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by ian bremmer
Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Israel’s war plan has led directly to this juncture (though Trump’s own decision to tear up the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018 arguably paved the way). The culmination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-long crusade to neutralize Iran’s nuclear threat to the Jewish state, ‘Operation Rising Lion’ began early on June 13 with Hollywood-worthy sabotage to disable Iranian air defenses, followed by the largest airstrikes on Iranian territory since the 1980-88 conflict with Iraq.
The Israel Defense Forces have since methodically destroyed significant portions of Iran’s missile launchpads, drone factories, and above-ground nuclear facilities. They have decimated its military leadership. They have gone after its domestic energy production and industrial capacity. On June 16, the IDF announced it achieved full air supremacy over Tehran, meaning Israeli planes can now fly over Iran’s capital without getting shot down – an extraordinary statement of facts on the ground.
Iran has been unable to mount much of an effective response. It has fired hundreds of missiles and drones against Israeli population centers, but very few projectiles (under 5 percent) have penetrated Israel’s layered defenses. Though these barrages have caused damage to mostly residential buildings and killed scores of Israeli civilians, as Tehran’s ballistic stockpile has started to dwindle, each wave has been smaller than the last. Israel’s advantage is only set to grow the longer the war goes on.
Yet the Israeli campaign has a hole. Despite severe damage inflicted upon Iranian capabilities and escalation dominance, Israel cannot achieve its chief war aim on its own: destroying Iran’s nuclear program. The partial degradation of the Natanz, Isfahan, and Parchin nuclear facilities, along with the assassination of 14 of Tehran’s top nuclear scientists, have set it back by months. But crucially, the Fordow enrichment plant, which sits more than 300ft beneath earth and reinforced concrete, remains out of Israel’s reach. Only the US Air Force’s Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or bunker-buster bombs, can “finish the job.”
Israel can and will continue to hammer at Iran’s other nuclear, missile, and military infrastructure for weeks (if not months), but a war that ends with Fordow guarantees that Tehran retains the means to redouble its efforts to acquire a bomb once the smoke clears. Israel’s only path to victory therefore runs through President Trump.
Early on, Trump drew a clear red line: American forces would stay out unless Iran escalated directly against American interests, such as by attacking US military bases or interfering with shipping through the strategic chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz. The president ran as a peacemaker, promising to end foreign wars and keep US troops out of them. To his credit, he has tried – he just hasn’t been very effective at it. Even after sanctioning Israel’s June 13 operation, he still insisted the US had nothing to do with it and urged the Iranians to return to the negotiating table, despite being frustrated at their continued refusal to compromise.
But over the last few days, signs have emerged that the president’s position has shifted. On June 15, Trump said “it’s possible we could get involved.” The day after, on Monday, he issued a cryptic warning to Tehran’s 10 million residents to “immediately evacuate” the city. And on Tuesday, he implicitly threatened to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and called for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” (all caps assuredly not mine).
In tandem, the Trump administration and the MAGA media apparatus started laying the political groundwork for a one-off US strike, making the case to the isolationist wing of the GOP that one-off airstrikes – as opposed to boots on the ground and long-term occupation – to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons are not only consistent with the president’s “America First” approach, but necessary to achieve his “peace through strength” vision. Even Vice President JD Vance, a vocal critic of US military intervention in the Middle East and the cabinet’s leading isolationist, echoed the new party line.
Trump has reportedly not made up his mind yet. He said today that it’s not “too late” for Iran to avoid a US attack if it agrees to give up its nuclear program. But as Israel and Iran exchange blows for the seventh day, the president could give the go-ahead to strike any second now. The retaliatory threat to US forces in Iraq should give him pause; two dozen ballistic missiles or sustained short-range rocket fire could overwhelm the air defenses shielding American bases in close proximity to Iran. A single successful barrage causing American fatalities could trap the United States in another open-ended quagmire. Ultimately, though, the perceived upside – encouraged by Netanyahu – of going down in history as the guy who eliminated the Iranian nuclear threat is likely to prove too tempting to pass up on. The US military has already deployed enough air and naval assets to the region to enable a strike and defend against potential retaliation.
Despite last-ditch efforts from both sides to avert a direct clash, Tehran looks unlikely to capitulate; Khamenei swore as much today. The leadership’s priority is regime survival, with domestic enrichment viewed as a cornerstone of the regime’s long-term survival strategy – the ultimate insurance policy against a Libya-style overthrow. Surrendering the nuclear program under threat of US bombardment would sacrifice long-term deterrence and legitimacy for the sake of short-term respite – a “poisoned chalice” even more bitter than Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1988 decision to accept a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While devastating, enduring the loss of Fordow would at least allow the regime to live to fight another day and perhaps even rebuild the nuclear program in secret once the dust settles.
With Iranian capitulation all but ruled out and no other clear off-ramp for Trump to walk back his ultimatum, the likely outcome is a US strike on Fordow in the coming days. Tehran would face growing pressure to retaliate against US bases, Gulf energy infrastructure, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz (through which 20% of the global oil supply flows) to restore deterrence and maintain credibility at home. But, fire and brimstone rhetoric notwithstanding, a weakened regime in survival mode will probably (read: hopefully) refrain from purposefully broadening the conflict further, especially in ways that would force it to fight a three-front war against Israel, the US, and the Gulf Arab states. Iran might opt to harass oil shipping and local export facilities instead, possibly leaning on its proxies, while stopping short of measures that invite major retaliation. Trump, for his part, shows little appetite to indulge Netanyahu’s regime-change fantasies.
The greater danger lies in the fog of war. Israeli decapitation strikes have fractured Iran’s chain of command; even if the consensus among the decision-makers is to proceed cautiously, a rogue Revolutionary Guard faction might decide to take matters into its own hands and shoot at US barracks, or a wayward missile could hit an oil tanker and blow $120-a-barrel crude into the global economy. The longer the conflict runs, the higher the odds of unintended escalation. And if it’s backed into a corner, such as via overt Israeli or American attempts to induce regime change (no matter how likely to fail and/or backfire), Iran can always decide to raise the stakes, retaliation risks be damned.
President Trump could well still pull back from the brink. Just hours ago, he said to reporters at the White House, “I may do it, I may not do it." The option for the United States to take out Fordow won’t go away in a month or six. At this point in time, it will unnecessarily put American troops at risk, and it won’t result in regime change. In fact, it’s more likely to rally Iranians around the flag, empower hardliners, accelerate clandestine nuclear activities, and create pressure for prolonged American involvement. It would be smarter to allow Israel to continue degrading Iranian nuclear, missile, and military capabilities while setting back its nuclear program many months further.
But evidence suggests Trump is about to pull the trigger. When he does, headlines will hail an American-Israeli triumph. The true picture will be more mixed: Iran’s nuclear program shattered but not permanently destroyed, its regime weakened but not dead; the United States deeper in a conflict it vowed to avoid; and Israel confronting a mortal enemy whose resolve to acquire nuclear arms will only intensify. The Middle East will be 16 centrifuge cascades weaker but no closer to peace.
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump activated 2,000 members of the California National Guard to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation efforts in Los Angeles, after small but highly visible demonstrations had popped up across the city in the days prior – with some instances of violence, opportunistic looting, and property damage. California Governor Gavin Newsom disputed that federal intervention was necessary and condemned Trump’s deployment decision as illegal and inflammatory, blaming it for stoking the protests.
Though the protests had largely petered out by then, on Tuesday the president dispatched an additional 2,000-plus National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines to the area. Downtown LA had a quiet night on the back of a curfew, but anti-ICE (and, more broadly, anti-Trump) demonstrations have started to spread to other major cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta, with more planned in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Antonio, and Seattle. Texas Governor Greg Abbot has already called in the National Guard ahead of any potential unrest in his state.
Here are my eight key takeaways:
- Trump’s decision to send federal troops into Los Angeles was extreme. It marked the first time in 60 years that the National Guard had been deployed to a US state without the consent of its governor. The last such instance was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama Guard in defiance of Governor George Wallace, one of the nation’s leading segregationists, to protect civil rights demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr. from violence. Needless to say, federal supremacy over states’ rights is being asserted in a very different context, by a very different president, and in service of a very different goal today.
- It’s legal – for now. Trump’s deployment pushes the envelope politically, but as long as the troops limit their role to protecting federal personnel and facilities while refraining from taking law-enforcement actions (as they reportedly have thus far), it will stay within the bounds of presidential authority. That’s a key legal distinction, as the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars active-duty forces from engaging in domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the 1807 Insurrection Act. That’s a step Trump hasn’t taken (yet at least), suggesting that he still sees as high a bar for it as he did during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
- The door is open to a more radical use of emergency powers. The counterpoint is that Trump referred to the LA protesters as a “violent insurrectionist mob” (he does know a little something about those) and on Tuesday refused to take the invocation of the Insurrection Act off the table. He also warned that any protesters at this weekend’s military parade in Washington, DC – peaceful or not – “will be met with very big force,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hinted at a desire to use military forces on domestic soil more extensively going forward. This pattern suggests that Trump’s threshold for activating emergency powers or using troops against Americans is lower than last time around, when he was repeatedly talked out of extreme steps by institutionalist advisors. I wouldn’t be shocked if the administration invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (aka IEEPA, the same law it used to levy reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day) to freeze the assets of individual American citizens and organizations it accused of aiding and abetting “foreign invaders” (aka undocumented aliens). Or if it used the Communications Act to pressure internet platforms into throttling protest-related content. These scenarios may sound far-fetched, but so did the unilateral deployment of the National Guard and Marine Corps to Los Angeles less than 200 days into the first year of the Trump presidency. In his second term, Trump has proven willing to push the legal and political limits of executive power, against precedent and despite long odds of success.
- Trump’s LA deployment was designed to score political points, not restore peace. The City of Los Angeles was unaffected by the protests, which were confined to a handful of downtown city blocks. The Los Angeles Police Department had things under control (at least until Trump escalated the situation), and local officials saw no reason to request federal help. In fact, they warned that adding federal troops to the mix would risk heightening tensions and endanger public safety. But Trump wasn’t trying to solve a security problem – he was playing politics.
- Trump is eager to pick public fights over immigration. This is the one issue area where the president has had consistently positive approval ratings, save for a brief dip underwater caused by the administration’s mishandling of the Abrego Garcia case. For Trump, the political upside of doubling down on the migrant crackdown is twofold. First, it shifts attention toward his biggest strength and away from headlines that are more problematic for the administration, such as his failure to secure trade deals, his inability to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and his messy breakup with Elon Musk. Second, it forces Democrats into defending politically unsympathetic targets and positions, much like they did with Abrego Garcia (before the White House overplayed its hand) and Harvard University.
- The optics of the LA protests play straight into Trump’s hands. Images of burning Waymos and protestors flying Mexican flags lend credence to the White House’s false claim that undocumented immigrants are dangerous foreign invaders and their defenders are radical anti-American traitors, allowing the president to discredit opponents of mass deportations as threats to public order and safety. That only a small number of troublemakers were illegal aliens doesn’t matter; Trump is betting (correctly, in my view) those visuals will drive public opinion away from the demonstrators and toward more aggressive deportation policies.
- More deportations are coming. Trump has made measurable progress in curbing illegal border crossings, but so far, deportations have fallen far short of his campaign pledge (and even of deportations during Joe Biden’s last year in office). That’s not surprising; large-scale interior removals are much more politically, economically, and logistically fraught than border enforcement. But according to the Wall Street Journal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently ordered ICE to step up its game, demanding that they stop targeting migrants with criminal records, asylum requests, and court petitions and instead “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens” at their jobs and schools. In other words, snag anyone who looks illegal, no probable cause (let alone warrant) needed. That approach was reportedly what sparked the LA protests last week. The backlash was instrumental to Miller’s goals: by signaling that Trump is making good on his deportation promise, standoffs with law enforcement can make deportations more popular and give Trump the political capital to ramp up more visible and disruptive workplace and neighborhood raids, particularly in Democratic-run cities. These operations will trigger more protests, which will in turn be met with more repression and stepped-up enforcement, and so on.
- On immigration, don’t bet on TACO. Trump faces fewer internal constraints in implementing his policy agenda on immigration than in any other area. Unless and until it starts dragging on his approval ratings, he is likely to double down: more aggressive raids, more confrontations with Democratic governors and mayors, more troop deployments to quell public protests. Mass deportations will disrupt local life in places like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. Backlash to aggressive enforcement tactics, family separations, and mistaken detentions will be the primary source of domestic unrest in the coming months, but Trump won’t back down. This is a fight the White House is happy to fight.
Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles was less about taking control of the streets and more about taking control of the narrative. The strategy is confrontational by design, with immigrants and Democrats as foils and civil unrest as a feature, not a bug. This playbook may work politically. But in the long term, the result will be more conflict: between cities and Washington, between red and blue, between civilians and the military, and between competing visions of American identity. The most politically divided and dysfunctional industrialized nation will only become more so.
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Trump’s Harvard crackdown is good politics, but his war on global talent will cost America dearly
President Donald Trump has decided to end federal funding for Harvard University. He’s also warning that all international students, including those now enrolled and working toward a degree, will have their visas suspended going forward. A federal judge has issued a stay to block this move, and the fight could wind up in front of the Supreme Court.
What’s the point of all this?
Trump considers Harvard a political adversary, and he will use the charge that the university has failed to protect Jewish students and faculty on campus from harassment by pro-Palestinian activists to punish it. Harvard has also refused to end race-based hiring practices, which the Supreme Court has ruled is illegal. Harvard says it’s already addressing both these issues, and courts will be busy in the coming weeks sorting out these claims and counterclaims.
Trump is very happy to have this fight, and the punishment is the point. He knows that, unlike, say, China, Harvard can’t effectively counterpunch. He also knows that when Democrats defend Harvard, Trump’s base voters, some of whom might be getting jumpy about inflation expectations, will rally to their president. After all, Harvard is an elite, rich, progressively minded institution – and therefore a big, beautiful target for populist attack.
We’ve seen this page of Trump’s playbook before. His immigration police arrest an illegal migrant, the government deports him to El Salvador without due process, and he watches as Democrats will jump to defend a man that Trump’s allies claim (without proof) is a member of a vicious criminal gang.
The message: Dems fight for illegal immigrant drug dealers while I fight for you.
In the Harvard case, Trump says he’ll strip the Ivy League School of $3 billion in federal funding and divert the money toward the trade schools and community colleges where his voters are more likely to send their kids. These are just a couple of the many reasons that Democrats remain even less popular than Trump.
That’s the politics. What about the reality?
First, the money Harvard stands to lose isn’t going toward the Comparative Literature department or printing up flyers for open air seminars on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not going for the hiring of more faculty for the Queer Theory curriculum. It’s mostly invested in scientific research, particularly in the School of Public Health. It is money intended to advance our understanding of multiple sclerosis and to limit the spread of tuberculosis. The long-term damage to public health here should be obvious to anyone.
Second, if Harvard were the only university Trump was targeting, then other great schools could absorb the students, including international students, that Harvard will lose. They could fill the research vacuum that penalizing Harvard will create. But no one should be confident that Trump won’t attack many more of the schools with the prestige, brand value, and alumni networks that attract students, parents, faculty, administrators, and resources.
And for foreign students, Trump is doing much more than simply suspending visas. He’s telling them in plain language that they won’t have the same rights as the Americans they go to class with. They won’t have free speech protections. Their smartphones can be taken and searched for evidence of opinions the Trump administration doesn’t like. If they text the wrong message or stop to listen to the wrong rally, they can be deported without even a hearing.
That will have a chilling effect on the ability of American universities to attract the most talented and motivated students from around the world – with implications that last long after Donald Trump has left the stage.
When my grandparents came to this country, and my grandmother passed through Ellis Island, seeing the Statue of Liberty with their own eyes was deeply important. The message was clear: the world’s best and brightest can build a home in America, for themselves and their descendants. Those with the courage and determination to flee repression and deprivation in their homelands will be welcome in this country. That’s a source of our national pride, but also of our national strength.
Today, America welcomes Afrikaner farmers from South Africa fleeing a genocide against white South Africans that does not exist, despite the fake videos and doctored photos that suggest otherwise. We won’t accept refugees fleeing the oppression of a leftist regime in Venezuela or the chaos in Haiti. We won’t take Palestinian children in the line of fire in Gaza.
Trump says Harvard’s hiring policies should be blind to questions of race. But by welcoming white South African farmers to the front of the immigration line while kicking talented non-white foreign students out of the country, the rest of the world won’t conclude the current administration is color blind.
Most of the rest of the world isn’t white. Therefore, most of the smartest, most talented, most determined students – and the workers best able to build dynamic private-sector companies – around the world aren’t white. The only way the US can compete over time against countries like China and India, which have a lot more people, is to continue to use America’s immigration advantage.
Does the average American want a world of diminished US influence? An America far less connected to the rest of the world? I don’t believe that.
Our politics is deeply dysfunctional, but our people – in states red and blue – still want to live in a dynamic and generous country that creates the opportunities that other nations can’t, won’t, or both. A nation that has always benefited from its openness.
By telling international students and legal migrants they are less welcome, less worthy, will not be well treated, should not come to American universities, should not bring their ideas and energy to help fuel our economy, we will inflict profound and lasting damage on our own country.
For all these reasons, Trump’s war on Harvard is both shrewd short-term politics and deeply destructive for the United States of America over the years to come.
Last week, I had the privilege and pleasure of serving as commencement speaker for graduates of the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University, my alma mater. And the venue was the Louisiana Superdome, a little bigger of a house than I’m used to.
It was a great day for me, and I’ll always be grateful to Tulane for the invitation. But it was a sobering experience too. It’s one thing to look out over a crowd of this year’s graduates, young women and men who are well prepared for challenges ahead but who may not yet appreciate just how messed up our world is right now. It’s quite another when you’re looking into the faces of this year’s graduates of your alma mater. The people who now sit where you sat. It makes me more aware of how just much has happened on the road from 1989 to 2025 – how much we couldn’t have imagined.
Here's the speech in full…
It’s great to be back at Tulane.
And I'm honored to be your distinguished alum.
I realize it's possible you've decided to give me this award because you neglected to look into my time here as a student.
I was 15 when I came to Tulane, a kid from the projects outside Boston. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school. This led to an unusually exciting freshman year. I lied about my age, both for drinking purposes (which I had never done before), and also for dating purposes (which I had also never done before).
I missed classes, slept through a final, had a 1.9 GPA my first term. When they put me on probation and threatened to send me home to Boston, I figured I should spend less time at the Boot and more time in my classes.
In the end, I graduated without further public controversy. For me, Tulane was a laboratory of people and personalities, of studies and learning, of theory and of facts on the ground. I have the school of liberal arts to thank that I can tell the difference.
But when I graduated, I realized that no one actually hired political scientists, and so I decided to start a company to persuade people that political science mattered. Thirty years later, I've made a career of it. I’ve made it possible for at least a few political scientists to have jobs doing just that.
I suppose that’s the reason I’m receiving Tulane's distinguished alumni award (and truly, I am honored by it). But at the same time, I am a little bummed out about it, because compared to pretty much all of the parents here, I am failing most dramatically in my broader professional efforts. It's tough to be a political scientist right now. The stuff I work on — helping understand political leaders, governments, the world order — it's all falling apart.
Back when I graduated this was not true. I was class of 1989. That's the year you want to graduate as a political scientist. The Wall came down. We won the cold war. Collective security, free trade, rule of law, democracy. For everybody.
The problem is that we were winners, but we weren't leaders. The leaders were the people that won back in World War II and that created the world order on the ashes of that destroyed world. The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, General MacArthur rebuilding Japan. The United Nations. The US-led global order.
Today, we've grown too comfortable as the most powerful country in that world, with the almighty dollar, the only global military, the top global businesses, and the best universities. We are in the most stable part of the world, with generally friendly neighbors (at least until we started fighting with them). Protected by both great oceans.
For generations now we have been the most privileged nation, but our own political system has become the most dysfunctional among rich democracies. Most everyone agrees on this. We even agree on who to blame. It's the “other guys.
So, what are we going to do about it? I use my voice to be speak up about it. We can't fix a problem until we identify it. I get things wrong, but I say what I truly believe in the hopes that helps other people do the same.
Because when we stand up, when law firms stand up, when universities stand up, courage is contagious. We have to show people a way.
Tulane class of 2025, what will you do about it?
First, you already have. You chose the liberal arts, which means, at some point, you made a conscious decision to pursue ideas over income – at least initially. It’s brave. It’s noble. It’s…confusing to your family.
But what you’ve been doing here matters, because while engineers are out there designing drones, you’ve been asking the more important question: who gets to decide where they fly? While business schools are simulating markets, you’ve been asking: who is this economy actually working for? While accountants are balancing the books, you've been asking: why do we pay taxes?
Let’s talk about the world you’re walking into. It’s no 1989, but it’s lively. We’ve got a climate crisis, a technology arms race, and a bunch of hot wars. We’ve got global alliances falling apart, superpowers behaving like exes who keep texting each other at 2AM, and a US domestic political environment that feels like a mad libs game with too many sazeracs.
But I’m not here to depress you. That’s what Twitter’s for.
I'm here to remind you: this is your moment. And no, not in the “you are the future” way that commencement speakers love to say before the parents applaud them. I mean you actually have an edge. You studied complexity. You learned that history doesn’t repeat, but it does plagiarize. You know that “unprecedented” really just means we didn’t study the past closely enough. You know that context is what matters, and that headlines don't tell the story. In a world of polarization, you’ve studied nuance. In a time of information overload, you’ve practiced discernment. In an age obsessed with outcomes, you’ve explored meaning.
Hopefully you have also learned along the way that -- ChatGPT notwithstanding -- hard work does pay off.
So, let me point out that all of those skills I just mentioned don’t just make for good leaders. Those skills make for good people.
Understanding complexity, believing that there is value in the truth, seeking the good in people, and looking beyond the moment right in front of you. Those are skills you need for life.
And you’re in it right now. A lot of ambitious young people set out these markers of achievement for themselves, and of course you’re sitting here on top of a big one. Having achieved one, you push for the next, and so you might think my real adult life begins when I get my first job, when I get out of grad school, when I buy my first home. Don’t do that. Your real adult life is already here. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll have regrets. But you grow from them.
If you stay true to the skills and values that you’ve learned here, if you care about the family and friends that have moved you forward, your life will be rich, whatever path you choose.
So, what should you do with your liberal arts degree? Whatever you want.
Some of you will go into journalism, helping us understand a world spinning faster by the day. Others will work in policy, trying to keep the world from setting itself on fire – literally and metaphorically. Some will become artists, storytellers, teachers, nonprofit leaders, or the only ethics advisor at a tech company full of Stanford dropouts. That job will be important.
I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Your algorithms will try to convince you every day that nuance doesn't matter, and that more stuff and money will make you happy. Fight against that. Stay curious. Stay human. Stay weird, but the good kind of weird – the kind that doesn’t let cynicism turn into detachment.
And please, when you start running things – because trust me that day is sooner than you think – remember what you learned here: that ethics without power doesn't accomplish much, and that power without ethics is what got us here.
I'm counting on you, Tulane graduates. I’m counting on you to be as welcoming to weirdo strangers as you were to me as a 15-year-old freshman.
I’m counting on you to use new technologies, especially AI, that allow for innovation—improving your own capabilities—inconceivable when I graduated.
I’m counting on you to be curious as the world changes around us, to connect more closely with those that are different from you, and to recognize your connections with one another in spite of those differences.
I'm counting on you to be admired not because of your money and privilege but because you act the way others know they should.
I'm counting on you to be inspiring not because of your charisma and personality, but because you set the standard. I'm counting on you to be leaders again. Because if you don't, we're leaving it to the finance majors.
Tulane graduates, I believe in you. My thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell you that.
And congratulations to you on this most important day.
It’s been three and a half years since I first laid out the idea of a technopolar world: one no longer dominated solely by states, but increasingly shaped – and sometimes steered – by a handful of powerful tech companies with the newfound ability to influence economies, societies, politics, and geopolitics.
At the time, I said the power of Big Tech was poised to grow but argued governments wouldn’t go down without a fight and sketched out three potential futures, depending on how the showdown between them played out: one in which tech companies displaced governments as the principal sovereigns of a globalized digital order; one where a tech cold war took hold and states reasserted control over a fragmented cyberspace; and one in which state dominance gave way to a new order led by tech firms.
This week, I published a follow-up in Foreign Affairs – “The Technopolar Paradox: The Frightening Fusion of Tech Power and State Power” – looking at how those predictions have aged, what’s actually happened since 2021, and where we might be heading next.
Spoiler: the trends I flagged back then have only accelerated. But reality has turned out messier, and more dangerous, than anyone could’ve imagined.
Here’s what you need to know.
Technopolarity turbocharged
Let’s rewind to early 2022. Russian tanks are bearing down on Kyiv. Ukraine’s government and military command structure is under threat as the whole country faces an imminent communications blackout.
Enter Elon Musk.
Within days, SpaceX ships Starlink terminals to Ukraine and flips on satellite internet coverage, effectively keeping the country online and in the fight. For a time, he’s hailed as a hero. But months later, when Ukraine asks him to extend that coverage to Crimea to enable a submarine drone strike on Russian naval assets, Musk refuses. He’s worried about escalation. Even the Pentagon can’t change his mind.
Think about that. An unelected billionaire with no formal role in government single-handedly altered the trajectory of a war between nation-states – not once, but multiple times. That was technopolarity in action: private tech actors wielding state-like powers with geopolitical consequences, making decisions that would normally be reserved for presidents, defense ministers, or national security councils, without public accountability.
Over the last few years, the power of tech firms has only deepened. During the pandemic, they became indispensable: for remote work, education, healthcare, and the flow of information (and disinformation). Their influence grew in every sphere – economic, social, and political. And it didn’t stop in the digital world. Tech firms now control critical infrastructure that governments rely on: cloud systems, cybersecurity platforms, data centers, satellites. They’re not just platforms. They’re utilities – with geopolitical consequences.
Governments have tried to claw back power. The EU passed the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. US regulators launched antitrust lawsuits and passed state-level privacy laws. Countries like India, South Africa, and Brazil cracked down on tech platforms. But none of these moves changed who writes the rules of the digital world.
And that was before AI exploded onto the scene and supercharged Big Tech’s lead over states. Suddenly, tech firms weren’t just dominant online. They were defining the frontier of innovation – and the terms of national power. Building advanced AI requires staggering amounts of data, compute, and talent. Only a few companies have these resources. And no government has the ability to move fast enough to rein them in. Even if they could build rules to constrain today’s models, those rules would be outdated by the time they were implemented. Key decisions about how AI shapes our societies, economies, and geopolitics looked bound to be made in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not parliaments or congresses.
Geopolitics strikes back
But just when technopolar consolidation seemed unstoppable, the old forces of geopolitics were making a comeback. Protectionism, economic security, and great power rivalry all returned with a vengeance – especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid growing US-China tensions. In response, governments began to take back control over economic and technological domains they had largely ceded to globalization and free markets.
Washington imposed export bans on advanced semiconductors, blacklisted Chinese firms, and poured billions into reshoring strategic supply chains. China retaliated with restrictions of its own, doubled down on self-reliance, and reined in its tech sector completely. Protectionism and industrial policy became the new global norm.
This retreat from globalization fractured the global tech ecosystem and upended the business models of “globalist” firms like Apple and Tesla, which long depended on open markets and integrated supply chains. “National champions” like Microsoft and Palantir, by contrast, are thriving, profiting off their close ties to the US government in this post-globalization, hyper-securitized, state-aligned era. Tech firms can’t just float above the fray anymore.
Rise of the techno-authoritarians
While states were busy battling for control of digital space, some of Silicon Valley’s leading lights decided they’d rather take over the US state than take orders from it (or resist it).
Back in 2021, I described folks like Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen as “techno-utopians”: visionaries who believed technology could transcend politics and even render governments obsolete. But in recent years, those same people pivoted from wanting to escape the state to trying to capture it.
What explains the shift from libertarian idealism to techno-authoritarian ambition? For one, today’s frontier technologies – from AI to quantum to biotech – can’t scale without state support. That’s made alignment with Washington a strategic necessity. And in an era of great power competition, the rewards of capturing public power have grown alongside the risks of being left out. But some of these tech leaders have grown ideologically hostile to democracy. Thiel has said he doesn’t believe “freedom and democracy are compatible.” Musk once called for a “modern-day Sulla,” in reference to a Roman dictator who dismantled republican institutions in the name of restoring order.
That might have started as a joke, but the governing instinct was real. Musk poured nearly $300 million into helping Trump retake power in 2024 and has since been rewarded with sweeping authority over the federal government. He’s used that perch to purge civil servants, install loyalists, and amass troves of government data – all while maintaining control of his private companies. Suddenly, the same tech overlords who control AI development, space infrastructure, and the digital public square are also shaping public policy and writing their own rules.
The risk isn’t just crony capitalism. It’s the fusion of state and tech power into a hybrid Leviathan where public institutions are reoriented to serve the strategic, commercial, and political goals of a narrow tech elite. Already, reports suggest that confidential IRS, immigration, health, financial, and Social Security data are being consolidated. For all we know, they are being fed into AI models developed by Musk’s xAI to be exploited for commercial gain or even political surveillance. We’re not talking about China’s top-down surveillance state. We’re talking about something more decentralized, more market-driven, and potentially even more dangerous – a system with just as much potential for abuse, fewer checks, and even fewer balances.
What the future looks like
So where does this leave us? Not in a fully tech-dominated world. Not in a state-dominated world. But in a messy hybrid one shaped by two poles of concentrated power.
On one side, we have an increasingly technopolar United States, where a handful of tech firms and leaders enjoy extraordinary power – wielding growing influence not just over digital space and critical infrastructure, but over US public policy and global standards. In some cases, they enjoy the implicit (or explicit) backing of the US government.
On the other side, we have a tightly state-controlled China, where tech firms serve the Chinese Communist Party’s goals.
Caught between these two poles is … everyone else. Europe aspires to digital sovereignty but lacks the homegrown tech muscle to pull it off. Much of the Global South is being pulled toward one model or the other. And global institutions that might once have brokered a balance are being sidelined or dismantled.
And here’s the kicker: though the US and Chinese systems differ in ideology, they’re starting to converge in practice. Both dominant models – American and Chinese – prioritize power, efficiency, and control over consent, accountability, and freedom. Whether authority lies with the state or the corporation, democracy and individual rights are not the default.
Therein lies the paradox of the technopolar age: technologies that were supposed to democratize access to power, information, and opportunity are now enabling more effective forms of centralized, unaccountable control, making it harder to govern democratically and easier for unaccountable elites – public or private – to tighten their grip.
In the West, we risk handing over our democracies to unelected technocrats. In China, the state already runs the show. In both cases, the result is the same: less transparency, less accountability, and more concentration of power – whether in corporate boardrooms or party headquarters.
The question is no longer whether the state can contain Big Tech. It’s whether open societies can survive the fusion of the two. Right now, the answer is very much up in the air.
Viktor Orbán watching his party leave him behind.
For the past fifteen years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has coasted from one election victory to another. Since returning to power in 2010, the self-proclaimed defender of “illiberal democracy” has transformed his country into an “electoral autocracy” – reshaping institutions, rewriting election laws, muzzling independent media, and stacking the courts – where elections are technically free but heavily tilted in his favor, the media landscape is dominated by government allies, and the ruling party – Fidesz – uses the machinery of the state to reward supporters and punish dissent.
All the while, Orbán has proudly cast himself as Europe’s chief populist troublemaker – a pro-Russian crusader against liberalism, immigration, and Brussels bureaucrats, Donald Trump’s man across the Atlantic, and a guy who relishes nothing more than jamming up the European Union’s gears.
His nationalist-populist model inspired imitators and admirers across the West. Where many right-wing populists have flamed out, Orbán has endured, winning elections (four in a row, to be precise) and accumulating more power along the way.
But now, Orbán’s veneer of invincibility is cracking. Suddenly, the world’s most durable populist and Trump’s best friend in Europe looks more vulnerable than ever.
Cracks in the crown
At home, the Hungarian prime minister is facing a newly energized political opposition led by a former protégé-turned-rival named Peter Magyar, who’s managed to do what no other challenger has: unite Hungary’s fragmented anti-Orbán forces. Recent polls show Magyar's center-right Tisza Party holding a commanding double-digit lead over Orbán’s Fidesz among committed voters. Whether or not it’ll hold until the elections in early 2026, that’s no small advantage in a country where the ruling party has rewritten the electoral rules in its favor.
Magyar’s appeal lies in his hybrid message: anti-corruption and pro-transparency, but also nationalist and socially conservative enough to peel away disillusioned Fidesz voters. His rise has upended Orbán’s usual playbook, which relied on a splintered opposition and a monopoly on patriotic rhetoric.
Now, for the first time in years, Orbán is worried, and he’s throwing every goodie he can think of at voters – tax breaks for mothers, higher allowances for families, VAT refunds for retirees, price caps on groceries – in a bid to shore up support and stem Magyar’s rise.
But while these giveaways may buy him some political breathing room, they are also blowing a hole in Hungary’s budget just as the economy is faltering. Growth has been stalled since the end of 2022, the budget deficit is ballooning at 4.9% of GDP, and Orbán’s long-running feud with Brussels means billions in EU recovery funds are likely to remain frozen this year.
Then there’s the Trump factor. Orbán likes to boast about his closeness with the US president. He was the first European leader to endorse Trump in 2016 and again in 2024. But that friendship is becoming less useful.
Unless the EU manages to negotiate a trade deal with Washington, Trump’s punitive new tariffs would hit Hungary’s growth engine especially hard, affecting demand from Europe (particularly Germany) and products ranging from lithium-ion batteries (which make up almost 20% of the country's US exports) to electronic, manufactured goods, and even high-quality wines. Orbán has downplayed the damage, insisting Trump’s tariffs are no big deal – and even floating the fantasy that he could leverage his closeness with Trump to strike his own bilateral deal … despite the tiny issue that EU countries have no capacity to bypass the bloc’s common trade policy.
The White House has also made it clear it’s not inclined to give its pal a pass, especially given the growing suspicion with which defense and trade hawks within the administration view Orbán’s pro-China orientation. In fact, Washington is pushing Budapest to ramp up defense spending to 5% of GDP, buy more weapons and LNG from the US, and distance itself from Beijing at a time when economic conditions are making Hungary more financially dependent on China.
And so, Viktor Orbán is boxed in: squeezed by a surging domestic challenger, trapped by an overextended fiscal policy, cut off from EU funds, and now caught in the undertow of his ally’s protectionist turn in Washington.
Don’t call it a comeback
You might think this spells good news for Europe. Facing his most difficult year since first coming to power, the bloc’s preeminent internal antagonist will have a more limited ability to hijack the EU agenda or undermine European unity on Russia sanctions and Ukraine support in concert with Trump. Sure, if you’re laying odds, it’s still Orbán’s election to lose … but Hungary’s at least in play now. It’s welcome news for Brussels.
Some have gone further, though, pointing to recent centrist electoral wins against right-wing populists with explicitly Trumpian politics in Canada and Australia as evidence of a broader anti-Trump effect being in full swing. If Trump’s disruptive return to the spotlight is causing voters to “rally around the flag” of stability, then perhaps Orbán’s troubles are a sign that Europe is finally sobering up from its populist binge – that the chaos and corruption of his and Trump’s style has worn thin, and European voters are turning back toward sanity and moderation.
But that reading overlooks the fact that the anti-Trump bump isn't holding in Europe. If anything, the tide of right-wing populism on the continent is accelerating.
Take Romania. George Simion, an ultranationalist firebrand with a MAGA streak, is now the favorite to beat Bucharest’s pro-Western centrist mayor, Nicușor Dan, in the May 18 presidential runoff election following the collapse of the country’s pro-EU governing coalition yesterday. Simion outperformed expectations in the first-round vote last Sunday after openly embracing Trump-style politics, railing against the EU, and even welcoming American CPAC chair Matt Schlapp to the campaign trail. He is campaigning alongside Calin Georgescu, another far-right candidate whose first-round presidential election win last November was annulled by Romania’s top court due to likely Russian interference. (A massive online influence campaign tied to the Kremlin seems to have helped Simion, too.)
Across the English Channel, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party delivered a political gut-punch to the mainstream last Friday, flipping a historically safe Labor parliamentary seat in a by-election and racking up wins in local council elections. The Labor-Tory duopoly that’s dominated British politics for over a century suddenly looks wobbly – and Farage, a leading Brexit advocate and perennial Trump ally, is at the center of the storm.
Even in places where centrists are supposed to be on solid ground, the far right is gaining. In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party is leaning into its Trump ties to boost its presidential hopeful, Karol Nawrocki. Recent polling shows Nawrocki closing in on centrist opponent Rafał Trzaskowski ahead of elections on May 18. He flew to Washington last week to meet with Trump-affiliated figures, hoping to ride the same anti-establishment wave to victory.
Meanwhile, in Germany, center-right leader Friedrich Merz squeaked into the chancellorship on a second vote after an embarrassing initial flop yesterday. With the hard-right, MAGA-endorsed Alternative für Deutschland continuing to rise, the conservative chancellor once viewed as the establishment’s answer to the populist surge now leads a wounded and weakened “grand coalition” that feels anything but grand.
All of which is to say: Orbán may be stumbling, but his current woes are less a sign of waning populism or an anti-Trump backlash across Europe than a story of one populist’s bad bets coming due. We could be entering a world where Budapest becomes less of a thorn in Brussels’ side than before. But if European centrists think that’ll be the end of their troubles, they’re in for a rude awakening. Far-right European populism is not going anywhere.
How Trump fails, nuclearization, geopolitics on AI, and more: Your questions, answered
This is the third and last mailbag of the spring season. Check out the previous two here and here. I will resume the newsletter’s regularly scheduled programming next week, but I hope you’ve found this detour from long-form columns valuable and that I’ve covered some of the things that might have been on your mind.
Here we go (as always, questions lightly edited for clarity).
Gun to your head, what Democrat stands the best chance of becoming president in 2028?
Given how much the country – and the world – will change in the next couple of years, I suspect it'll be someone that nobody has on their shortlist right now. Or did you put money on “The Apprentice” host changing the course of history back in 2013?
School taught us the Founding Fathers created a government of checks and balances, yet I don't see Congress stepping in to curb a dictator-type president. Why?
The system of checks and balances the framers designed in 1787 is resilient, but it has never been failproof. After all, the Constitution is a piece of paper – it isn’t self-enforcing. Ben Franklin’s “a republic, if you can keep it” shows the Founding Fathers recognized as much. One of the things the system needs to work is vigorous conflict between the branches. In other words, elected officials (looking at you, lawmakers) need to be willing to put duty to their office and their country above loyalty to their party.
But the modern American political system, with nationalized parties facing nationalized interests, nationalized polarization, and nationalized partisan media, has no ambition “to counteract ambition” as James Madison intended. This is especially true in Donald Trump’s GOP, which is cowed by the president’s political hold over the Republican voter base and media ecosystem. There’s also a big collective action problem – no one wants to be the first to stick their neck out, at least not until the crisis gets “big enough” to merit losing their jobs.
Given that virtually all of Trump’s actions are via executive orders and, therefore, can be overturned by the next administration, how big of a long-term effect do you think he will have?
Quite big. He’s setting precedents with the destruction of democratic norms, politicization of institutions, erosion of the rule of law, and expansion of executive authority that the next president will be able to build on if they so choose. As my colleagues and I flagged in this year’s Top Risk #2, Rule of Don, “Once precedents are broken by one party, the other tends to follow suit more easily.”
And let’s keep in mind there’s a decent chance the next president is someone Trump effectively anoints, which – presuming he’s still around after 2028 – could mean he’d still have a lot of direct influence. This assumes that free and fair elections are not materially disrupted through the weaponization of the “power ministries” (Justice Department, FBI, IRS). It’s far from my base case given state and local administration of elections, but still, a fatter tail risk than I’m comfortable with.
What’s the most likely way Trump can fail?
After hubris comes nemesis. The pattern is relatively familiar: Trump overplays his hand by picking more and bigger fights than he can win, gets kicked in the head by reality, and is either forced to backtrack or suffers a decline in the polls that threatens to splinter off Republicans in Congress and constrains his ability to implement his agenda.
Whether it’s China responding forcefully to the tariffs, markets revolting against attacks on Fed chair Jay Powell, or Harvard defending its academic independence, we’re already seeing meaningful snapback functions limiting the president. Not from traditional institutions, the courts, or multilateral treaties, but from powerful forces domestically and internationally that are refusing to take it on the chin. When you want to live by the law of the jungle and claim the title of apex predator, you have to win the big fights.
Will Trump’s dramatic “you are on your own” security messaging drive more countries to acquire their own nuclear weapons?
Absolutely, it’s a rational thing to consider in a G-Zero world. I doubt any of them will go nuclear over the next four years, but America’s unreliability already has a number of US allies and partners searching for alternatives to the US umbrella. Germany is likely to work out some form of nuclear-sharing with France and the United Kingdom, whose umbrella could extend across Europe and cover Poland as well. The Poles are also openly contemplating developing independent capabilities. South Korea and Japan are more likely to get their own nukes as a deterrent to Chinese aggression. The big open question is the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia (and maybe Turkey?) could also go down this path if Iran negotiations fail. Bottom line, we’re headed for an era of nuclear proliferation.
What did you think the G-Zero meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?
How should Canada manage the small but important risk of invasion from the US?
By continuing to make clear that the threat is unacceptable – a view shared by a large majority of Americans, too. As Canadians just did by electing Mark Carney as prime minister, something that was unthinkable only a couple of months ago when his Liberal Party was dead in the water. That should tell Trump (who, by the way, had already ruled out direct military intervention) everything he needs to know about Canadians’ reaction function to foreign aggression.
Can American power be used to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and broker any kind of durable Israeli-Palestinian peace? Should it?
Should it? Of course. Can it? Not in any way that seems politically plausible. After all, Trump is even more pro-Israel than Biden was, and that was a high bar to clear already after what we saw last year. He doesn’t care about the well-being of the Palestinian population. And beyond Biden and Trump, most American voters don’t care enough about foreign lives to change their leaders’ calculus.
Absent heavy political pressure from Washington that isn’t coming, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has little reason to ease the pressure on Gaza, let alone to enter a broader peace process that could end his political career and maybe even land him in prison. Not only does he need to keep the far-right faction of his coalition onside, but most Israeli citizens now support the continuation of the fighting … and no longer support a two-state solution.
How do you think it will end between Ukraine and Russia? Will the Ukrainians be able to get their lands back?
Ukraine will be de facto partitioned, as we said in last year’s Top Risks report. That may be uncontroversial now, but it wasn’t a popular call to make in January 2024, when most of the West (to say nothing of the Ukrainians) was still demanding that Ukraine get all its land back. It wasn’t going to happen then, and it isn’t going to happen now. That would still be true if Kamala Harris had won the US presidency. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledges that Ukraine is militarily incapable of retaking all its territory, while Russia won’t agree to a voluntary return. The question is how much each side will lose – and how much leverage each will gain – by the time they decide enough’s enough. That time just hasn’t arrived yet.
How do you think AI will impact geopolitics by 2040?
I expect we will not recognize our geopolitical order. International relations presume a state-based system with major powers cooperating and competing in the diplomatic, economic, and security realms. Artificial intelligence will blow that premise out of the water. As the digital realm becomes the dominant geopolitical arena, we will shift to a hybrid order where technology companies and governments compete for influence.
States will either completely integrate AI into their systems of governance and decision-making or they’ll be left behind by non-state actors that are growing increasingly sovereign not just in the digital space but in society, the economy, and national security. Closed political systems will have an evolutionary advantage, as power will lie with whoever controls the most data. Open systems will increasingly move toward more centralization, lest they become marginalized in global influence.
In the long run, would you bet against the US? Is it still the land of opportunity?
I’d bet against all national governments in the long run. They are too slow-moving to adapt to what’s coming. Many people living in today’s United States may well continue to thrive in this future. But it will increasingly be up to us – not governments – to make ourselves fit for purpose.
If 75% of the world’s economy and 95% of the world’s population keep globalizing, especially its fastest-growing parts, is it accurate to talk about deglobalization?
No, you’re right, the world as a whole is not deglobalizing. Certainly not digitally, less so once the AI revolution goes truly global. But it is accurate to talk about the United States actively deglobalizing and the US-China relationship decoupling. Both of which have massive structural, long-term implications.
How can we return to a state where facts are less strongly disputed? Can social media ever recover from having become a manipulation-friendly propaganda machine?
Two small but useful, pro-social ideas to start. First, only verify actual people, not bots. Second, make platforms legally responsible for the content created and shared by large accounts that they algorithmically promote. The goal is not to constrain free speech – which, to be clear, should be protected according to our constitution and laws – but to weaken the present incentives to intentionally engineer and maximize outrage and anger to drive user engagement at the expense of our societies and democracies.
Why should I care so much about what’s going on in the world? It feels like it’s more of a headache than anything else. I am doing nothing with all the information that I absorb except complain, get angry, stand in disbelief, and of course, enjoy a lot of memes. But it weighs on me, and sometimes I wonder what the point is.
Because it involves your fellow humans. They’re just like you, only slightly more irritating. And they’re all we have. They’re worth caring about, even if you, your family, and your friends are all doing just fine. Because those people suffering in lands near and far could be you, your family, or your friends. That they aren’t is just an accident, luck of the draw. As John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” If you hear a bell tolling … it may well be tolling for you, my friend.
With all of the chaos unfolding in the US, do you ever wish that you were back in Antarctica?
Not in the slightest. It’s way too cold, and there’s nothing much interesting happening there. Though the whole no Wi-Fi thing would be occasionally welcome.
Does Moose profit from your use of his name, image, and likeness? If not, can I offer him some pro bono legal assistance?
Moose is in it for the art, not the money. Plus, he’s family. He gets two, sometimes three, meals a day – even on days when his content doesn’t perform very well.