP Huang
Fable — a short fantastical tale with a moral message. For weeks, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei was telling anyone who’d listen that he’d invented an AI so powerful it could walk through walls, shoot sparrows from the sky, talk to horses, invent trees. A death star of tech. Whether this was part of the sales pitch or genuine alarm, the US Government has taken him at his word, and shut off access to
Strait To Hell, Kim Jong Boom, Armenian Roulette
It’s war in our time. After flirting with peace for a few miserable hours, the US and Iran are back to what they know best: taking uneven chunks out of each other amidst the world’s prime oil pathway. This week, Iran levelled a terminal of Kuwait’s airport, and attacked the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Then there was that mysterious Apache helicopter crash off Hormuz. Now, after the crisp kinetic strik
Two Audio Essays: The Escalation Ladder & Weaponised Interdependence
This week: two audio essays. First up, they’re calling it the Poor Man’s Tomahawk. Ukraine is firing up to 2000 long range drones a week into Russia. The production facilities supplying them are scattered across Western Europe. These production facilities have an artificial shield, in that they are diplomatically protected. But how long this will last is unclear. For its part, Ukraine would like t
Crossing The Orange Line, Hard Bargain, Sino Silicon
Russia has rained Oreshnik hypersonic missiles on Kiev. Four people killed. 549 missiles apparently shot down. This was a message. The Oreshnik travels at Mach 10. It was designed to deliver nukes. As fighting season starts in earnest, year five looks like it might be the start of real escalation. But, if Russian munitions start tiptoeing ever further West, could this be the year of, you know, rea
Huawei With The Fairies, Land of The Falling Bond, Montezuma’s Other Revenge
Donald Trump took Elon Musk and Jensen Huang to Beijing with him for 48 hours. But rather than the frat boy big weekend of their autistic dreams, the trip turned into a sequel to The Hangover.A dressing down from President Xi on Iran, a few more soybeans flogged, and some Boeings on order: was it worth Jensen’s $17 000 an hour time?Meanwhile, the Japanese 10 year bond yield has climbed above the C
Two Audio Essays: The Oil Infrastructure Breakdown & How Epstein Could Bring Down The British Bond Markets
This week: a tale of two audio essays. Philip is going deep dive on the coming oil crisis.He sees a two-wave format emerging. The initial wave - dropping in a month or so, is already baked in. “The oil infrastructure is like a body,” he says. “if the heart stops pumping, the cells stop oxygenating, after a while they begin to die off.” They're "living chemical engineering systems" that need consta
Merz Sadist Bends, Bond Villain, Slick Dealing
Remember Olaf Scholz? Just about? Remember when he sunk to the lowest opinion poll rating in German political history? Well the good news for anonymous hopeless former Chancellors is that the next beige technocrat in charge of Germany has just beaten his record. Plunging to 89% dissatisfied – with only 11% satisfied. Even with Macron as the most unpopular President ever, Starmer the least popular
Multipolarity Dialogues: George Yeo On How Singapore Navigates Between China and America
After weeks of Iran drumbeats - time for something a bit different. George Yeo is the former Foreign Minister of SingaporeEducated at University of Cambridge and later at Harvard Business School, he's a former Brigadier-General in the nation's Air Force, and one of its most distinctive strategic thinkers - a man whose career tracks the rise of modern Asia itself.Yeo served in government for over t
Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday, It's A Kind Of Magyar, New York Slop Exchange
The hot question this summer: Can you bring your own jerry can of diesel onto an EasyJet?As all the major airlines begin to cancel flights, bump surcharges, and post losses, the looming fuel crisis is finally hitting landfall - in the skies.Meanwhile, Hungary’s Prime Minister elect, Péter Magyar, has decided he wants to unilaterally remove the country’s President and the head of the Constitutional
New Kid On The Blockade, Tisza Trailer
Trump blockades a blockade. The world holds its breath: will the Iranians blockade the blockade of the blockade? Are we destined for battleship Tetris piling up in the Gulf? Or is this just one more instance of the real war being the PR one? Then, with his Fidesz party reduced to a rump, what happens when the lynchpin of anti-Brussels energy falls out? The EU threw everything at Orbán, and it has
Multipolarity Dialogues: Malcom Kyeyune on The Annihilation Gamble
Annihilation - no more.On Tuesday, the world was saved at five minutes to midnight. For the next two weeks, at least… But while the power plants are safe for now, the tragi-comic spectacle conflict in Iran has poked bigger holes in the global defence-industrial system. No one knows this better than Malcom Kyeyune, the Mad Mullah of Malmö, who is back on the pod to take a victory lap, after predict
Premium Multipolarity: Iran On The Home Front - Europe Under Economic Siege
1973. Beyond the war, we’re hacking into the coming implications of the major energy crisis that’s brewing - as the last tankers to leave the Gulf trundle into the ports of Europe. From Volkswagen to venture capital, we’ll be charting what life looks like with oil at 150 or 200 dollars a barrel. Energy lockdowns. Rationing. Bond crises. All of these are being whispered in the press right now. As m
Multipolarity Dialogues: The Middle East Is Being Re-Made, But Not In The Way America Thinks with Policy Tensor
Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, think as an experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical.Now, is Iran actually winning this war, or is the US slowly pounding it to bits with its air power? Will there be a land invasion? Could a land invasion even succeed? How are the
The Art of War, Closing The Gap, Six Finger Discount
The dog that didn’t bark. China is cooling its heels on the war in Iran. As America’s entanglement deepens, it’s not Sun Tzu they’re turning to, but the wit and wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Meanwhile, even closer to Beijing, US weakness is showing up the true nature of the slow war in the South China Sea. If America can’t open the Strait o
Special Edition: Dire Straits
As Iran smoulders, ships burn in Hormuz, and TACO traders search for signal in the thunderous noise, we’re celebrating the end of the world in the only way we know how - two audio essays. Philip Pilkington on the economic consequences of the war. And Andrew Collingwood on the political mess we’re in.
Welcome To Gulf War 3 With Malcom Kyeyune
The Netherlands has its youngest ever Prime Minister. Liberal technocrat Rob Jetten is also openly gay - a big win for diversity. But can the VVD survive in coalition without meaningful agricultural reforms? Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, wheat futures are up almost nine percent since September. We’ll be asking whether transitory commodities inflation in the Stans is the big story we’ve all been missi
El Dumbo, Tariff-ying, Rear Lagarde Action
The US State Department advised its citizens in Northern Mexico to ‘shelter in place’, as the cartels took their reprisals, following a major Mexican security forces operation against gang kingpin El Mencho - and then another called El Tuli. It’s all LOL, until you realise that this is just the start. By targeting the cartels, the US has poked a hornet’s nest; And the hornets are on cocaine. Meanw
Big Trouble In Little Marco, Losing Their Shahed, To The Viktor The Spoils
At the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio offered Europe a peace in our time. The Americans sprayed on the charm. But looking between the fine words, it seems like Marco was on his way out the door. Do Europe’s friends need to tell her this is a break up speech? Meanwhile, rumours of the destruction of Iran remain premature. We’ve run the numbers, and it turns out it would take ten per cent o
Multipolarity Dialogues: Iran From The Inside
Firas Modad is back for his second turn on the pod.After talking about Neo-Ottomanism last time, he is turning his attention to Iran, and its faltering regime.With rumours of an imminent attack continuing to swirl, what future is there for a post-Khamenei world?What part could be played by the exiled Shah? Is there perhaps a different faction that could take the reins if the mullahs fell?Even then
Two Audio Essays: Bessent’s Big Gold Short and TACO Revisited
Today we bring you two audio essays from your favourite geo-political podcasters.First up Philip is looking at the recent attempt to short the precious metals market.Perhaps the push to lower the interest rate is not to juice the economy but rather an attempt ultimately stop the Sell America trade?Meanwhile Andrew’s shouting from the rooftops "it’s right there in the document!".The Donroe Doctrine
Special Edition: Japanese Bonds and the Unwinding of the Global Financial System
After Greenland, the rupture in the Transatlantic Alliance was made visible at the WEF conference in Davos.Mark Carney said the quiet bit aloud. But the real implications are beginning to be felt in the deep financial plumbing that undergirds the global economy. Now, a Japanese bond market sell-off is unsettling larger forces. If Japanese interest rate then rocket, they may need to liquify their
Special Edition: Amerikanets on the Venezuela Shadowplay
In 1991, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard published a series of essays in Libération and The Guardian entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard's argument was effectively twofold. Firstly, since the American military overwhelmed the Iraqi army so easily and barely sustained casualties, what took place for the West was not really a war per se.Secondly, the new medium of cable news telev
Not Without My Shah, Green Eyed Monster, Fed Up
Reza Pahlavi is packing his toothbrush again. As protests grow in Iran, the exiled Crown Prince has been popping up for media appearances, from his home in the Maryland suburbs near DC.As we enter yet another cycle of Persian proto-revolution, we’re saying he shouldn’t count those air miles just yet.Meanwhile, Donald Trump says that Greenland’s defences are two dogs and a sled. Handy, because Amer
The Day After The Revolution: Venezuela’s Coming Chaos
They got the Ace of Spades.The annual dictator kidnapping season got underway in fine style this week as the US bagged a big one, 1.9 meter Nicolás Maduro.But while the President and his exposer were taking a tour of the Gulf of America by Black Hawk, back on Planet Earth the geopolitical plates were shifting as never before.In 2026, it looks like we're about to answer the greatest question of the
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: The Final Night
And to all a good night.Need a last minute gift? Or want to treat yourself to something you actually want?You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Thirteen
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Twelve
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Eleven
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Ten
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Nine
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Eight
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Seven
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Six
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Five
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Four
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Three
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day Two
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Multipolarity Advent Calendar: Day One
Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.
Premium Edition Teaser: Why The Special Relationship Is Over
The Special Relationship: from Britain defaulting on its loans in the 1930s, to Suez, to Falklands, to the War on Terror, to Trump patronising Starmer at the recent Israel-Gaza peace summit, the precise specialness of this relationship has long been in dispute - whether the political classes acknowledge it or not. There was of course Lend-Lease and the small matter of two World Wars, but Britain’s
The Six Ages Of China
The common story of modern China’s development is that it has two ages: Mao, and reform. The truth is there are at least six internally coherent economic eras within the country’s journey from basket case to superpower. Each with their own rules and obsessions. That’s certainly the view of Philip Pilkington, who has been crunching the deep data on the Chinese economy, in a new paper for Eurasia Ma
Lovely Bubbly, EuthanisedUK, Is The Shine Coming Off Sheinbaum?
Would every company be affected if the AI bubble were to burst? That’s what Sundar Pichai, the head of Google's parent firm Alphabet reckons.The facts are startling, with the crypto market shedding more than $1tn in six weeks amid fears that the bubble may just go pop. With bitcoin price at its lowest level since April and the FTSE 100 falling, the guys at the top still say they absolutely do
Turkish Power, Israeli Pivot: The New Middle East That Is Taking Shape with Firas Modad
Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.The Middle East is as violent and fractious as ever. Now the questions that arise from that violence appear more important than ever. Israel seems to want to end the chaos i
Premium Edition Teaser: Has China Won The Trade War?
This week, the Lads are taking the sword to Trump’s big deal with China. The South Korean talks were heralded by both sides as a breakthrough. They reached agreements on US soybean exports, the supply of rare earth minerals, and the materials used in production of the drug fentanyl. They managed to resolve the Nexperia crisis by means of a simple volte face. But in an era where trad
What's The Worst That Could Happen? With Malcom Kyeyune
This week: Halloween Fright Night on Multipolarity. We’re taking various geopolitical doomsday scenarios, and running through how they would play out, in full ghoulish detail. From Britain disintegrating, to America crashing the global economy, to Forever War on the Eastern Front. And stay tuned for an extra special guest… The Headless Norseman himself, Malcom Kyeyune. Remember you
Audio Essays: Budapest Beanfest, Blessed are the Chipmakers
This week: two audio essays.Peace is coming to Budapest… whether you believe it or not. So says Philip Pilkington, our man on the ground. The show may be paused, but that doesn’t change the fundamentals: Trump and Putin need a meeting; they need a venue; the Russian President can’t be arrested on sight. And Hungary’s nous in positioning itself as a true neutral makes it the ideal venue. He ta
Multipolarity Dialogues: The Dawn of China's New Military Tech Age with TP Huang
About a month ago, the foreign affairs and geopoltical media was abuzz with talk about the Victory Day military parade in Beijing. What had shocked was that, unlike the standard communist bloc military parades, with their thousands of Soviet-style tanks and armoured personnel carriers and well trained goose-steppers, this one showcased weaponry that could have come from a science fiction film: mob
Golden Year, Colour Evolution, This Week In Political Instability
If you’re an enterprising nine year old looking to top up your pocket money, get yourself a bar of bullion. Gold is up to $4000 an ounce for the first time ever – while the dollar is down ten per cent on the year. The biggest drop since, well, since the gold window closed in 1971. Dedollarisation will always mean something-else-isation — this week’s rally seems to be the latest shake out. Bet
Multipolarity Dialogues: Policy Tensor on China's South-Eastern March
Welcome to Multipolarity Dialogues – a series of interview that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.On this episode: Anusar Farooqui. Like the public intellectual equivalent of a DC comics superhero, Anusar lives a double life. By day he’s a man who wrote his
Premium Edition Teaser: Bold & Bankrupt - The Truth About MMT
Modern Monetary Theory. Magical Money Tree. Whichever name you know it by, everywhere, these days, the intellectual salons hum with people trying to say that they’ve invented that most terrifying of things: a new paradigm. That they have the economic equivalent of Einsteinian Relativity. These people profess that debt is no issue. That a country that prints its own currency can’t go brok
Special Edition: The Multipolarity Hotline
This week, it's the sensual adventure in Geopolitical ASMR you've all been waiting for.Our two men talking to themselves on their mobile phones in separate locations. With Philip Pilkington presently locked in a hotel room in China, it seems Andrew is penning him Sleepless in Seattle-style voice notes from Northumberland. Dynamic. Digital. Dangerous. Disestablishmentarian.How much of this you can
Multipolarity Dialogues: Carlos Roa On How The New Golden Road Is Shifting Power South
Multipolarity Dialogues is a new series of interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We’ll be talking to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, experts, about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now. This week: Carlos Roa is the Director of Research at the Washington DC Danube Institute. He was formerly the executive editor of National Interest magazine.&
Multipolarity Dialogues: David Lloyd Dusenbury and China's Long Cultural History with the West
Recently, Philip Pilkington and David Lloyd Dusenbury published a couple of papers and an article on the long story of China's intellectual history with the West. A story that extends beyond Marco Polo, and has far more breadth and interchange in pre-modern times than most would suspect. Lloyd Dusenbury is an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida, author of three well-rega
Special Edition: Malcom Kyeyune on Venezuela, Iran, Taiwan, and The American Oligarchy
Friend of the Pod Malcom Kyeyune is back, and he’s got that late empire feeling. After the Chinese Military staged an extraordinary parade in Beijing, Washington is worried. The top dog question has resurfaced. In the same week, Elbridge Colby released a new strategic document effectively telling Washington it needs to be far more selective in military affairs. After they spent a quarter
Premium Edition Teaser: Shanghai Surprise, Bolivarian Counter-Revoution, Bond Villains
Narendra Modi. In Shanghai. In the back of a car. With Vladimir Putin. Positively glowing. The tweets the Indians sent out at the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation were the equivalent of a taken for granted girlfriend openly flirting with the jocks at the big keg party. The key question: is this obvious piece of signalling going to be stronger than the thick skulls of the lugs in Washi
Multipolarity Dialogues: Why Serbia Is In A Very Weird Place Right Now, with Misa Djurkovic
As they say in the Economist: "Serbia is at a crossroads..." Anti-corruption protests after the collapse of the station roof in Novi Sad have not gone away, now many months after the event. The country's leader, President Vučić, is under pressure as never before, after 13 years in power. He has offered 'televised dialogues': his opponents have declined. The standoff continues. Meanwhile, in the t
All’s Fair In War, Slumdog Day Afternoon, Shite Christmas
With EU leaders summoned to the White House to take dictation, it seems as though the Ukraine War is entering its final phase. Can the Europeans take their medicine? Or will they stay doolally on the happy pills? India has made it easier for Russian banks to operate. Turns out, Trump’s capricious decision to threaten them with swingeing sanctions has had second order consequences. These days,
The Semtex Road, Baked Alaska, 404k
The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity is now open. Only problem? It goes through a geopolitical electromagnet pulling all the badboys of the region into its tractor beam. The US has taken out a 99 year lease on a corridor that connects Armenia and Azerbaijan. It’s a breakthrough peace deal, certainly. But is it a silk road through a minefield? Meanwhile, in Alaska, Vlad is about t
Airstrip Zero, Goodness Gracious Xi, AliBaba For Ali Baba
Lawds malarkey guv’nor, Blighty’s popped its clogs. Americans have been hoovering up ‘UK doom’ content ever since Elon Musk decided to push the grooming gangs scandal on X at the start of the year. On the inside, everyone understands the Notting Hill days are long gone. Only some have clocked that the Children of Men era is upon us.Now, with the banning of a viral ad for a crypto exchang
Premium Edition Teaser: The Bus To Nowhere
Get on the bus. Or get on the Trump train. At this week’s Chinese trade talks, Europe has found itself piggy in the middle in the great global realignment. After Team Ursula were shunted off an airport bus by their Chinese hosts, – and given no official welcome, it’s clear which side is now entering their Hundred Years of Humiliation. We’ll be clipping the tickets of both dele
Multipolarity Dialogues: Steve Hsu on China's Tech Frontiers
Steve Hsu is a physicist, a tech founder, the hub of a network of cutting edge thinkers, and the host of the excellent Manifold Podcast. After a record-breaking first appearance, this week, he returns to Multipolarity for his second turn. This time, we want to ask him about the big picture on China’s tech frontiers. Six months on from the Deep Seek shock, it’s clear that China is making
Special Edition: Global Cakeism
Philip Pilkington is away in Belgrade on a foreign assignment, which means we’re serving up a Sleepless In Seattle-style double header, on tariffs. First off: what is the end game for trade and the dollar? With Liberation Day now a distant memory and the passing of The Big Beautiful Bill, Philip has crunched the numbers, and figured out that all is not what it seems. Meanwhile, Andrew, c
Milei Down and Die, Tears of a Clown, Very Stable Genius Coins
In a viral video clip, tantric sex expert Javier Milei once said that he only makes love once every three months. Let’s see if he goes to the IMF any more regularly. In the wake of an enormous bailout, we’ll be busting some myths on the grand schemes of Captain Ancap. Meanwhile, in Britain, the finance minister is crying in Parliament, and the Prime Minister is too socially awkward to comfort
The Twelve Day War, 5 Percent? Get Bent, Dead Dollar Bounce
Nothing Ever Happens. Or does it? A week on from a one act play of a war, we pick through the charred remains of the Fordow Nuclear Site. We’re looking for clues. A smouldering nothingburger here; or a flambéd Middle Eastern order there? Meanwhile, Daddy got his five percent — NATO members have signed up to splash the cash on the next generation of weaponry. But is this wise defensive s
Premium Edition Teaser: Iran Special
Was it real?As we record this on the morning of the 23 June, we are a little over 24 hours removed from Operation Midnight Hammer, in which USAF assets, including B2 Spirit stealth heavy bombers, attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. US President Donald Trump says that Iran's nuclear programme has been destroyed for good. Open Source satellite pictures of the
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