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The Economist Magazine Cover For 04/04/2025

Cover Story: Ruination Day Inbox The Economist Unsubscribe 10:02 AM (2 hours ago) to me The Economist Read in browser April 5th 2025 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image Insert a clear and simple description of the image Edward Carr Deputy editor As Liberation Day dawned I had a feeling that, after weeks of suspense, President Donald Trump’s big tariff announcement was going to be an anti-climax. And because he was due to speak on Wednesday, just an hour before our cover had to go to the printers, we wouldn’t have much time to react. So we prepared two covers—one squarely on trade and the other on China, in case Mr Trump’s squib was damp. I could not have been more wrong about the thunderbolt the president was about to unleash. What he had to say was more unhinged and more wantonly destructive than I had ever imagined. We knew a few things in advance of the Rose Garden rant—that Mr Trump has an archaic obsession with the trade in goods, to the exclusion of services; and that extra tariffs will hurt America and the world. Those ideas led here. As the president speaks, a container is hanging over him like the sword of Damocles. Or we could have a container-grenade about to blow a hole in the global trading system. We thought these designs might seem like hyperbole. We needn’t have worried. Mr Trump began his address by asserting that America was being “looted, pillaged and raped”. That’s quite an accusation to level against countries supplying you with tennis shoes. A month ago we had a cover of Mr Trump about to torch a heap of dollars. Perhaps we could offer readers an update, with the president striding gleefully away from a conflagration of greenbacks, a bit like the Joker after bombing a hospital in Gotham City. But surely that would be too extreme… We settled on this, because it focuses on the needless harm of Mr Trump’s policies. As we have written many times, America’s economy is the envy of the world. But under Mr Trump’s foolish policies, its consumers will pay more, and have less choice. Its savers will suffer from a slump in markets. Its workers will be hit by slower growth. And, spared the discipline of foreign competition, its companies will fall behind. We have developed the sketch. But our attempt to show that we are thinking globally hasn’t worked—sawing America out of the globe looks odd. We also preferred the type aligned left. Our working title was “Ruination Day”. As we waited for Mr Trump to begin speaking, I was wondering if we’d need to revise it. Mr Trump’s new tariffs take America back to the 19th century. They have been calculated using a formula that, when you strip away the pretentious Greek letters, treats every bilateral trade deficit as unfair—which makes as much sense as complaining that Ford suffers by buying in the parts it needs to make money selling cars. And almost every word the president uttered to justify his economic vandalism was arrant nonsense. We called it Ruination Day. We were being generous. We were loth to waste the China cover we had prepared, because it provides one more reason to think that Mr Trump’s announcement will harm America: it could benefit China. So we published the cover in our Asian edition. Tariffs now totalling 65% will hurt China’s economy, no doubt. The retaliation announced in Beijing after we went to press will exacerbate the harm. However, our argument is that American protectionism will put pressure on China’s leaders to correct their worst economic errors. It may also allow President Xi Jinping to redraw the geopolitical map of Asia in China’s favour. In short, it is a big, beautiful opportunity. That took us to a golden fortune cookie. It is good, in that it gets across the notion that China has an opportunity, but may not seize it. If China is to make the most of Mr Trump’s self-harm it will need to boost domestic consumption and steady the property market, as well as stop persecuting the private sector. All those things require Mr Xi to change course. But there is a problem with this cover. Restaurants inside China don’t serve fortune cookies at the end of a meal. That is something they do in Chinese restaurants abroad. This design therefore illustrates how Americans see China, not how the Chinese see America. MAGA Mao was much better. Indeed, as we have reported, many Chinese make comparisons between Mr Trump’s whirlwind executive orders buffeting America and the chairman’s Cultural Revolution, which tore China apart after 1966. Whether China seizes this moment depends on one man: Mr Xi. But the fact that the opportunity exists owes much to another: Mr Trump. You can browse all of our covers from 2024—and learn about the creative decisions that went into each one—in this interactive Cover Story annual. Related → Donald Trump’s mindless tariffs will cause economic havoc (Leader) → America’s president takes trade policies back to the 19th century (Finance and economics) → Can the world’s free-traders withstand Trump’s attack? (Finance and economics) → How America could end up making China great again (Leader) → As the trade war heats up, China is surprisingly confident (Briefing) Cover image • View large image (“Ruination Day”) • View large image (“How America could end up making China great again”)

Tariffs: The Genie Has Been Let Out Of The Magic Lantern: No One Can Predict What Happens Next

Yesterday and early this morning, the new tariffs were front and center. Everyone was transfixed as things developed. I have a very original and thought-provoking analysis for you. It all starts in the 1980s when the great author Michael Crichton published the book "Jurassic Park." To make a long story short, dinosaur DNA was brought back to life to create dinosaurs that were then left to run wild in some deserted area in Central America. (In reality, these huge animals lived in a time when there was much more oxygen in the earth's atmosphere. They could not survive in the lower oxygen atmosphere that we live in today.) A mathematical concept called "Chaos Theory" was introduced to the readers. Elena heard this theory and had a blank look on her face. In very simple English, it says that when you let a genie out of a magic lantern, you cannot predict what will happen next. For those curious, here is an in-depth discussion of this theory: Search Labs | AI Overview Learn more Chaos theory, a branch of mathematics and interdisciplinary science, studies seemingly random or unpredictable behavior in systems governed by deterministic laws, highlighting the concept of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" (the "butterfly effect"). Here's a more detailed explanation: Key Concepts: • Deterministic Systems: Chaos theory explores systems where the future state is entirely determined by the present state and a set of rules, meaning there's no inherent randomness in the system itself. • Sensitivity to Initial Conditions: Even tiny differences in the starting conditions of a chaotic system can lead to dramatically different outcomes over time, making long-term prediction extremely difficult. • The Butterfly Effect: This metaphor illustrates the idea that a small change in one part of a chaotic system (like a butterfly flapping its wings) can have large, unpredictable consequences elsewhere (like a tornado in another location). • Non-linearity: Chaos often arises in systems with non-linear interactions, where the effect of a change is not proportional to the change itself. • Strange Attractors: Chaotic systems often exhibit behavior that appears to be random, but is actually confined to certain regions of the state space, known as strange attractors. • Fractals: Fractals, with their self-similar patterns across different scales, can be used to visualize and understand the complex structures of chaotic systems. • Examples: Chaos theory has applications in various fields, including weather forecasting, economics, population dynamics, and even the behavior of seemingly random processes like stock markets. Examples of Chaos Theory in Action: • Weather: Weather patterns are highly sensitive to initial conditions, making long-term weather forecasting inherently difficult. • Stock Market: The stock market is a complex system with many interacting factors, and its behavior can appear chaotic due to the sensitivity to news, investor sentiment, and other factors. • Population Dynamics: The growth and decline of populations can exhibit chaotic patterns, influenced by factors like resource availability and competition. • Double Pendulum: A simple system like a double pendulum can exhibit chaotic behavior due to the non-linear interactions between the two pendulums. In essence, chaos theory reveals that even in seemingly random systems, there can be underlying patterns and deterministic laws that govern their behavior, although these patterns can be difficult to predict due to their sensitivity to initial conditions. Dra. Claudia Sheinbaum is the president of Mexico. Before she was a politician, she was a well-respected scientist who worked for 4 years at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory here in California. When tariffs were being discussed, she wrote a very thoughtful and well-researched piece to President Trump. She warned him that up to 400,000 US workers would lose their jobs if he implemented the tariffs. This morning, the first US layoffs resulting from the tariffs have taken place. Stellantis is a US auto company that produces Jeeps and Chrysler cars. They furloughed 900 workers at plants in Michigan and Indiana that assemble cars from parts made in Mexico. Half a world away in China, the Fitch credit rating agency downgraded China's debt credit rating from A+ to A due to concern about tariffs: Fitch Downgrades China to 'A'; Outlook Stable. Fitch Ratings - Hong Kong - 03 Apr 2025: Fitch Ratings has downgraded China's Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'A' from 'A+'. The Outlook is Stable. The stock market took a hard crash yesterday. It does not look better today. We are about to go through a very painful time.

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The Economist Magazine Cover For 03/29/2025

Cover Story: Elon Musk’s efficiency drive Inbox The Economist Unsubscribe 11:02 AM (3 minutes ago) to me The Economist Read in browser March 29th 2025 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image Insert a clear and simple description of the image Edward Carr Deputy editor In most of the world our cover is devoted to Elon Musk and his revolution against the federal government in Washington. In the Middle East and Africa we write about Israel’s remarkable resurgence after the horrors of October 7th 2023, and the hubris that now looms. Of all the things President Donald Trump has done at home since his inauguration in January, putting the Department of Government Efficiency under Mr Musk has turned out to be the most polarising. Mr Musk’s fans believe that in the 2010s a priesthood of partisan bureaucrats schemed with the media and universities to impose a progressive agenda on America. To them, dismantling this soft authoritarianism requires rough tactics. By contrast, Mr Musk’s critics see him as a self-dealing villain drunk on far-right ideology. We started with a moody Musk in black and white and an elevated Elon peering down at the mortals scurrying around Washington like ants. The world’s richest man has transformed at least two industries. Just imagine if he could pull off the same trick with the federal government—an organisation whose annual expenditure of $7trn is roughly equivalent to the combined revenues of America’s 20 biggest companies. Across the West, voters are frustrated because their governments are more adept at slowing things down than at making them go. We have worked up the super-human Musk. He does, after all, conceive of himself as a saviour who will put people on Mars and turn humankind into a multiplanetary species. Ordinarily, chances to start government afresh crop up only in times of war, plague or natural disaster. A sympathetic reading of DOGE is that Mr Musk is trying to bring creative destruction to bureaucracies by other means. But that looks much too optimistic. So far DOGE has broken laws with abandon and destroyed careers. It has lied about waste and seized personal data protected by law. Some federal employees still have to send weekly emails listing five things they did last week. But the inbox is full and they bounce back. To make this cover work, we needed a lot more edge. That thought took us to a Cybertruck running amok on America’s most famous lawn. Or perhaps it could be carting off the Capitol dome—which is not too far from the truth, given that DOGE wants to close outfits like the Department of Education that are supposed to fall under the purview of Congress. These images have an extra piquancy because Tesla has recently recalled a batch of Cybertrucks. But we wanted to show the machinery of the state, rather than the legislature or the White House. The feathers are flying and the federal government is at risk of becoming roadkill. For the final cover, we jazzed up the eagle, plonked the truck in the desert and gave it a personalised number plate. Rather than seeking to make government work better, DOGE’s actions so far look as if they are designed to expand the president’s power and root out wrongthink. Facing lawsuits and some adverse rulings, Mr Musk and others have attacked judges, accusing them of staging a coup. Mr Musk—and America—have a huge opportunity. They must not blow it. Just 18 months ago Israel was in grave peril. Surrounded by enemies, bickering with its main ally in Washington and reeling after Hamas’s attack caused the most murderous day in the country’s history, the Jewish state seemed vulnerable and confused. But it has staged a remarkable turnaround. It is fighting again, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon and in Syria and with full American backing. Unfortunately, its military supremacy comes with bitter strife at home and a danger of over­extension. We started with a photograph of the West Bank. But it struck our correspondents as out of date. The army is waging its biggest offensive in the West Bank in decades. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced from four refugee camps in the north. Far-right lawmakers are pushing ahead with plans to expand Jewish settlements. Or perhaps we could go with a collage of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. His government is using aggressive tactics to curb the independence of Israel’s institutions. In recent days the cabinet has endorsed the firing of the head of the Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, and of the attorney-general. The two officials happen to be involved in investigations of Mr Netanyahu’s aides over allegations of graft and other sins. The prime minister says he is innocent. We preferred this idea, however. Israel is planting flags—in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank. This new, hegemonic Israel is the product in part of the lingering trauma of October 7th. Before the massacre Israel sought to avoid all-out conflict, contenting itself with periodic strikes against its foes, to assassinate threatening leaders or destroy sophisticated weapons. When it fought, as it did several times against Hamas, it kept the wars short. The goal was to deter and weaken its adversaries, not to obliterate them. In hindsight, many Israeli generals and spies see that policy as naive. They are no longer willing to tolerate threats on their borders—even hypothetical ones. The trouble is that hegemony will impose a heavy burden on the Israeli army, on society and on the economy. Can Israel carry it? You can browse all of our covers from 2024—and learn about the creative decisions that went into each one—in this interactive Cover Story annual. Related → Is Elon Musk remaking government or breaking it? (Leader) → Elon Musk is powersliding through the federal government (United States) → Israel’s expansionism is a danger to others—and itself (Leader) → An unrestrained Israel is reshaping the Middle East (Briefing) Cover image • View large image (“Elon Musk’s efficiency drive”) • View large image (“Israel’s hubris”)

A Hot Earth Is Normal

Some Like It Hot Humans may struggle to survive in hot weather, but the planet does just fine. In fact, the Earth existed in a greenhouse climate free of ice caps for much of its history and only developed its ice caps through a lucky coincidence. A new study shows that ice caps formed due to a fortunate combination of low global volcanism and widely dispersed continents with large mountains, which facilitated global rainfall, and enhanced processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere, said researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “The important implication here is that the Earth’s natural climate regulation mechanism appears to favor a warm and high-CO2 world with no ice caps, not the partially glaciated and low-CO2 world we have today,” explained Andrew Merdith, lead author of the study. Researchers believe Earth’s general tendency towards a warm climate has generally prevented catastrophic “snowball Earth” glaciations, allowing life to prosper. Researchers have long tried to explain the cold intervals in Earth’s history by following clues such as decreased CO2 emissions from volcanoes, the reaction of CO2 with certain rocks, and increased carbon storage by forests. Now, researchers were able to conduct the first comprehensive test of all these cooling processes using a new long-term 3D Earth model developed because of advances in computing. The team concluded that no single process could create these cold climates and that the cooling was produced by the combined effects of several processes that took place at the same time. “Over its long history, the Earth likes it hot, but our human society does not,” said co-author Benjamin Mills, adding that this study carries implications for global warming and that we should not always expect Earth to return to the cooler climate of the pre-industrial age.

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Nursing Is the Toughest Major to Get into at the University of California System

UC’s most competitive major has a 1% acceptance rate, and it’s not computer science By Nanette Asimov, Higher Education Reporter March 22, 2025 Gift Article Magdalena Guerrero, a sophomore at CSU East Bay in Hayward, was unable to get into the school’s nursing program because she applied slightly too early. Administrators said they could not make an exception for her application because the program is so competitive. Magdalena Guerrero, a sophomore at CSU East Bay in Hayward, was unable to get into the school’s nursing program because she applied slightly too early. Administrators said they could not make an exception for her application because the program is so competitive. Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle Winning admission into the University of California’s most competitive majors — including computer science, engineering and business — is about as likely as hitting a home run your first time at bat. Yet even those subjects are not the hardest to get into. That honor belongs to nursing, for which you might have to hit two home runs. In a row. Just 1% of the nearly 6,000 yearly applicants to UC’s undergraduate nursing programs, at UCLA and UC Irvine, are permitted to walk through the door. Advertisement Article continues below this ad See more on majors: Look up acceptance rates for every UC, CSU major Most popular majors: List of 'impacted' and high-demand majors at every UC and CSU College Guide: Key data and acceptance rates for every UC and CSU Data Tools: Majors that lead to the best-paying jobs for UC and CSU graduates Nursing is also notoriously hard to get into at 17 of the 20 California State University campuses offering the program — even though hospitals across the state are short the equivalent of more than 40,000 full-time nurses, as UCSF reported in 2021. Nursing jobs pay well in California – typically around $120,000 — and thousands of brainy, compassionate students want in. Magdalena Guerrero is one of them. The Cal State East Bay sophomore chose nursing as a high-school freshman and never wavered. “I love nursing so much,” said Guerrero, 19, who in October applied for next fall’s nursing program at the Hayward campus, a 12-minute commute from her Union City home. “I’m super-competitive,” said Guerrero, a straight-A student who completed her nursing prerequisites last fall and sometimes spent 13 hours a day in the library, her head in the books from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. “I loved it. I ate there — I brought my snacks. I love studying. I love the knowledge.” Advertisement Article continues below this ad ‘Even more selective’ than Ivy League The story of how and why Cal State East Bay rejected Guerrero’s nursing application is the story of why that major is the most crowded — and confounding — across all public universities in California. “We’re even more selective than getting into Yale,” Mark Lazenby said of UC Irvine’s nursing school, where he’s the dean. (The Ivy League school took 6.53% of applicants last fall.) “A lot of young people want to become nurses,” Lazenby said. “They want to do good with their lives. We hear this over and over again — that nursing can lead to gainful employment and a lot of career options. At the same time, it’s meaningful work that benefits society.” Advertisement Article continues below this ad By 2030, with every baby boomer locked into old age, the need for nurses will only skyrocket, he said. So what’s stopping California’s universities from welcoming every applicant? A view of the UCLA campus from the top of the Janns Steps. A view of the UCLA campus from the top of the Janns Steps. Jen Osborne/Special to the S.F. Chronicle Money is the driving factor At UC Irvine and UCLA — which together admitted 118 nursing students out of 11,776 who applied in 2023, the most recent data available — the answer is money. UC Irvine’s engineering school, for example, spends less than $10,000 a year to educate each student. The nursing school spends at least twice that amount, said Lazenby. Advertisement Article continues below this ad A lecture hall packed with engineering students needs but one professor. But in nursing, where the stakes are about patient survival, every group of 10 students needs a single, attentive instructor. Also expensive: computerized mannequins, which reside in hospital simulation rooms and suffer sudden heart attacks and massive strokes. These cost a couple hundred thousand dollars each, Lazenby said. At CSU, where 20 of the 23 campuses offer nursing, only Dominguez Hills, Monterey Bay and Northridge report no overcrowding. Schools ration seats because it’s hard for them to hire enough qualified instructors. “Anybody who comes to teach full time takes about a 50% pay cut compared to working at the hospital,” said Elaine Musselman, director of San Francisco State’s nursing school, which, like many CSU campuses, struggles with the hiring problem. Advertisement Article continues below this ad As a result, San Francisco State’s nursing school is offering admission to just 28 of its 328 applicants for next fall. That’s 8.5%, compared with the school’s 84% admission rate overall. The campuses try to get around the problem by inviting full-time nurses to teach part time, maybe once a week. People sit in a courtyard outside the Health and Social Sciences building at San Francisco State University last September. People sit in a courtyard outside the Health and Social Sciences building at San Francisco State University last September. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Hosting by hospitals required But another reason for the overcrowding is unique to nursing programs: They are required to partner with hospitals that are willing to host and teach students in actual healthcare settings. Engineering, business and computer science programs never encounter this issue. “Nursing is very hands on, so they can’t just learn by the textbook,” Musselman said. “You need to work with real people.” These are called clinical placements, and there aren’t enough of them. California has more than 140 nursing programs, many of them at community colleges or more costly private colleges, and all are competing for clinical placements. About 15 years ago, hospitals generally paired one clinical instructor with up to 12 students at a time, once a week. Today, hospitals tend to host no more than eight students at a time, which requires schools to arrange for placements twice a week so every student can participate. The pandemic’s massive nurse burnout is only part of the reason for limiting the student groups, although this is changing as COVID recedes. Another reason is the domino effect of hospitals increasingly sending patients home to recuperate instead of admitting them. Those who stay tend to be sicker, which in turn leaves nurses with less time to help students, Musselman said. Magdalena Guerrero said she was devastated when her application to the highly competitive nursing program at CSU East Bay in Hayward was rejected because of a timing error. Magdalena Guerrero said she was devastated when her application to the highly competitive nursing program at CSU East Bay in Hayward was rejected because of a timing error. Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle ‘It’s awful’: No leniency for application glitch This is the world into which thousands of California students hope to enter each year, including Guerrero, the Cal State East Bay sophomore. Last semester, as she completed her last two pre-nursing requirements, earning As in human anatomy II and microbiology, Guerrero’s excitement grew. She beat the deadline for submitting her application for next fall’s nursing program, then waited for April, when she expected good news to arrive. Instead, she heard from the administration on Feb. 17. She had just finished a psychology class and had sat down to do homework when she noticed the email. “I was super excited,” she said. But the message contained bad news. It said Guerrero had been disqualified because her transcript lacked her two final prerequisites — the ones she had aced. In her exuberance, Guerrero had sent in her application a shade too early. If it had been any other major at Cal State East Bay, a school that — like many CSU campuses — is losing enrollment, administrators would have bent over backward to fix the glitch and help the stellar student join her preferred major. “But this is how narrow the bottleneck is for nursing,” said Monika Eckfield, chair of Cal State East Bay’s nursing department. “If we make an exception for her, then we have to it for hundreds of others.” Guerrero felt devastated. “I felt something inside of me kind of, like, broke,” she said. “I blamed myself over and over. The letter took away my spark. I’m just now getting on my feet.” Guerrero said she recognizes that nursing is “so overcrowded they couldn’t give me a second chance.” Still, she said, “I wish they could have been more lenient. I can’t imagine how many students are going through the same thing. It’s awful.” Students and faculty travel through the UC Irvine campus in 2023. The acceptance rate for the school’s undergraduate nursing program is just 1%. Students and faculty travel through the UC Irvine campus in 2023. The acceptance rate for the school’s undergraduate nursing program is just 1%. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images A search for solutions UC Irvine turns away 99% of nursing applicants: 5,800 students last year. Lazenby, the dean, called on the state to invest more money not only in traditional nursing education, but also in the kind of research-intensive schooling that UC provides to its nursing students. All professors have doctorates and teach their students to interpret medical research or to become researchers themselves. Many students go on to graduate school and become hospital leaders. “The state has to decide whether it’s going to invest in research-intensive nursing education, because it is costly,” Lazenby said. “Yet, the value of human lives should not be pitted against that cost. We shouldn’t say, ‘We’ll educate nurses on the cheap.” It’s a hope that became a little less likely after Thursday, when UC system President Michael Drake announced that the university was in such financial jeopardy that a systemwide hiring freeze was necessary. One reason, he said, was a proposed 8% funding cut from the state, which Gov. Gavin Newsom has also recommended at CSU. However, improving state finances could erase that problem. More of a problem, Drake said, is the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding that Trump administration officials are threatening to withhold from universities – as they have already done at Columbia University — to punish what they have said was an insufficient response against pro-Palestinian protesters on campus last year. Meanwhile, the state’s public universities are strategizing to figure out how to enroll more nursing students. At San Francisco State, a 2023 partnership with Sutter Health to guarantee clinical placements for eight students over four semesters “allowed us to increase our enrollment by 25%,” Musselman said. While Cal State East Bay accepted just 48 of its roughly 500 nursing applicants for next fall, Eckfield said she hopes that will improve with a pending reorganization of scattered programs — nursing, kinesiology, social work, public health, speech and hearing – into a single College of Health. “So even if students come in with the intention of (entering) the nursing program, if they don’t get in, they’ll see that it’s not the end of the road for them. They can stay and finish out their bachelor's degree,” Eckfield said. Sophomore Magdalena Guerrero holds her water bottle, covered with nursing-themed stickers, at CSU East Bay in Hayward. Sophomore Magdalena Guerrero holds her water bottle, covered with nursing-themed stickers, at CSU East Bay in Hayward. Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle Still determined Guerrero has no intention of giving up nursing. Cal State East Bay has a different nursing program at its Concord campus — 90 minutes from Guerrero’s home — and she is about to apply there for spring 2026. She could reapply to the closer Hayward campus, but the earliest she could get in would be fall 2026. “What if I didn’t get into Hayward a year from now?” Guerrero said. “Because nursing here in California is SO competitive, I cannot miss an opportunity. “I understand that I’m young. But at the same time, I have this passion, this spark. I’m willing do anything — even if it takes an hour and 30 minutes on BART,” she said. “Nursing is everything to me.” Reach Nanette Asimov: nasimov@sfchronicle.com; Threads: @NanetteAsimov March 22, 2025 Photo of Nanette Asimov Nanette Asimo

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Please Pay Close Attention To Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence Company

Madame President: Your Monday morning briefing...As always, my radar is on a 360-degree sweep looking for stories overlooked by traditional media that are very important to you. Elon Musk's car company Tesla is taking a huge beating right now. Sales of his cars are sharply down worldwide. Tesla shares are taking a big beating. There is even violence being directed at Tesla owners and facilities worldwide. Elon has another venture that is booming. In 2023 he formed X Artificial Intelligence. This company includes a program called Grok to build a supercomputer in Memphis. Musk has already raised $6 billion in venture capital for this project. He is seeking a $75 billion valuation for X A.I. When this company succeeds, Musk will be "The King of Artificial Intelligence" for the Western world. With the control of Artificial Intelligence and the social media platform X (Twitter) Musk will control the information flow for the Western world. ("A man or woman with one eye is king in the land of the blind.") When we add in his political power one could infer that he would become the most powerful human in the Western world. The word "King" comes to mind. Please reflect on this carefully. Be careful out there! Stay "Far from the madding crowd." Amo-a, -Jack

How Much Is Vice President J.D. Vance Worth?

GOBankingRates How Much Is Vice President JD Vance Worth? The Answer May Shock You Caitlyn Moorhead Sat, March 15, 2025 at 4:07 PM PDT·3 min read 147 Francis Chung / Pool via CNP / SplashNews.com / Shutterstock.com Francis Chung / Pool via CNP / SplashNews.com / Shutterstock.com In the last few years, JD Vance has gone from being an American author, political commentator, venture capitalist and holding an Ohio Senate seat to being the Vice President of the United States. Chosen as the controversial running mate for President Donald Trump in 2024, he is now a leading member of the Republican party in 2025. Be Aware: If Trump Eliminates the Department of Education, Do You Still Have To Pay Your Student Loans? Read Next: These 10 Used Cars Will Last Longer Than an Average New Vehicle With all of these money-making ventures and current political clout, it may or may not surprise you what Vance earns in a year or even shows for his all-around estimated wealth. Here’s a sneak peek into his finances. Quick Take: JD Vance’s Net Worth His memoir “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” and its film adaptation — directed by Ron Howard and released by Netflix — made him a public figure. However, he now has a few more financial disclosures under his belt. Here are a few key takeaways about Vance’s estimated net worth and sources of his income: Estimated total net worth: $10 million Salary as Vice President: $235,100 each year he serves Real estate holdings: $4 million Memoir royalties: Between $15,000 to $50,000 every year Bitcoin: Between $250,000 to $500,000 Ownership of venture capital firm, Narya Capital Fund I: Between $500,000 to $1 million Consider This: Trump Wants To Eliminate Social Security Taxes: 3 Moves Retirees Should Make This Winter The Early Life and Career of JD Vance James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman) was born to Donald Bowman and Bev Vance in Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1984. His parents split when he was very young — his father leaving the family behind — and he and his sister were mostly raised by his maternal grandparents. He wrote that his childhood was abusive, and his mother battled addiction while enduring a string of bad relationships. After graduating from high school, he joined the Marines. And following his discharge, he attended Ohio State University where he graduated with a degree in political science and philosophy before attending Yale Law School. Upon earning his law degree, he relocated to San Francisco, where he worked in corporate law. In 2016, his book was published and he returned to Ohio, where he planned to embark on a political career. Vance met his wife Usha Chilukuri while at Yale Law School. They were married in 2014, and share three children together. Final Take To GO: The Wealth of JD Vance The bottom line is that any political figure that has reached the heights of Vance will have some pretty high earning potential. Though he was already making a good living before becoming Vice President, now with Trump’s support in his back pocket along with his wallet, his wealth building doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Michelle Tompkins contributed to the reporting for this article. Editor’s note on political coverage: GOBankingRates is nonpartisan and strives to cover all aspects of the economy objectively and present balanced reports on politically focused finance stories. You can find more coverage of this topic on GOBankingRates.com. More From GOBankingRates 4 SUVs That Will Have Massive Price Drops in Early 2025 How Paychecks Would Look in Each State If Trump Dropped Federal Income Tax 5 Cities You Need To Consider If You're Retiring in 2025 10 Cars That Outlast the Average Vehicle This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How Much Is Vice President JD Vance Worth? The Answer May Shock You View comments (147)

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Trump Wants To Cut Funding To 10 Universities Including U.C. Berkeley Over Anto Semitism

Bay Area Trump wants to cut funding to 10 schools over antisemitism. UC Berkeley is one By Rachel Swan, Reporter Updated March 8, 2025 8:58 p.m. Gift Article A flyer on antisemitism is posted outside a UC Berkeley office. UC Berkeley is among 10 colleges and universities the Trump administration targeted for possible withdrawal of federal funds, over allegations they created a hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty. A flyer on antisemitism is posted outside a UC Berkeley office. UC Berkeley is among 10 colleges and universities the Trump administration targeted for possible withdrawal of federal funds, over allegations they created a hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2024 Show More UC Berkeley is reportedly among 10 schools being targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration for withdrawal of federal funds, which could potentially sap the institution of millions of dollars. Officials at the Department of Justice created a list of schools that could face punitive measures amid claims that they have allowed antisemitism to pervade their campuses, the New York Times reported. Federal law enforcement had already announced an investigation of UC Berkeley and four other universities last month, saying the Justice Department would determine whether campus administrators, students and faculty had engendered an “antisemitic hostile work environment.” Advertisement Article continues below this ad The list published by the Times includes two other universities in California — UCLA and the University of Southern California — as well as Northwestern University, John Hopkins University, New York University, Harvard, Columbia, George Washington University and the University of Minnesota. Berkeley law student Adam Pukier, left, helps a pro-Israeli demonstrator cross UC Berkeley’s Strawberry Creek last March. A group of more than 100 pro-Israeli demonstrators crossed the creek, largely avoiding confrontations with pro-Palestinian demonstrators holding a banner across Sather Gate. Berkeley law student Adam Pukier, left, helps a pro-Israeli demonstrator cross UC Berkeley’s Strawberry Creek last March. A group of more than 100 pro-Israeli demonstrators crossed the creek, largely avoiding confrontations with pro-Palestinian demonstrators holding a banner across Sather Gate. Noah Berger/Special to the Chronicle 2024 It was not immediately clear how much money UC Berkeley stands to lose if the Justice Department finds that the allegations of a hostile work environment are valid. This week, Trump revoked about $400 million in federal grants, awards and contracts slated for Columbia, accusing the school of “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Spokespeople for the department did not respond to a series of questions from the Chronicle on Saturday evening. In late January, Trump signed an executive order aiming to clamp down on antisemitism, with an explicit pledge to “marshal all federal resources” to quell any perceived animosity toward Jewish students and faculty, a sentiment that White House officials said had “exploded” since Hamas launched a coordinated attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That invasion killed about 1,200 people, and militants kidnapped hundreds more, while Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes and blockade of humanitarian aid in Gaza have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Advertisement Article continues below this ad A woman holds up an Israeli flag during a rally held in support of the nation at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in October 2023. A woman holds up an Israeli flag during a rally held in support of the nation at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in October 2023. Jessica Christian/The Chronicle 2023 Protests have swept college campuses over the past year and a half as the Israel-Hamas war all but decimated the Gaza Strip and displaced much of the population. Students erected tents on university lawns to show support for Palestine and opposition to Zionism. At UC Berkeley, anti-Israel demonstrators broke down a door and smashed a window at Zellerbach Playhouse to disrupt a talk by an Israeli lawyer last year. Days later, Jewish students and their allies marched to pressure the university to crack down on antisemitic speech and violence. Administrators at UC Berkeley highlighted their commitment to stamping out antisemitism in a statement Saturday, responding to the Justice Department’s threat to claw back funding. In the statement, administrators cited the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life and Campus Climate, formed in 2015, as well as the Antisemitism Education Initiative developed four years later, to train new students, residence hall staff and campus government leaders how to recognize bias against their Jewish peers. Advertisement Article continues below this ad “We will respond to any complaints or allegations through the process prescribed by the DOJ,” the statement said, adding that UC Berkeley has rules and procedures to address antisemitic incidents, and administrators intend to comply with them. Reach Rachel Swan: rswan@sfchronicle.com March 8, 2025|Updated March 8

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How Does The Trump Presidency End?

Profile photo for Tomaž Vargazon Tomaž Vargazon · Follow Practicing atheistFeb 17 How do you think Trump's presidency will end? Let me use one of Ramsays’ quotes on this one. If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention There is no good way for the end of the Trump ‘47. The baseline scenario is USA is turned into a hybrid regime, akin to pre-2014 (-ish) Russia: the president and the parliament (Congress and Senate) is fixed and will be won by the Republicans with a majority control every single time, forever. This will be achieved by a combination of cheating, lawsuits and directing the DOJ to start investigations and prosecutions against anyone who is a serious threat to their power. Courts will work to further the power of the Republican party. There will be some genuine political opposition, mainly at mayoral and state level, but they will be locked out from real power at the federal level and hamstrung by courts. No opposition, Democrat or some other party, will ever be able to seriously challenge the Republicans for power. The best-case scenario is hardly any better: the backlash in 2028 election is so massive no amount of cheating is able to hide it and the Democrats manage to cling power back. However they now face the GOP deep state that will hamstring every single change or improvement and work to make the country ungovernable. The country will lurch from crisis to crisis, intermittently experiencing periods of crisis (when Democrats are in power) and active dismantling of beneficial institutions (when Republicans are). This setup is not stable however and it almost certainly ends up as either the baseline or the worst-case scenario below. It’s only marginally possible for sanity to return to right-wing politicis, and only if the GOP splits first. The worst-case scenario is the backlash does give Democrats a clean win, but a combination of cheating, electioneering and lawfare enables the Republicans to cling on to power. Chaos ensues and rips the country apart again. But hey, expensive eggs right? And Haitians eating cats and dogs, that had to be stopped. 267.1K views View 5,344 upvotes View 78 shares 1 of 438 answers

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He Shot Down 4 Japanese Planes On December 7, 1941 and Went On To Great Things

Profile photo for Lyle F. Padilla Lyle F. Padilla · Follow Retired US Army Armor Officer, former USAF F-4 WSOFeb 9 Did any pilots who survived Pearl Harbor continue to fly in combat missions? How did their experiences differ from attacking ships at Pearl Harbor to flying over Japan? I can’t address any Japanese pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor, but the US Army Air Force fighter pilot who shot down the most Japanese planes (four confirmed) over Pearl Harbor and the surrounding area on December 7, 1941, 2nd Lieutenant George S. Welch, went on to have a distinguished combat record during the remainder of World War II and then as a test pilot in the postwar era. Welch remained at his base at Wheeler Field in Hawaii for several months after Pearl Harbor before transferring to another squadron during the New Guinea Campaign and started scoring more kills on the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, then accumulated a total of 16 kills (including the four at Pearl Harbor) over the next ten months. He was then pulled out of combat flying and released from Active Duty to the Air Forces Reserve at the rank of major after contracting malaria, but was hired as a test pilot for North American Aviation and resumed flying in that capacity. He was the chief test pilot for North American’s P-82 Twin Mustang, then the swept-wing jet P-86 Sabre. He is believed to have actually broken the sound barrier in the prototype P-86 two weeks before Chuck Yeager was credited for doing so in a the Bell XS-1 rocket plane in October 1947, with the Air Force keeping quiet about it for several decades as it did not want to reveal the fact that their newest fighter, soon redesignated the F-86 and about to dominate the skies in the Korean War, had a supersonic capability. Welch made several trips to the front line air bases in Korea as a technical representative of North American, and it is believed that he flew a number of missions over “MiG Alley” in North Korea and scored additional kills over communist MiG-15s which were kept off the books and credited to other pilots because of his civilian official status. Welch then became the chief test pilot for the North American F-100 Super Sabre, a larger and more powered engine derivative of the F-86 which was the first production fighter to go supersonic in level flight. Sadly, he was killed in 1954 testing an F-100 which had stability problems. 32.6K views View 445 upvotes View 5 shares 1 of 5 answers

How The Finns Beat The Russians 1939-1940

Profile photo for Catalin Olteanu Catalin Olteanu Former Small Entrepreneur 4y Why did the USSR, with superior military size and strength, suffer such losses in the Winter War against Finland? Can anybody imagine how it is possible to conduct a military assault on average temperature of -21 to -24 degrees Celsius? Can anybody imagine how enthusiastic can be a soldier sleeping in a tent at -30 or even -39 degrees Celsius, especially when on the next day he is supposed to attack one of the most fortified defensive lines in the history of warfare? What if the attack is to be led under such circumstances that snow can reach 1.5 meters ? Or what if beneath the snow there are mines, swamps and marshes ? The ‘’Winter War’’ was a political action designed to impress the world-Germany too- about the major technological advance of the Red Army. The attack would have been an incredibly difficult task even in the summer time. This is the great general who saved Finland -Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim - Wikipedia and this is his main opponent : Kirill Meretskov - Wikipedia Geographically speaking, Finland is arranged such that any aggression could come only from the Soviet Union, and only through the Karelian Isthmus.The Finnish army, began an extensive buildup of defenses on the Karelian Isthmus since 1918. Beginning 1929, the scope of the buildup expanded significantly. On the Karelian Isthmus emerged a solid strip of fortifications and obstructions, which became known as the Mannerheim Line. Finland spent practically all of her military budget for ten years on the fortifications. The main strike was carried out on the Karelian Isthmus; secondary strikes were carried out along the entire Finnish-Soviet border, from the Baltic Sea to the Barents Sea. The Mannerheim Line was not located on the immediate border, but deeper in the territory. The line was in fact a brilliantly camouflaged defense structure, well integrated into the surroundings, and stretching 135 km in width and up to 30 km in depth. Its right flank met the shore of the Baltic Sea; its left flank bordered Lake Ladoga. All in all, the Mannerheim Line counted 2,311 concrete, ironclad, and wooden defense structures. All existing bridges on this strip were wired with explosives and ready to be blown up or burned. The Finns used a brilliant tactic. A couple of snipers could block a whole Red Army division. The Finnish snipers and light mobile squads were fully active and operating to the best of their capacity. Here is a standard situation: a column of Soviet tanks, motorized infantry, and artillery is moving along a forest road. To their left and to their right there is nowhere to go—impassable woods, packed with land mines. Ahead of them was a bridge. The Soviet demolition experts checked for mines and came back reporting that the way was clear. The first tanks begin to crawl onto the bridge—and together with the bridge they fly up into the air: packs of dynamite had been inserted into the supporting beams of the bridge during its construction; they are undetectable, and even if they had been discovered, any attempt to defuse them would have triggered an explosion. The Soviet column, many kilometers in length, like a snake is stopped in its path. Now, the Finnish snipers spring into action. The snipers strike from somewhere far away. They hit only Red Army officers and tow-truck drivers. A diversion through the forest is not an option-on both sides of the road lie impenetrable minefields. Below probably the best sniper in history : Simo Häyhä - Wikipedia Not a single army in the world had conducted an offensive operation, under a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius. In such temperatures, no one had even attempted to conduct massive attacks, because it is impossible. The Red Army’s attack was an exception. Finnish soldiers are born, raised, and trained to act in these conditions. The snipers who spent days waiting for their victims, and the soldiers of the light ski squads which raided the rear of the Red Army, were warmly clad and well equipped. They had clear orders and retreat path to shelters and bunkers. The theater of operations consisted of 50 percent woodlands, 25 percent water, some swampland, and only about 10 percent of the total surface could be crossed by tanks. During the 105 days of the war, there were twenty-five days of flying weather. The rest of the time, blizzards or snowfall impeded flight. In December, there are very few daylight hours. Complete darkness falls at four o’clock. In the north there was no daytime at all. The mighty Soviet artillery was pretty useless due to thick snow; the tanks were useless; the air force also could not help, for it could not see anything. The Finns were most of the time under the snow, well camouflaged. The finish pillboxes were made by professionals: Against the pillbox #0011, the Soviets unleashed 1,322 shells from 203-mm howitzers and 280-mm mortars—almost two hundred tons. The pillbox was partially damaged, but even after this it continued to resist. Despite the incredible resilience of the Finns, the Mannerheim Line was penetrated and the Finland was forced to sue for peace. On March 13, 1940, the war between Finland and the Soviet Union was ended. The war lasted 105 days The Soviet Union received the Karelian Isthmus, but Finland kept her independence. On April 12, 1942, Hitler said the following: “The entire war with Finland in 1940, just as the Russian advance into Poland with obsolete tanks and weapons and poorly clothed soldiers, was nothing other than a grandiose disinformation campaign, because Russia at that time controlled arms which made it, in comparison with Germany and Japan, a world power.” He also said, on June 22, 1942: “Back home in Russia, they created an extremely powerful military industry . . . and the more we find out what goes on in Russia, the more we rejoice that we delivered the decisive blow in time. The Red Army’s weaponry is the best proof that they succeeded in reaching extremely high achievements.” 42.4K views457 upvotes32 shares28 comments 7.5K views View 25 upvotes

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Five Special Books That Had A Profound Impact On My Life

In a recent Op-Ed, I praised the author Sonya Walger and her book "Lion." Sonya also has a podcast called "Bookish." In each segment, she interacts with a major film or television star with the same question: "What were the five books that most influenced your life?" She started me thinking. I want to share with you the five books that had a profound influence on me as follows: 1) The Wind Off The Sea by David Beaty; This novel follows a career Royal Air Force officer from 1940 until 1962. My sister and I love the winter days in our hometown of Galveston, Texas, The cold wind blasts in from the Gulf of Mexico. This book has wonderful character development. The reader comes to know the RAF officer so well. The book ends with a murder mystery and an unauthorized attempt to fire a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. 2) Once An Eagle by Anton Myrer; this novel covers 50 years in the life of a man named Sam Damon. He comes from the Midwest of the U.S. He joins the U.S. Army. He is sent to fight in France as an enlisted man in World War I. He distinguishes himself in combat. He is given a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant. He hates war but loves the army. He is a leader who is always concerned about his men's welfare. He plans battles carefully to minimize casualties. When the war ends, Sam stays in the army. He goes through 23 years of the peacetime army. When World War II comes, he is sent to lead soldiers in the Pacific island campaigns including the Philippines. He is promoted to general. He is a brilliant infantry officer. When World War II ended, he goes through the peacetime army. He was sent to South Korea in 1950 to lead an infantry division. He becomes quite knowledgeable about combat operations in Asia. He was recalled from retirement to take a tour of South Vietnam in 1968. He sees the madness of this war. He is getting ready to release a report warning the public. Career military officers murder him to keep him silent. The whole theme of the book was "Suffering can deaden the soul or enrich it." 3) The Captain by Jan de Hartog; this novel follows the wartime experiences of a merchant marine captain who routinely made the run from England to Murmansk in the Soviet Union. As you can imagine, the Nazis did everything possible to stop these ships from bringing supplies to Russia. The captain survives the war and attributes it to good luck. 4) Firefox and Firefox Down by Craig Thomas; this novel has a wild premise. The Soviet Union designs an advanced jet fighter that a pilot can control with thoughts. The U.S. sneaks a former U.S. Air Force pilot and Vietnam veteran to steal the plane and bring it back to the West. The pilot is named Mitchell Gant. He steals the Soviet plane and begins the mad dash to the West. The Russians do everything possible to recover their plane or shoot it down. The aerial combat scenes would make a great action/adventure story. The author does a further brilliant job of developing Mitchell Gant as a character. As he rushes to evade the Soviets, he vomits in the cockpit. He has blackouts. He has flashbacks to the trauma of his Vietnam combat missions. He is never sure that he can accomplish this mission. As Firefox Down ends, Mithcell drops the landing gears to land the Soviet fighter in Scotland. I was throwing the book in the air and cheering. It was not because Mitchell had defeated the Russians. It was because he had defeated the dark spirits that lived inside him. 5) The House Of The Spirits by Isabel Allende; this novel tells the story of three generations of Chilean women starting in the early 1900s and ending when General Pinochet stages the military coup in 1973. Having spent decades of my life being married to two South American women, I love this book. It shows what it is really like to be a woman in South America. This book was published 39 years ago. Each time I read the ending, I get tears in my eyes and am emotionally touched. The is a dog with magical capabilities in the book. His name is Barabbas. The book ends with these words: "Barabbas came to us by the sea."

The Economist Magazine Cover For 02-15/2025

The Economist Read in browser February 15th 2025 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image Insert a clear and simple description of the image Edward Carr Deputy editor We had two covers this week. In America and Asia, as Donald Trump and Elon Musk prepare to take on the Pentagon, we weigh up whether DOGE will reform it or wreck it. In our British and European editions, we feature an interview with Friedrich Merz, who is the clear front-runner to become Germany’s next chancellor. America’s armed forces face a real problem. Not since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and built huge tank formations at the height of the cold war have America’s military vulnerabilities been so glaring. In the killing fields of Ukraine the United States is being out-innovated by drone designers; in the seas and skies off China’s coast it is losing its ability to deter a blockade or invasion of Taiwan. Our task on the cover was to get across the importance of reform as well as the risks that it descends into chaos or corruption. We start with the latest in our attempts to depict Mr Trump by showing ever smaller parts of his body. A hand will do—though the Pentagon has been reduced to a tiny steel nut. However, although Mr Trump is the immediate reason to write about the Pentagon, we wanted to get across the fact that our coverage is broader than that. Our main focus is the technological, industrial and bureaucratic weakness of America’s defence establishment. That led us to a second, more promising, idea of the Pentagon and the drones. This design doesn’t quite work—we weren’t sure whether this swarm was emerging from the DoD or (more appropriately) attacking it—but, as you will see, it figured in our final cover. The Economist Here we have the Pentagon implanted in a circuit board, in a misty, atmospheric sketch—with a hint of the film “Blade Runner”—and a crystal-clear worked-up final cover. America struggles to turn technology into a military advantage. The drones over Ukraine are upgraded every few weeks, a pace that is beyond the Pentagon’s budgeting process, which takes years. American and European jammers in electronic warfare cost two or three times as much as Ukrainian ones, but are obsolete. The good news is that a new generation of mil-tech firms, including Anduril, Palantir and Shield AI, is banging on the Pentagon’s doors. Indeed, Palantir is now worth more than any of the five big prime contractors, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Again, however, the Pentagon in this treatment is awfully small. And, although the focus on its problems with technology is justified, they are just symptoms of a deeper malaise. This took us in a different direction. We have the drones, we have DOGE battling the bureaucracy and we have a truly massive Pentagon somewhere in deep space—less “Blade Runner” than “Star Wars”. The space connection makes sense, because NASA shows how to introduce competition, risk-taking and innovation into a procurement system dominated by incumbents. In the 2010s, to escape the ignominy of paying for rides to the International Space Station on Russian spacecraft, NASA put fixed-price contracts out to tender. Boeing offered Starliner; Mr Musk’s SpaceX offered Crew Dragon at a much lower cost. Crew Dragon has been a huge success. Starliner has yet to fly a successful mission. We liked this idea and asked for it to be worked up into a cover. This was almost there. We needed a bit more going on, so we added some drones and explosions and brightened up the background nebulae. We called this the battle for the Pentagon. Mr Trump and his insurgents will be taking on pork-barrelling politicians, as well as the bureaucracy. They guard their control over defence spending so jealously that, without congressional permission, the Pentagon cannot as a rule shift more than $15m from one line to another—too little to buy even four Patriot missiles. And yet it could all go very wrong. If Mr Trump prefers sacking generals for supposedly being “woke” or disloyal, he will bring dysfunction upon the Pentagon. If Mr Musk and his mil-tech brethren use DOGE’s campaign to wreck, or to boost their own power and wealth, they will corrupt it. Their work could not be more important, or more risky. We also published our interview with Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democrat from North Rhine-Westphalia who, after elections later this month, looks very likely to become Germany’s next chancellor. Outside Germany, the beanpole from Brilon is an unfamiliar figure, so we decided to use a photograph from the interview. Mr Merz has a difficult task ahead of him. Germany has been in recession for the past two years. Unhappiness at migration has led to a surge in support for the xenophobic right, fragmenting politics and causing paralysis in government. For years Germany has relied on importing cheap gas from Russia, selling expensive exports to China and outsourcing its security to America. That business model lies in ruins. Here are two standard shots. In our interview Mr Merz came across as confident, intelligent and remarkably calm considering the stakes. His instincts lie in the right direction. He understands the concerns of business and promises a crusade against red tape. He believes in free markets, free trade and the Atlantic alliance. He knows that fixing immigration is crucial to weakening the appeal of Germany’s hard-right party, the Alternative for Germany. These would make fine covers, but they are a bit dull. We wanted to get close up. The frown tells a more accurate story than Mr Merz’s optimistic gaze into the middle distance. Our worry about the next chancellor is that Mr Merz favours what sounds like incremental change over the radical shake-up that Germany and Europe need. He behaves as if the hard part will be to get elected. Yet governing will be much harder. To command his coalition and to carry through difficult reforms in a time of turmoil, he will need a mandate for sweeping change. To capture that tension we zoomed right in on Mr Merz, who is looking straight into the camera. Some Germans may see this as a harsh portrait. In fact it dramatises the man and the hard road that lies ahead of him. Cover image • View large image (“Battle for the Pentagon”) • View large image (“Can Friedrich Merz save Germany?”) Related stories → Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon? (Leader)

Will Donald Trump And Elon Musk Wreck Or Reform The Pentagon?

Leaders | High alert Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon? America’s security depends upon their success The Pentagon as a space station in a battle of drones and military aircraft image: Mona Eing & Michael Meissner Leaders February 15th 2025 Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon? Can Friedrich Merz save Germany—and Europe? After DeepSeek, America and the EU are getting AI wrong Countering China’s diplomatic coup The Lucy Letby case shows systemic failure and a national malaise Feb 13th 2025 Save Share Give Listen to this story. IN THE PENTAGON they must surely be on high alert. On February 9th President Donald Trump declared that it would soon become the target for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Accusing it of “hundreds of billions of fraud and abuse”, Mr Trump will unleash his insurgents, fresh from feeding foreign aid into the woodchipper. Their work could not be more important, or more risky. That is because America’s armed forces face a real problem. Not since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and built huge tank formations at the height of the cold war have America’s military vulnerabilities been so glaring. In the killing fields of Ukraine America is being out-innovated by drone designers; in the seas and skies off China it is losing its ability to deter a blockade or invasion of Taiwan. America’s military supremacy is in jeopardy The stakes are all the higher because the Pentagon is a place where MAGA ideology meets reality. Mr Trump’s foreign policy is transactional: this week he said he had begun talks with Russia on the future of Ukraine. But it is built on the idea that peace comes through strength, and that is possible only if America’s forces pose a credible threat. And what if DOGE goes rogue in the Pentagon? If Mr Musk causes chaos or corrupts procurement, the consequences for America’s security could be catastrophic. The problems are clearest in the struggle to turn technology into a military advantage. The drones over Ukraine are upgraded every few weeks, a pace that is beyond the Pentagon’s budgeting process, which takes years. American and European jammers in electronic warfare cost two or three times as much as Ukrainian ones, but are obsolete. Many big American drones have been useless in Ukraine; newer ones are pricier than Ukrainian models. Another problem is that America’s defence industry has been captured. At the end of the cold war the country had 51 prime contractors and only 6% of defence spending went to firms that specialised in defence. Today, just five primes soak up 86% of the Pentagon’s cash. Wary of driving more primes out of business, the department has opted for a risk-averse culture. Contracts are typically cost-plus, rewarding lateness and overspending. The resulting lack of productivity gains helps explain why building warships in America costs so much more than it does in Japan or South Korea. Behind this is the nightmare of budgets. Two-year delays are aggravated by congressional squabbling. Pork-barrelling politicians waste money by vetoing the end of programmes. They guard their control over spending so jealously that, without congressional permission, the Pentagon cannot as a rule shift more than $15m from one line to another—too little to buy even four Patriot missiles. When the Pentagon proposed diverting just 0.5% of the defence budget to buy thousands of drones under its “Replicator” initiative in August 2023, winning approval took almost 40 congressional meetings. Pentagon angst is as old as the military-industrial complex. Past secretaries of defence, including Bob Gates and the late Ash Carter, were philosopher kings next to their new and manifestly unqualified successor, Pete Hegseth. And yet the defence bureaucracy has always seemed to come out on top. There are two reasons why this moment may be different. One is that the time is ripe. Not only is the threat to American security becoming clear, but a new generation of mil-tech firms, including Anduril, Palantir and Shield AI, is banging on the Pentagon’s doors. Indeed, Palantir is now worth more than any of the five prime contractors. More controversially, Mr Musk is eager to crack heads together, an enthusiasm which stems partly from the second reason to hope: his experience elsewhere. In the 2010s, to escape the ignominy of paying for rides to the International Space Station on Russian spacecraft, NASA put fixed-price contracts to provide such services out to tender. Boeing offered something called Starliner; Mr Musk’s SpaceX offered Crew Dragon at a much lower cost. Crew Dragon has been a huge success. Starliner has yet to fly a successful mission (and has left Boeing having to absorb billions of dollars of budget overruns). From 1960 to 2010 the cost of getting a kilogram into orbit hovered at around $12,000; SpaceX rockets have already cut that by a factor of ten, and promise much more. Helsing, Europe’s only defence unicorn, takes a similarly nimble approach to development, continually updating its systems with data from the front lines. Mr Musk’s task is big and complex. American weapons need more AI, autonomy and lower costs. Where possible, they should be made from cheap off-the-shelf parts that ride on advances in consumer tech. The Pentagon should foster competition and risk-taking, knowing that some schemes will fail. A decade ago Carter set up a unit for innovation, but it was often seen as a threat. The Pentagon needs more of them. It should also listen to combatant commanders, too often drowned out by politics. Hardest of all, Mr Trump will have to get congressional Republicans to give the Pentagon a freer rein to spend and innovate. Reforming the Pentagon is much harder than other parts of government. America cannot focus on preparing for war in 2035 if that involves lowering its defences today. It cannot simply replace multi-billion-dollar submarines and bomber squadrons with swarms of drones, because to project power to the other side of the world will continue to require big platforms. Instead America needs a Department of Defence that can revolutionise the economics of massive systems and accelerate the spread of novel systems at the same time. Mr Musk and his boss are conflicted. If Mr Trump prefers sacking generals for supposedly being “woke” or disloyal, he will bring dysfunction upon the Pentagon. If Mr Musk and his mil-tech brethren use DOGE’s campaign to wreck, or to boost their own power and wealth, they will corrupt it. Those temptations make it hard to think that this administration will succeed where others have failed. But the hope is that they will. America’s security depends upon it. ■ For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign up to our weekly Cover Story newsletter.

If We Want To See How The Russia/Ukraine War Ends, We need To Look At The Historical Parallel of Finland vs The Soviet Union 1939-1946

There was the announcement that President Trump is now opening negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the three-year war in Ukraine. Elena got upset about this. She asked an excellent question: "Why haven't the Europeans been brought into the process? After all, this is a European war." I suspect that ending this war will be a process just as painful as ending the Vietnam. When the dust settles, Ukraine will lose some territory. It will be a neutral state. Membership in NATO is "off the table." Membership in the European Union is very possible. There is always the argument that Russia will use this time to rebuild its economy and military machine. Then will come a second Ukraine invasion. In the time of peace Ukraine will be rebuilding its economy and military machine that will be very modern with the best weapons in the world. I pointed out to Elena a fascinating point of history. I am a World War II amateur scholar specializing in Russia and the Eastern Front. Josef Stalin launched an invasion of Finland in 1939. Here is a summary of what happened: The Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30, 1939, beginning the Winter War. The war lasted until March 13, 1940. How it started • The Soviet Union demanded that Finland cede land to create a buffer zone against Nazi Germany. • Finland rejected the demands, which led to the invasion. • The Soviet Union's forces included 465,000 men and 1,000 aircraft. How it was fought • The war was fought in brutal conditions, with heroic actions on both sides. • The Finns used guerrilla fighters, reindeer to haul supplies, and single-handed attacks on tanks. • The Soviets suffered heavy losses. How it ended • Finland had to surrender a large area of southeastern Finland, including the city of Viipuri. • Finland also leased the peninsula of Hanko to the Soviet Union for 30 years. Aftermath • The League of Nations denounced the invasion and expelled the Soviet Union. • President Roosevelt gave Finland $10 million in credit. The brave people of Finland fought this invading force with primitive weapons including Molotov cocktails (bottles full of gasoline with a rag in the top of the bottle that was lit and thrown at Russian tanks.) Stalin's forces suffered horrific losses. When the Nazis invaded Russia, Finland came in on the Nazi side. They played a big part in the 900-day siege of Leningrad. Soviet forces drove out the finish military contingent. After World War II, Josef Stalin took over all of Eastern Europe. He did not make a move to Finland. Here is the official explanation: Stalin did not invade Finland at the end of World War II because, despite having the military power to do so, he deemed it strategically unnecessary to antagonize the country further, considering Finland had already ceded significant territory to the Soviet Union during the Winter War and had largely aligned itself with the Allied powers by the war's end, preventing them from becoming a potential threat to the Soviet Union; additionally, a full invasion would have been costly in terms of lives and resources, which were needed for post-war reconstruction. In my humble opinion, Finland caused the Soviet Union such awful losses that Stalin had not the stomach for a repeat of the first Finnish invasion. I think that Putin will adopt the same attitude toward Ukraine.

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The Economist Magazine Cover For 02/08/2025 Beware Of Online Scams!

The Economist Read in browser February 8th 2025 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image The Economist Edward Carr Deputy editor We were keen to step back from the headlines this week. Since making landfall on January 20th, Storm Donald has battered the news cycle with hurricane-force bombast and a multi-vortex tornado of executive orders. We covered the tempest once again in this issue, reporting on the turmoil over tariffs and Gaza. But for our cover we chose to focus on people who are as bent on remaining anonymous as the Oval Office Aeolus is determined to be at the eye of it all. I am talking about scammers. Online fraud is a sophisticated industry that steals over $500bn a year from victims all around the world. It employs perhaps 1.5m people. In “Scam Inc”, our eight-part podcast series released this week, we describe the crime, the criminals and the untold suffering they cause. Scamming already rivals the global drugs trade, but it is growing much faster. It is the most significant change in transnational organised crime in decades. Our coverage draws on months of reporting by Sue-Lin Wong, our South-East Asia correspondent, and Sam Colbert, one of our producers. Our thought for the cover was to adapt the artwork for the podcast. Here are a couple of ideas that we used for the podcast. The first episode of “Scam Inc” tells the story of Shan Hanes, the chief executive of a bank in rural Kansas, who was manipulated into investing $47m in crypto, most of it other people’s money. He was in the thrall of a woman called Bella, whom he had met on LinkedIn. A part-time pastor, he also stole from his church. Even after the bank failed and his life had fallen apart, Mr Hanes could not believe that he had been duped. He flew to Australia in the hope that Bella would help get the money back. She never turned up. Unfortunately, neither of these designs capture the enormity of such a crime. Mr Hanes was the victim of what is known as “pig-butchering”. In the original Chinese that is known as 杀猪盘, or sha zhu pan, criminal slang for a technique in which scammers identify a mark, win their confidence over weeks or months, get them to invest and then mercilessly squeeze “every last drop of juice” from them, their family and friends. This design takes that idea literally—so much so that unless you are already familiar with it, you may be baffled. The Economist Here we have combined innovative tech, butchering and the crooks’ raid on people’s savings by depicting a piggy bank and a cyber-hammer. The Chinese criminal syndicates run a digital gig economy. Rather than being hierarchical mafias, they form an underground network that is scalable and hard to stop. One group may specialise in contacting marks, another in coaching them to invest in crypto and a third in laundering their stolen money. All of this takes place online. Once again, though, unless you know that the hammer is supposed to be digital, it is a bit confusing. This gets at the idea of an out-of-reach, upside-down world of lawless syndicates and broken lives. Pig-butchers work from compounds that host production lines of scammers, some of whom are trafficked and held there as forced labour. The compounds contain supermarkets, brothels and gambling dens—as well as torture chambers for workers who cause trouble. They are a cross between a prison camp and a company town. Some of the profits buy protection from politicians and officials. In the Philippines a Chinese national called Alice Guo became the mayor of a small, run-down town, where she built a scamming complex. In 2019-24 over $400m passed through her bank accounts. In Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar cybercrime is a mainstay of the economy. Scam states are likely to become even harder to deal with than narco states. As so often, simplicity won the day. The barbed hook is an allusion to the fact that everyone becomes a potential target of the scammers simply by going about their lives. The scammers manipulate their targets by preying on their emotions, not only by feigning romance, but by exploiting all human frailties: fear, loneliness, greed, grief and boredom. Among the victims we have identified are the relatives of the very FBI investigators whose job is to shut scams down. This is where that design took us. The drawing has more life than a photomontage. A subtitle advertised how much reporting had gone into our work. Unfortunately, just now everything seems to favour the scammers. Advanced malware helps them harvest sensitive data from victims’ devices. Online marketplaces supply them with tools and services, including web domains and AI software. By combining voice-changing and face-changing AI with translation services and torrents of stolen data sold on underground markets, the scammers will be able to target more victims in more places. The Trump tornado is far from blowing itself out. Doubtless, we will feature it on our cover before long. But another storm is raging in the shadows online, and many of us are barely aware of it. Finally, many thanks to all of you who entered a design for our cover competition. It is a festival of creativity. We will send out the shortlist of our seven favourite ideas in a special Cover Story newsletter next week. You will have a chance to vote on your pick; and then I will announce the winners. Cover image • View large image (“Scam Inc”) Backing stories → The vast and sophisticated global enterprise that is Scam Inc (Leader) → Online scams may already be as big a scourge as illegal drugs (Briefing) → Scam Inc: our eight-part podcast series investigating the sinister world of online fraud

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Did The Russian GRU Bring Down The Lear Jet In Philadelphia on Friday?

The First Sunday in February Is Here: As always, my radar is on a 360-degree sweep, looking for things that normal media outlets miss. I was in my study early Friday evening. News Nation delivered a shocking report that was most disturbing. A Lear Jet had lifted off from The Executive Airport in North Philadelphia. As it climbed, the pilot lost control. The jet crashed into an open field. A huge explosion followed. As more details came out, it was revealed that the aircraft was an older Lear Jet. It was carrying Mexican citizens on an emergency medivac flight that would stop in Missouri and proceed to Tijuana. Most likely, oxygen bottles were on the plane to support the deathly ill patient. Initial speculation was that a spark ignited the oxygen bottles, causing an explosion. The National Traffic Safety Bureau will spend months doing a detailed investigation before official findings are released. I went to full alert. The Ukraine war has disrupted conventional military thinking. A couple of unsophisticated drones can sink a major capital vessel of the Russian Navy. One hundred grams of explosives on a bicycle seat can kill two very senior and heavily guarded Russian generals. Putin's GRU has shown that a tiny explosive charge strategically placed can bring down a large jet airliner. His GRU targeted DHL cargo jets. A small explosive device was planted in innocuous packages. In 4 of the 5 cases, the explosive devices were detected and removed from the plane's cargo. In the fifth case, an explosive device was not detected. It detonated in midair. A major jet airliner was brought down. Vladimir Putin is taking savage losses in Ukraine and on Russian territory occupied by Ukrainian forces. Donald Trump was expected to cease all aid to Ukraine when he came into office and force an end to the war. Things have not gone according to Putin's hopes. He may have ordered the GRU to cause a plane crash on US soil as a warning to Trump. The Executive Airport in North Philadelphia was a perfect venue for such an attack. It did not have the security that the excellent Philadelphia International Airport has. GRU planners would have become aware of the medivac flight. A tiny explosive device was planted on the plane. The plan was to detonate it on liftoff. The goal was to have the plane heavily loaded with fuel crash at the nearby major shopping mall or a large concentration of row houses with devastating property damage and civilian casualties as the massive amount of jet fuel caught fire and rapidly spread. Luckily the plane crashed in an open field. Give thanks to your higher power for your good fortune in life. -JackW

The Economist Magazine Cover For 02/01/2025

Cover Story: The revolt against regulation Inbox The Economist Unsubscribe 10:04 AM (3 hours ago) to me The Economist Read in browser February 1st 2025 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image The Economist If you think you have what it takes to design an Economist cover, enter our competition by February 3rd. You’ll be in with a chance of winning a copy of our new Cover Story annual, which assembles our covers of 2024 week by week. Edward Carr Deputy editor This was another week when the Trumpian news cycle imposed itself on our choice of cover—not on what we wanted to write about, but on how we illustrated it. I suspect that the remaining 206 weeks of this presidency will see plenty more covers go the same way. Our theme was slashing red tape and it is a heroic one. Javier Milei has wielded a chainsaw against Argentine regulations. Narendra Modi’s advisers are quietly confronting India’s triplicate-loving babus. Rachel Reeves, Britain’s chancellor, wants to overhaul planning rules and expand London’s Heathrow Airport. Even Vietnam’s Communists have a scheme to shrink the bureaucracy. Done right, the anti-red-tape revolution could usher in faster economic growth, lower prices and new technology. Here is where that thought leads. We have Eugène Delacroix’s painting that commemorates the revolution of 1830 in which Liberty dispatched the reviled Charles X. In our version she is brandishing a sharp pair of scissors, ready to dispatch an equally pernicious web of red tape. Some of us thought that it was odd to evoke revolutionary France in order to illustrate a theme that has often been championed by the right. However, politicians on the left have realised that, with high interest rates and towering public debt, rapid growth is the only way to make welfare states affordable. Besides, the reason to cut rules is not just to enhance enterprise, but freedom, too. We liked this, but then along came Mr Trump’s sledgehammer executive orders—some of them weakened and rescinded within days. Because the president risks making deregulation seem reckless, our heroic imagery would not work. One alternative was the world swathed in red tape. It has the virtue of being accurate. Americans spend a total of 12bn hours a year complying with federal rules. The federal code runs to 180,000 pages, up from 20,000 in the 1960s. In the past five years the European Parliament has enacted more than twice as many laws as America. In Britain, well-meaning rules propounded by newt-fanciers obstruct, delay and raise the cost of new infrastructure. But we use a lot of globes and this one lacks drama. The Economist These two are better at getting across the scale of the problem. In much of the rich world getting anything built has become a daunting task, keeping house prices high. Highway projects suffer cost overruns and delays. Proposals to dig mines in America endure nearly a decade in permitting hell. Over-regulation most hurts small businesses, deterring newcomers. Incumbents sit back, knowing that they are sheltered. These ideas are downbeat. The figure lost in the forest has a chainsaw, but it is a lonely and forbidding place. We wanted to be more enthusiastic. You need only look at history to see that deregulation can pep up the animal spirits. Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, India in the early 1990s and southern Europe in the 2020s all sped ahead after their leaders undertook pro-market reforms. Under Mr Milei, Argentina is growing again; deregulation has brought the prices of some imports down by fully 35%. The marching scissors certainly convey efficacy. But they also have an unfortunate overtone of militarism. This is a portrayal in which the thickets of bureaucracy are being cut back by an overmighty state. That paradox is confusing. This paradox, by contrast, is amusing. The scissors are stuck to the wall by the very same red tape they are supposed to cut. It is a nod to the reality that reforms are often stymied by incumbent businesses, trade unions or lobby groups who stand to lose from deregulation, even if society as a whole will benefit. Our designers liked this image because it echoes the “Comedian”, an installation by Maurizio Cattelan that sold at auction for $6.2m in November. The editorial team was less sure, though. Even if you already know the story of this concave comestible, it is hard to work out what is going on. This was the idea that held our attention. Rules and government are essential in any society. Without them, and the bureaucrats to enforce them, life would be shorter and less secure. But this cover shows how the rules can proliferate until they are suffocating business and society. For the final design, we overlaid our masthead with the sticky stuff, we got rid of the words “red tape”—you don’t want to repeat the visual metaphor—and we made the tape itself into such a tangled mess that you are just itching to peel it back. A bit like all that bureaucracy. Cover image • View large image (“The revolt against regulation”) Backing stories → Milei, Modi, Trump: an anti-red-tape revolution is under way (Leader) → Many governments talk about cutting regulation but few manage to (Briefing) → Even in India, bureaucracy is being curtailed (Briefing) → Javier Milei, free-market revolutionary (The Americas)

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Trump's First Week-THe Real Truth

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Trump's first week: The Real Story Let it be known Robert Reich Jan 26 READ IN APP Friends, Before I post my Sunday cartoon I want to share with you some thoughts about the first week of Trump II. The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.” Rubbish. What’s Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites. Trump is leading a move to replace democracy with oligarchy. He’s implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by a handful of absurdly rich men. He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another — over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone. Trump’s divisive policies will cause great harm, to be sure, and we must do everything we can to protect those who are vulnerable to them. But his cruel divisiveness is deflecting attention from the main event. The media reported on all the hot-buttons Trump pushed: The government now recognizes only two “immutable” genders, male and female. Migrants (now referred to as “aliens”) are being turned away at the border. Immigration agents are freed to target hospitals, schools, and churches in search of people to deport. Diversity efforts in the federal government have been dismantled and employees turned into snitches. Federal money will be barred from paying for many abortions. All awful to be sure, but the bigger story is Trump’s consolidation of power — substituting loyalists for experts across the government, using retribution to intimidate others, purging the government’s independent inspectors general, giving the Defense Department more authority over civilian life (and putting a raving loyalist in charge), giving Elon Musk authority to cut spending and roll back regulations, and readying a massive tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations. Americans aren’t seeing this big story yet because Trump’s divisiveness is masking it. One example: Trump fired Lina Khan, the aggressive monopoly-buster chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and replaced her with corporate stooge Andrew Ferguson. As a result, giant corporations and their CEOs are now free to get even bigger — merging with one another, acquiring smaller companies, and using predatory bullying to wipe out competitors. These are key steps on the road toward even more concentrated oligarchic control. Yet what’s been reported this week is that Ferguson is purging diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies from the Federal Trade Commission. I’m not playing down the importance of DEI. I’m just saying that the really big shift is happening behind the rightward flip. In fact, the terms “left” and “right” mean less and less now. The big story is about power and wealth moving into fewer and fewer hands. Trump is the frontman. The three richest men in the world (Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg) stood prominently before him when he was sworn in last week. Trump has appointed other billionaires to key positions. Behind them is a coterie of billionaires pushing for more oligarchic control of America (among them, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, and Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone). Their two key inside players are Musk and JD Vance. The oligarchs are counting on Vance to become president when Trump is incapacitated or dies in office, or clings to power beyond 2028 and turns power over to Vance. Vance will manage the final transition to an oligarchic form of government. Recall that Vance would never have been elected senator from Ohio in 2022 were it not for Thiel’s $15 million investment in him (by far the largest portion of Vance’s campaign fund). Thiel knew what he was buying. Vance had worked for Thiel’s California venture capital firm before running for the Senate and was part of Thiel’s group of rich crypto bros, tech executives, back-to-the-landers, and disaffected far-right intellectuals. Because Thiel had been a major funder of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, he had significant influence with Trump when urging him to pick Vance for vice president. Thiel once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power. That’s the whole point. Thiel and his fellow billionaire oligarchs want it all. Their intellectual godfather is Curtis Yarvin, a 51-year-old computer engineer who believes that political power in the United States has been held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream media, whose commitment to equality and justice is eroding social order. Yarvin thinks democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful. They should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major “shareholders” select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. The first step toward achieving Yarvin’s vision was offered by Vance in a 2021 podcast — replace “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state … with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say” – as did Andrew Jackson – that “the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.” Yarvin’s emphasis on the inefficiency of democratic government is the seed for Musk’s department of government efficiency, itself another step toward Yarvin’s joint-stock corporation of oligarchs. A third step: cryptocurrency substitutes for the U.S. dollar. This would shift financial controls out of a democratically elected system of government and into the hands of oligarchs who control crypto. Make no mistake: Trump’s first week was a catastrophe for many vulnerable people. But the biggest story was his startling initial moves from democracy to oligarchy. My hope lies in Americans noticing this. As I’ve said, not since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into power so unapologetically, unashamedly, and defiantly. Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover. The backlash, when it comes, will be stunning. Share So glad you can be here today. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber of this community so we can do even more.