The Ukraine Paradox. Why Geopolitics is Now PC vs Mac. Its Silicon Curtains For AI Co-operation. If You’re a Lumberjack – You’re OK. Plus more! #242

Grüezi!

• The US ripped up “The West” this week. Now it’s just America’s grudging arms customers, resentful tariff victims and some old spy deals.
• Europe gets a humiliation triple whammy from Vance (AI), Hegseth (NATO) and Trump (Ukraine)... but is the US doing deals its isolationism can’t deliver?
• From Meta’s “inhuman” performance reviews to China’s $250B industrial transformation, machines may be taking over – but they humans still throw the switches.
• And as the US closes its Silicon Curtains, SoftBank’s ambitious $500B Stargate project reminds us of the globalised AI future we could have had... if we weren’t too busy choosing operating systems for civilisation.
• Good news for lumberjacks – while democracy cracks, at least someone still needs to swing an actual axe. Take that, ChatGPT!

1?? The Ukraine Peace Talks Paradox

Don’t cut deals you can’t enforce…

Trump said this week he and Putin will resolve Ukraine. No Europe. No NATO. No Ukrainians. Oh, and Ukraine needs to give up its mineral wealth to the US.

His Defence Sec, Pete Hegseth, told Europeans: “Stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”

This kind of “strategic clarity” creates the kind of dangerous power vacuum for Europe that Russia, historically, has been quick to exploit.

Washington is simultaneously trying to do two incompatible things:

• Negotiate a ‘grand peace’ deal with Putin over Ukraine, over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians;
• Signal its intention to significantly reduce its European security commitments.

You can’t credibly guarantee peace terms while announcing you’re walking out the door. As an EU diplomat told the FT:

A scenario in which “the US says, ‘We did the ceasefire, and all of the rest is for you to clean up’?.?.?. wouldn’t work.”

Perhaps Europe deserves to be told some hard truths, but as Kissinger said about publicly abandoning your allies: “the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

European leaders, already struggling with inadequate defence spending, now face a triple challenge:

• Vance's AI sovereignty demands
• Hegseth's NATO restructuring proposals
• Trump's unilateral Ukraine peace initiative

Their response has been telling: Eight major European powers (UK, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, and the European Commission) scrambled to convene an emergency ministerial meeting under the awkward "Weimar+" format, highlighting the “ongoing challenges” in coordinating any European defence policy.

The strategic reality? Any sustainable peace requires credible security guarantees. If America steps back, Europe must step forward – dramatically. This means a fundamental restructuring of European defence capabilities and spending.

The alternative? A peace deal that’s really just a pause button, giving Russia time to regroup while America quietly slinks away.

#Geopolitics #InternationalRelations #Strategy #Defense #EuropeanSecurity #Leadership

2?? Welcome to PC vs Mac World! Geopolitics Used To be About Values

Now we know it’s just capitalism with two competing operating systems.

The future of geopolitics? PC vs Mac. Which brand do you want on desktop? Or rather whose boots do you want to hear on your doorstep?

As globalised capitalism fragments, China is building out its brand. It’s spending $250B to change its economic model and build an alternative industrial architecture.

The scale is staggering:

• $250B annual investment in industrial policy;
• Dominating EVs (48% of passenger car sales);
• Controlling global shipbuilding (from 5% to >50% market share);
• Flipping from $40B chemical trade deficit to $34B surplus.

But this transformation comes with massive costs and contradictions. For every success story (BYD overtaking Volkswagen), there’s a challenging reality (semiconductor self-sufficiency stuck at 30% vs 70% target).

What’s truly fascinating is the deliberate tradeoff Beijing is making:

• Accepting “burnt capital” and inefficiency;
• Choosing industrial policy over social safety net development;
• Risking international pushback from factory overcapacity;
• Prioritising strategic security over economic efficiency.

Look at daily life in China – Huawei phones running on a domestic OS, WeChat, BYD electric cars, high-speed trains, local tech platforms. It’s a preview of the self-sufficient industrial ecosystem they’re building.

The most interesting case? DeepSeek’s AI success shows an alternative path – private sector innovation achieving what massive state investment struggles to deliver.

We’re watching the emergence of a new model – not just “Made in China” but “Brand China” – where they’re simultaneously:

• Moving upstream in global supply chains;
• Building their own domestic alternatives;
• Accepting massive costs for strategic independence;
• Reshaping global trade patterns.

The implications for global business and the rest of the world are profound.

#GlobalTrade #China #Manufacturing #EconomicTrends #InternationalBusiness #SupplyChain #TradePolicy

3?? Four Ways Democracy is Decaying in the United States

Institutional erosion guaranteed…

Like surgeons tasked with cutting off their own fingers, US political scientists have been analysing the democratic stress their country is experiencing, before such unpatriotic behaviour has them quietly shown the door.

Here are four ways they see democracy crumbling.

1. Administrative Weaponisation –?Systematically deploying state institutions against political opponents. Unlike previous episodes of political abuse of power, current efforts appear broader and more institutionally embedded.
2. Public-Private Power – Tech capability + financial independence + quasi-governmental authority = unique challenges to democratic accountability.
3. Elite Adaptation – Elites accommodate fast to authoritarianism. Principled GOP politicians led the way – business leaders, media orgs, and others follow. The effect? A cascade of silence or submission that weakens democratic norms before any formal institutional changes occur.
4. System Uncertainty – Deliberate creation of ambiguity about lines of authority and rules of engagement is a threat multiplier. This affects both domestic institutions and international relations, potentially creating destabilising feedback loops.

International distrust → domestic institutional stress → more international distrust

Elite accommodation → weakened opposition → more elite accommodation

System uncertainty → defensive behaviour → more uncertainty

What can be done?

Several factors continue to hold back authoritarian consolidation:

• US federal structure provides multiple centres of independent checks;
• Independent judiciary with lifetime appointments;
• Diverse media landscape, resistant to centralised control;
• Autonomous private sector with international ties;
• Robust civil society traditions.

However, these ‘safeguards’ may be more vulnerable than previously assumed…

4?? The Great AI InAction Summit

Why Paris ushered in the Age of the ‘Silicon Curtain.’

The global AI landscape dramatically shifted this week. US VP Vance’s speech in Paris rejecting multilateral AI governance, didn’t so much unveil a new world order as draw a new curtain across it.

Here’s what business leaders need to understand. First the scale of spending:

• US: $320B AI infrastructure investment
• Europe: $27.4B (just 7.7% of global investment)
• SoftBank alone: Planning $500B investment despite $82B existing debt

Three seismic shifts make this more than numbers:

1. The End of Cooperation

• US and UK refuse to sign AI safety declaration;
• Direct US warning against European regulation;
• Clear signal that AI is now about dominance, not collaboration;
• SoftBank caught between competing powers.

2. A Silicon Curtain

• US promising to dominate AI development;
• Europe pushing its own investment in domestic capacity;
• China accelerating through DeepSeek;
• Risk of incompatible standards and systems.

3. Europe risks becoming a “digital colony:”

• Lost its tech crown jewels (DeepMind, ARM, key robotics firms);
• Lacks massive-scale tech financing mechanisms;
• Missing critical AI infrastructure;
• Declining operational investment from US tech giants.

The historical pattern is clear. Just as 19th-century railroad financing shaped industrial power, AI infrastructure investment will determine 21st-century economic winners.

What does Europe need to do?

1. Create a “Digital Airbus” – pool resources across countries; unified regulatory environment; sovereign tech investment fund
2. Infrastructure First – data centres; chip fabrication; high-performance computing networks
3. Leverage European Strengths – industrial automation; precision engineering; strong research institutions.
4. Reform Capital Markets – unify fragmented markets; create tech-focused investment vehicles; enable project financing at scale.

The last 25 years of economic growth came primarily from tech. Without urgent action, Europe risks permanent technological dependence.

Meanwhile, it’s not just the US and China. The Middle East, India, ASEAN, and parts of Africa are seeing opportunities to leap ahead…

#Technology #Europe #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #AI #TechPolicy #EconomicGrowth

5?? Stargate – The AI Future We Could Have Had?

Ever wondered what a globalised AI world might have looked like?

SoftBank’s $500B Stargate Project is actually too significant to be just another player in this geopolitical landscape – but it isn’t bigger than politics. Here’s why it represents a globalised world we seem to be losing:

1. Scale

• At $500B, it's larger than most countries’ entire AI investment
• Would create more AI infrastructure than currently exists globally
• Could determine where AI computing power resides

1. Strategic Position

• Partnership with OpenAI (US);
• Japanese base but global reach;
• Deep ties to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth;
• History of working with Chinese tech.

1. Infrastructure Reality

• No one country can easily replicate this scale of investment;
• Even the US government would struggle to match it;
• Creates potential “must use” infrastructure.

Can SoftBank’s globalised vision survive the new Silicon Curtain? It will have to adapt…

6?? Lessons From Meta’s Transformation

Oh, the humanity…

Having tried to make sense of what’s happening in the US, it wasn’t a political story that set me thinking but a business one – Mark Zuckerberg’s “Orwellian” transformation of Meta.

It started me thinking about the “freakishness” of successful leaders. It isn’t incidental but fundamental to how our institutions work. Why? Because these institutions aren’t really designed for humans to “flourish.”

They emerge through competition, accumulation, and survival imperatives. The people who rise to the top are often those most adapted to these “inhuman” traits – which makes them appear strange or damaged to those of us still holding onto more human values.

We talk about “we” should design better systems – social, democratic, economic – but there rarely is a “we” at the crucial moments. Instead, organisations emerge through countless small decisions, power struggles, market forces. By the time there’s enough collective awareness to think about deliberate design, the core patterns are already set.

This explains why reform efforts so often fail. We’re not really dealing with “designed” systems that can be “redesigned,” but with emergent phenomena that have their own evolution and momentum.

Take Meta’s performance review system. Nobody sat down and said “let’s create a system that damages human dignity.” It emerged from the interaction of quarterly earnings pressures, scaling challenges, management theories, competitive dynamics. The inhumanity isn’t a bug – it’s an emergent property.

This made me rethink “institutional sociopathy.” Institutions don’t actively oppose self-actualisation – they’re just completely indifferent to it because it wasn’t part of their evolutionary creation and reproduction. A river doesn’t care about the towns it floods.

The “freakish” leaders succeed precisely because they’ve adapted to this institutional indifference. They’ve internalised the logic of systems that didn’t evolve to serve human needs.

Their apparent dysfunction is actually optimal adaptation to dysfunctional systems. We then try to derive leadership lessons and organisational principles from these unusual individuals. We try to systematise their adaptations, creating a feedback loop that further embeds institutional indifference to human wellbeing.

The governance challenge becomes clearer. We’re not really designing systems, we’re trying to influence evolutionary dynamics already in motion. There’s no central point of control, no moment of conscious creation.

This is why the most human-centred organisations often stay small or local – they’re swimming against powerful evolutionary currents. Scale itself seems to select for institutional patterns that are indifferent to our very humanity.

7?? I’m A Lumberjack And I’m OK!

AI can’t cut down trees.

Anthropic analysed millions of AI conversations on its Claude platform to see which jobs are being hardest hit by AI. And guess what? Good news for lumberjacks – only 0.1% of forestry-related tasks had any AI involvement.

While software developers and writers are seeing AI usage in up to 75% of their tasks, those of us working with our hands in the physical world remain largely untouched.

Key findings for the “can’t be automated” club:

• Physical labour jobs show minimal AI usage
• Construction, maintenance, and equipment operation tasks rarely involve AI
• Jobs requiring ‘environmental manipulation’ (like felling trees!) remain human-dominated.

So while my tech friends are debugging code with ChatGPT, I’ll stick to debugging trees with my trusty chainsaw. Some jobs just need the human touch (and strong arms)!

#AIResearch #Forestry #PhysicalJobs #FutureOfWork #LumberjackLife

Thanks for reading!

Best

Adrian