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Elon Musk claims he's lifting weights to prepare to fight Mark Zuckerberg.
What We’re Ignoring: Revenge of the nerds
There’s growing evidence that the much-ballyhooed mixed martial arts battle between X-Man Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may actually take place.
Musk first posted that he would be up for a cage match against Zuckerberg in June. Since then, the two moguls have traded multiple barbs on the topic. Now Zuckerberg, who trains in jiu jitsu, has shared a screenshot of a conversation with his wife Priscilla Chan in which he crows about installing a training cage in their backyard. (Her response: “I have been working on that grass for two years.”)
Not to be outdone, Musk posted to X that he is preparing for the fight by “lifting weights throughout the day,” and that the "Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”
Zuckerberg says he is "not holding his breath" because he offered a date of Aug. 26 but didn't hear back. No word yet on whether Threads will attempt a rival broadcast. Stay tuned. Or don’t.
NATO membership for Ukraine?
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Sweden will join NATO. Is Ukraine next?
Well, sure, but next doesn't mean tomorrow. Next means like at some indeterminate point, which makes President Zelensky pretty unhappy and he's made that clear, but he has massive amounts of support from NATO right now, and he needs that support to continue. So, it's not like he has a lot of leverage on joining NATO. As long as the Americans are saying it's not going to happen, that means it's not going to happen. No, the real issue is how much and how concrete the multilateral security guarantees that can be provided by NATO to Ukraine actually turn out to be. We will be watching that space.
Is Taiwan readying itself for an invasion by conducting its biggest evacuation drills in years?
I wouldn't say readying for an invasion. I would say, you know, sort of preparing for every contingency, and that means taking care of your people. I mean, the Americans weren't readying themselves for nuclear Armageddon by doing drills in classrooms and by, you know, having bomb shelters, but they had them because we were in a world where nuclear war was thinkable. Well, we're in a world where Chinese, mainland Chinese invasion of Taiwan is very unlikely, but thinkable. And of course, the Taiwanese have to think about it a lot more than you and I do.
Elon vs. Zuck. Thoughts?
Well, my thoughts are mostly about the battle of the social media platforms and the fact that of course you now have the big gorilla in the room with a Twitter competitor. And I've seen it pretty functional for the first several days. Obviously, massive numbers of people are on it, mostly because it's really easy to sign up. They're all coming over from Instagram and it's owned by the same person, by the same shareholders. Unclear to me who's going to win. If I had to bet, I would say that within 6 or 12 months, we're going to have a fragmented social media landscape politically, the way we do blogosphere or cable news, which is, I guess, good for consumer choice, but it's bad for civil society. What else is new?
Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg
Hard Numbers: Strong Threads, Italian ‘Succession,’ Democracy dwindles in Hong Kong, and the Romanian port keeping the world in grain
53: Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s former PM and richest man, died last month without leaving instructions for how his $7.6 billion fortune should be distributed throughout his family. Berlusconi never publicly declared a successor to his business empire spanning real estate, television, cinema, and sports, leaving his two eldest children to jointly own 53%. “Succession” season 5 anyone?
88: In another hit to democratic freedom in Hong Kong, its legislature voted to overhaul district-level elections, reducing the number of directly elected officials from 452 to 88. This decision effectively eliminates the pro-democracy faction of the government, which in the last election, humiliated the pro-Beijing camp, winning 90% of the seats.
27 million: The Romanian port of Constanta is preparing to handle 27 million tons of Ukrainian grain as the 2023 harvest begins. That’s more than double the amount it shipped annually before the Ukraine war, and it’s struggling to accommodate the influx in addition to Romania’s own grain exports.
I take responsibility: world leaders edition
Perhaps you've seen some of the celebrity "I Take Responsibility" videos that have gone viral recently. Well, now some of our world leaders, including Trump, MBS, Putin and Bolsonaro, have jumped in on the act too, with their own twist.
Fallout From A Fake Democracy
Nine out of every ten Venezuelans live in poverty and the average Venezuelan has lost 24 pounds in the past year alone. This is not what democracy looks like.
In this week's show, Venezuela expert Moisés Naím explains how this oil-rich country fell so far and why, as a former government official himself, he takes that personally.
+Syria Attack(?) +Lula in Jail +Orban Wins again +The Zuck Stops Here
Delete Your Account, Mark
Mark Zuckerberg faces his biggest crisis yet and Peter Maurer, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, casts some much-needed light on some of the actual crises plaguing today’s most vulnerable people (the non-billionaires of the world).