ITK Daily | August 20
Happy Saturday.
To be ITK, know this:
Read this: Colombia, largest cocaine supplier to US, considers decriminalizing WP
+ Colombia is calling for an end to that war. It wants instead to lead a global experiment: decriminalizing cocaine.
Read this: The art and science of intelligence in war Hew Strachan
+ Intelligence in war is as much a product of common sense as of technical brilliance. It must be understood and applied wisely to be of any use.
Read this: The physics and hype of hypersonic weapons David Wright + Cameron Tracy
+ "hypersonic weapons may have advantages in certain scenarios, but by no means do they constitute a revolution. Many of the claims about them are exaggerated or simply false. And yet the widespread perception...has increased tensions."
Read this: Russia holds war games in Venezuela, sending alarming signals throughout Latin America Miami Herald
+ This year’s games seek to remind the world that Russia still has friends, but observers believe that the fact that they are being held in Venezuela could have a longer-lasting effect.
Hoo boy...
Read this: The war that changed the world Jeremy Cliffe
+ Six months in, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has revealed a global order in transition.
+ The war has also changed the geopolitical landscape. Ukraine’s defense has drawn not just on its own impressive resolve but also on huge transfers of Western military and economic aid
+ As much as the morning of 24 February 2022 was a turning point – the Zeitenwende, or epochal shift, of German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coinage three days later – it cannot be understood in isolation. It came against a tumultuous global backdrop
+ It came against a tumultuous global backdrop: the debacles of the Iraq + Afghanistan wars, the rise of China and the relative decline of the West, the turmoil of Trump,, Europe’s waning relevance, the shift towards a more multipolar and anarchic world order, and the pandemic
+ If the war had gone as Putin had hoped... A Ukraine successfully subjugated and sundered as punishment for its alignment with the West would have made a potent symbol of a new post-Western era, the collapse of the old order, and the rise of authoritarian-friendly multipolarity
+ “My Chinese interlocutor sees the situation in Ukraine not as a war of aggression between sovereign countries, but rather as a revision of post-colonial borders following the end of Western hegemony.”
Read this: There’s no more to Truss than meets the eye Matthew Parris
+ People trying to identify personal and political qualities that make the foreign secretary a winner should give up now
+ "Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain."
Ouch.
WWI leads to WWII
+ @afneil: When World War One ended with Germany’s surrender not a single allied troop had made it on to German soil. Stoked up feeling that they hadn’t really lost, which led to Second World War.
Read this: The rise and fall of Chimerica NOEMA
+ For decades, America gave China a vision of future prosperity. But today, America has mostly ceased to offer a model for China or anywhere else, leaving China’s leaders without a guide as they chart a course into a future filled with potential turmoil.
Read this: Chinese leader asked Biden to prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan WP
+ The trip exposed tensions between the House Speaker and administration officials, who had warned of China’s potential response. Pelosi felt the trip was an important statement to make.
Why would you the White House put out this story?
I need to think about it.
Any theories?
Read this: NASA reveals where it wants the next Americans to land on the moon WP
+ NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration identified the 13 regions at the moon’s south pole where it would like to land astronauts as part of its Artemis program.
+ The first human mission to land on the moon in some 50 years is now scheduled for as early as 2025, and would be the first crewed lunar landing since the last of the Apollo missions in 1972.
Read this: Record lows for rivers across China, US, and Europe sap economies FT
+ Factories grinding to a halt, crops devastated, cargo ships forced to carry smaller loads, and millions facing a risk of blackouts — these are just some of the drastic consequences of record low river levels during droughts in the US, Europe, and China.
+ There are many different types of drought, such as agricultural or hydrological, which are complex events that cannot always be definitively linked to climate change.
领英推荐
Read this: How the world's top public companies have invested in blockchain + crypto LinkedIn
Read this: Tinder struggles to attract younger users as Gen Z singles look to new apps FT
+ World’s dominant dating app seeks new ways to achieve growth as rivals such as Bumble and Thursday thrive
+ Tinder is struggling to attract younger users who are starting to abandon the world’s dominant dating app, as Generation Z singles prefer hotter new services in the search for love after lockdowns
Read this: The VC-fuelled comeback of WeWork founder Adam Neumann FT
+ a16z alone has raised a massive $14.1bn this year for investment vehicles ranging from specialist crypto and biotech funds to more traditional venture and growth funds. That is about as much as it raised in the previous seven years combined.
+ The mercurial entrepreneur promises his new start-up can disrupt the property industry. Andreessen Horowitz is betting he is right.
You can hate on this investment all you want, but it is a space and model that is ripe for disruption.
Blockworks: a16z leads $50m seed round for Gary Vaynerchuk ’s NFT project
+ VeeFriends will use the investment further to build out the NFT characters’ intellectual property rights.
Think theme park.
Read this: Girls Can’t Surf review — lively documentary about the struggle for recognition FT
+ A history of women on the waves takes in the challenges of endurance, sexism, and homophobia.
+ Lively documentary Girls Can’t Surf (directed by Christopher Nelius) is supposedly a general history of women in surfing from the 1970s onwards, but its real throughline is that same struggle for equity and recognition.
+ The untold story of how a band of renegade surfer girls in the 1980s fought to create their own professional sport, changing surf culture forever.
+ Trailer
Read this: Londoners encouraged to slow down in new ‘room to breathe’ experience ES
+ A new immersive experience encourages Londoners to de-stress from commuting, the recent heatwave, and global crises
Harry Kane has now scored the most goals by any player for a single club in Premier League history.
Read this: Bayern Munich and the myth of competition NYT
+ In several of Europe’s top leagues, it already feels like the title race is over. But is dominance what fans really want?
+ FC Bayern München Munich has won every title for the last 10 years. Sometimes, the gap to the nearest contender stands at 25 points. There is no drama. There is no doubt.
Read this: Paramount pays record $1.5bn to keep Champions League on CBS FT
+ Paramount has agreed to pay a record $1.5bn to extend its US English-language broadcast rights in the US for the UEFA Champions League, in the latest sign that football is making strides in an American market it has historically struggled to crack
Read this: Formula 1’s Toto Wolff: ‘You need to push people out of their comfort zone’ FT
+ The Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team team principal on selling motor racing to a new generation, becoming a social media meme — and how he engineered one of sport’s great winning runs
+ "It is athletes in high-performance machines . . . it is about life and death, and on top of that we added Keeping Up with the Kardashians"
+ “I can’t do aerodynamics,” he says, “but I know everything about the guy who can.”
+ “No sports team in any sport has ever won eight consecutive world championship titles, and there are many reasons for that, and what is at the core is the human. The human gets complacent. You are not energized in the same way you were before. You are maybe not as ambitious.”
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