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By taking advantage of new decentralized technologies and living as cheaply as possible, people might be able to increasingly just opt out of capitalism and consumerism entirely.

All resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few.” This arrangement is made possible by aggressive use of advanced technologies to create an abundance of resources and thereby negate the need for any sort of rationing.

put money directly in people’s hands so they can spend it and keep the market economy going. The main difference is that instead of making the income unconditional, Ford advocates doling out money according to an incentive scheme that encourages behavior society desires.

if we can find a way to directly upgrade human minds—such as through the use of brain-computer interfaces—then workers would be able to keep pace with technological change and readily adapt to new jobs and industries as quickly as they crop up.

they push for a series of common sense policy fixes, such as fixing education to better prepare people for STEM fields or reforming the patent system to mitigate drags on innovation.

Therefore we should try to accelerate technological progress by whatever means necessary so that we can make the painful transition as short as possible—much like tearing off a bandaid.

Yes, there will be less jobs available, and certainly people’s incomes will suffer, but technology will simultaneously bring down the cost of living at a fast enough rate that people will survive just fine without the need for government invention or economic restructuring.

Once AGI arrives we will have much bigger issues to contend with, such as will the human race survive being displaced as the most intelligent beings on planet Earth?

this could complicate the transfer of power, which would be affected by a lack of unity among the rebels. It could also lead extremist elements of each major sect to retreat to territorial enclaves and would likely lead civil war to engulf the northern Levant.

the United States would likely need to position at least one fleet aircraft carrier in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility in order to support the need for constant aircraft in the air space.

Such a campaign would be reminiscent of Operation Desert Fox (the bombing of Iraq in 1998) and would be designed to send a clear message to Syria without exposing U.S. forces to a sustained operation like a no-fly zone would.

Another strategy would be to target the chemical weapons in an oblique manner by focusing on potential delivery systems, such as Scuds and artillery batteries, but this, too, could not be done comprehensively.

The main constraints of this option are that the plan still requires direct involvement and has the potential for mission creep, while any action that influences the direction of this fight could have disastrous consequences.

The plan, however, also begs the question of whether rebels can really be vetted, armed and shaped in a way that will achieve a desirable outcome in Syria after the regime collapses.

The Syrian civil war is complicated and offers no easy solution to the United States. Currently, the situation is being managed as indirectly as possible, but this strategy might become untenable for Obama.

Even as creating engaging experiences on the web is mandatory, the metric called Engagement is simply an excuse for an unwillingness to sit down and identify why a site exists.

Each business is unique and each website is trying to accomplish something unique.

It is nearly impossible to define engagement in a standard way that can be applied across the board.

At the heart of it engagement tries to measure something deeply qualitative.

One of my personal golden rules is that a metric should be instantly useful. This one is not.

Most of all engagement is a proxy for measuring an outcome from a website.

In Summary: The reason engagement has not caught on like wild fire (except in white papers and analyst reports and pundit posts) is that it is a "heart" metric we are trying to measure with "head" data, and engagement is such a utterly unique feeling for each website that it will almost always have a unique definition for each and every website.

Step One: Define why your website exists. What is its purpose? Not a five hundred word essay, rather in fifteen words or less. If it helps complete this statement: "When the crap hits the fan the only purpose of my website is to ……….".

Step Two: If you did a great job with it then the above statement contains the critical few metrics (three or less) that will identify exactly how you can measure if your website is successful at delivering against its purpose.

Step Three: If you have a ecommerce website then revenue or conversion is probably one of your critical few. But one of the critical few is what your senior management might call engagement. Work hard to define exactly what that metric is (see below for ideas).

"Are you engaged with us?"

Likelihood to recommend website

Use primary market research

Customer retention over time

# of Visits per Unique Visits, Recency of Unique Visitors

In Summary : When most people measure "engagement" they have not done due diligence to identify what success means for their online presence. In absence of that hard work they fall into measuring engagement, and then measure something that is hard to action or something that will rarely improve the bottomline. Avoid this at all costs. Think very carefully about what you are measuring if you do measure engagement. If engagement to you is repeat visitors by visitors then call it Visit Frequency, don't call it engagement. Don't sexify, simplify! :) If you want to measure "engagement" then think of new and more interesting ways to measure that (see list above). Engagement at its core a qualitative feeling. It really hard to measure via pure clickstream (web analytics data). Think different.

Wuhan, the flagship of new port investment on the Yangtze as well as nationally, actually saw declines in both the number of berths and freight throughput during that period.

Going forward, the question for Beijing will be whether and to what extent it is able to realize its ambitious plans for the Yangtze River corridor and inland China as a whole. Even then, it is not clear that expanding and industrializing a handful of inland cities will reduce mounting economic imbalances or social tensions unless combined with significant changes to a range of other policies, including the hukou (or household registration) system and the fiscal and financial relationship between city, provincial and national governments. Significant changes to these policies will, in turn, meet steep resistance from entrenched bureaucratic interests. More fundamentally, such changes would likely unleash the social unrest that Beijing's entire political economic system is intended to manage.

port development in Wuhan is similar to projects like the Three Gorges Dam or the ongoing South-North Water Transfer Project, which seeks to divert up to 10 percent of the Yangtze River's flow to water-starved provinces in northern China. All three are attempts to reconcile immense geographic and environmental constraints with the ballooning demands (both consumer and industrial) of an enormous population and an ever-expanding economy -- all while providing enough jobs to maintain a degree of stability.

The problem, then, is not simply that the Chinese government's approach to economic development is inconsistent with the needs of the economy and population as a whole

Here’s how it works: A utility makes a case to a public utility commission (PUC), saying “we will need to satisfy this level of demand from consumers, which means we’ll need to generate (or purchase) this much power, which means we’ll need to charge these rates.”

Now, into this cozy business model enters cheap distributed solar PV, which eats away at it like acid.

First, the power generated by solar panels on residential or commercial roofs is not utility-owned or utility-purchased. From the utility’s point of view, every kilowatt-hour of rooftop solar looks like a kilowatt-hour of reduced demand for the utility’s product.

It’s worse than that, though. Solar power peaks at midday, which means it is strongest close to the point of highest electricity use — “peak load.”

This is a widely held article of faith, but EEI (of all places!) puts it to rest. (In this and all quotes that follow, “DER” means distributed energy resources, which for the most part means solar PV.) Due to the variable nature of renewable DER, there is a perception that customers will always need to remain on the grid. While we would expect customers to remain on the grid until a fully viable and economic distributed non-variable resource is available, one can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent. To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?” [Emphasis mine.]

Just the other day, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said, “If the cost of solar panels keeps coming down, installation costs come down and if they combine solar with battery technology and a power management system, then we have someone just using [the grid] for backup.”

As ratepayers opt for solar panels (and other distributed energy resources like micro-turbines, batteries, smart appliances, etc.), it raises costs on other ratepayers and hurts the utility’s credit rating. As rates rise on other ratepayers, the attractiveness of solar increases, so more opt for it. Thus costs on remaining ratepayers are even further increased, the utility’s credit even further damaged. It’s a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle:

(“Despite all the talk about investors assessing the future in their investment evaluations,” the report notes dryly, “it is often not until revenue declines are reported that investors realize that the viability of the business is in question.” In other words, investors aren’t that smart and rational financial markets are a myth.)

So rates would rise by 20 percent for those without solar panels. Can you imagine the political shitstorm that would create? (There are reasons to think EEI is exaggerating this effect, but we’ll get into that in the next post.)

In case the point wasn’t made, the report also analogizes utilities to the U.S. Postal Service, Kodak, and RIM, the maker of Blackberry devices. These are not meant to be flattering comparisons.

China's commercial and strategic expansion into the Indian Ocean faces several hurdles -- sheer distance, local security problems, etc. But the most important hurdle is the internal stability of China itself. China's economy, already in trouble, could dramatically deteriorate to the point where China's one-party state, and the domestic cohesion it offers, might become undone. Were China to face serious and sustained unrest, its activities abroad would be compromised.

“If anyone in the food industry ever doubted there was a slippery slope out there,” Mudd said, “I imagine they are beginning to experience a distinct sliding sensation right about now.”

his plan would start off with a small but crucial move: the industry should use the expertise of scientists — its own and others — to gain a deeper understanding of what was driving Americans to overeat. Once this was achieved, the effort could unfold on several fronts.

Mudd proposed creating a “code to guide the nutritional aspects of food marketing, especially to children.”

What happened next was not written down. But according to three participants, when Mudd stopped talking, the one C.E.O. whose recent exploits in the grocery store had awed the rest of the industry stood up to speak. His name was Stephen Sanger, and he was also the person — as head of General Mills — who had the most to lose when it came to dealing with obesity. Under his leadership, General Mills had overtaken not just the cereal aisle but other sections of the grocery store. The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt’s well-tended image as a wholesome snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success, the company’s development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable tube — perfect for kids. They called it Go-Gurt and rolled it out nationally in the weeks before the C.E.O. meeting. (By year’s end, it would hit $100 million in sales.)

“What can I say?” James Behnke told me years later. “It didn’t work. These guys weren’t as receptive as we thought they would be.” Behnke chose his words deliberately. He wanted to be fair. “Sanger was trying to say, ‘Look, we’re not going to screw around with the company jewels here and change the formulations because a bunch of guys in white coats are worried about obesity.’ ”

The women are given less forgiving roles: Catherine Gibson's Susan can only imagine personal fulfillment through having a baby, Ilinca Kiss's elegant, icy Beatrice oozes stereotypes of Frenchness like a perfume and Claire Sanderson's Hannah goes on vaguely "working with the environment," serving as a foil to the other characters. Her best line is to observe that she's busy after Senexate, because "Most people didn't care about climate change when it was only going to affect their children, but they care now."

government officials also attribute the drop-off in attacks and hijackings to better coordination between foreign naval patrols, which have made the waters off the Somali coast a less permissive environment for pirate operations.

Effectively patrolling such a large area requires intelligence and the development of a counterpiracy doctrine that includes going after the larger pirate vessels, called mother ships, that extend pirates' range and allow them to operate in rougher seas during the monsoon.

The new Somali federal government still lacks the capability to control pirate towns such as Hobyo and Haradheere, and its officials do not appear to want a strong Puntland doing it for them. 

In essence, the commercial shippers and naval forces have adopted a siege strategy -- they hope to starve the pirates of resources, forcing them to give up. Somali pirates held about 20 ships at any given time in 2010; they currently hold 11. As the pirates hijack fewer ships, and as armed guards make piracy more dangerous, the entire enterprise is looking less lucrative and appealing.

The problem with the siege strategy is that as soon as shipping companies or foreign naval forces let up on the pirates, they will go back to hijacking ships.

The key component of the siege strategy is that it weakens the pirates' control over their land-based sanctuaries. Their power is connected to their revenue, so the decrease in revenue will decrease their power. The shipping companies and foreign navies hope that some other, less disruptive enterprises will eventually take root along Somalia's pirate-heavy coast.

The only force that has significantly challenged the pirates on land is the Puntland Maritime Police Force. Located in northeast Somalia, Puntland is much more stable than the south and is virtually independent. The Puntland Maritime Police Force had success in capturing pirates, destroying their staging bases along the beach, cutting off their supply routes and even, supposedly, attempting to seize hijacked vessels from the pirates.

This is a problem for both the Brotherhood and its opponents, as neither wants jihadists to exploit their enmity.

it is unlikely that transnational jihadists will be able to steer Egypt toward a civil war like Algeria's during the 1990s or post-Arab Spring Syria's. That said, Egypt is likely to see its share of violence (in many cases in the form of militant attacks) as a result of many other factors.

With the Brotherhood's senior leadership in jail, the mainstream Islamist movement may not be able to control the unrest it is currently fomenting. Jihadist forces, realizing that the window of opportunity for them is narrow, would like to prevent any compromise between the military and the Brotherhood in the short term. Therefore, the duration and intensity of the crisis in Egypt will depend upon the Brotherhood and the military's ability (or lack thereof) to reach a political compromise.

Let’s consider how Kalanick treated his Uber taxi drivers in New York. When he was trying to convince them to break the law to boost Uber’s footprint in the city, Kalanick offered yellow cab drivers free iPhones and promised to “take care of” any legal problems they encountered with the TLC. A few short months later, when the service was forced to close, those same drivers received a message to come to Uber HQ. Reports the Verge… Multiple drivers said Uber called them into headquarters, claiming they needed to come by in order to get paid and would get a cash bonus for showing up. When the cabbies came in, Uber surprised them by asking for the device back, informing them that taxi service was no longer available in New York. That’s classic Rand right there. The more replaceable the worker, the more they can be treated like total shit. After all, if they’re so damn special, they can always leave and find another job.

“The notion that there some sort of deal or arrangement or whatever was just not the case,” said Kalanick in an interview with the Washington Post. How embarrassing, then, when the Post uncovered documents proving that Uber had indeed tried to make under the table arrangements to operate in DC. Or as the Post’s Mike DeBonist put it: “If you’re going to be dismissive of backroom deals, it behooves you to stay out of backrooms.”

A Disruptive company might very well succeed in exposing government crooks lining their pockets exploiting outdated laws, but that’s only so the Disruptor can line his own pockets through the absence of those same laws. A Disruptive company may give you free candy in your 50-dollar cab but, again, that’s only because doing so is good business. If poisoning that same candy suddenly becomes better business (like encouraging New York cab drivers to be distracted by their phones, or putting vulnerable people at risk of attack is better business)… well maybe that’s an option worth exploring too. After all, food safety legislation is just another attempt by the government to drive Disruptive businesses off the road.

the Indian army is constrained with problems inside the subcontinent itself.

Both Afghanistan and North Korea have the capacity to drain energy and resources away from India and China, though here India may have the upper hand because India has no land border with Afghanistan, whereas China has a land border with North Korea.

Because India's population will surpass that of China in 2030 or so, even as India's population will get gray at a slower rate than that of China, India may in relative terms have a brighter future.

Were China ever to face a serious insurrection in Tibet, India's shadow zone of influence would grow measurably. Thus, while China is clearly the greater power, there are favorable possibilities for India in this rivalry.

That is the silver lining of the India-China rivalry: India balancing against China, and thus relieving the United States of some of the burden of being the world's dominant power.

The salient fact here is that by liberating Myanmar, India's hitherto landlocked northeast, lying on the far side of Bangladesh, will also be opened up to the outside.

But while the future beckons with opportunities, the present is still not assured. The political transition in Myanmar has only begun, and much can still go wrong. The problem, as it was in Yugoslavia and Iraq, is regional and ethnic divides.

Myanmar is a vast kingdom organized around the central Irrawaddy River Valley. The ethnic Burman word for this valley is Myanmar, hence the official name of the country. But a third of the population is not ethnic Burman, even as regionally based minorities in friable borderlands account for seven of Myanmar's 14 states. The hill areas around the Irrawaddy Valley are populated by Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen and Karenni peoples, who also have their own armies and irregular forces, which have been battling the Burman-controlled national army since the early Cold War period.

Worse, these minority-populated hill regions are ethnically divided from within.

Myanmar, it is true, is becoming less repressive and more open to the outside world. But that in and of itself does not make for a viable institutionalized state. In sum, for Myanmar to succeed, even with civilians in control, the military will have to play a significant role for years to come, because it is mainly officers who know how to run things. But given its immense natural resources and sizable population of 48 million, if Myanmar can build pan-ethnic institutions in coming decades it could come close to being a midlevel power in its own right -- something that would not necessarily harm Indian and Chinese interests, and, by the way, would unleash trade throughout Asia and the Indian Ocean world.

The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.

Haidt’s account of reason is a bit too simple — his whole book, after all, is a deployment of reason to advance learning — and his advice sounds cynical. But set aside those objections for now, and go with him. If you follow Haidt through the tunnel of cynicism, you’ll find that what he’s really after is enlightenment. He wants to open your mind to the moral intuitions of other people.

The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.

These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it.

This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.

Saving Darfur, submitting to the United Nations and paying taxes to educate children in another state may be noble, but they aren’t natural. What’s natural is giving to your church, helping your P.T.A. and rallying together as Americans against a foreign threat.

Large organic farms are typically monoculture fields just like large conventional farms, though more crop rotation is required. Industrial organic poultry and beef farms also look oddly similar to conventional industrial feedlots, even if the animals are eating organic feed. In fact, both organic and conventional industrial farms are often owned by the same mega-corporations, and share the same bottom line of profit. There’s no reason to suspect that these industrial organic foods would be markedly more nutritious than conventionally grown foods.

Interestingly, despite the wide range in the quality of foods that qualify as organic, the Stanford study did find some significant differences. Organic produce contained significantly more phenols, the cancer fighting chemicals found in red wine, green tea, chocolate and many fruits and vegetables. However, this finding was glossed over in favor of the non-significant differences found between vitamin C, betacarotene and vitamin E levels in organic versus conventional foods.

Soil quality and weather (the raw ingredients) are by far the biggest factors in the nutrient levels of produce, with freshness and storage methods being next in line.

The Stanford study confirms organic agriculture has substantially fewer pesticide contaminations, but for some reason this finding was also glossed over since the conventional produce levels “didn’t exceed maximum allowed limits.” Logically, however, if limiting pesticide exposure is important to you (as it should be) organic produce is the better option.

The animal studies were even more encouraging. Small but significant improvements in fatty acid profiles were found for organic milk and chickens, which contained more healthy omega-3 fatty acids. More importantly, antibiotic resistant bacteria, the kind that are becoming more common (and deadly) in our own hospitals, were 33% more likely to be found on conventional meat products than on organic meat.

During his years as a top executive, Roberts often tried to push the chain toward healthier fare, such as mango strips, slinky-shaped carrots, and yogurt. At one point he even explored the possibility of a vegan McNugget. (“People would look at him like he was a Cyclops,” Donahue says.) In 2006 he resigned; soon after his noncompete agreement expired, he pulled together two of Oprah’s celebrity chefs, Art Smith and Tal Ronnen, and had them create a sample menu for what was to become Lyfe Kitchen.

Market research Roberts did at McDonald’s convinced him that mothers, the dominant decisionmakers about mealtimes, are more focused than ever on healthy food. So this time around, brussels sprouts and quinoa will enter the picture. This time around, the end result—the food—will look and smell and taste more like an entré from some bistro in Brooklyn than a 30-second stop along Fast-Food Alley.

In other words, Roberts will take all the tricks he learned from old-style fast food and apply them to the next phase of American eating. Which brings us back to that free-range chicken. The new poultry supply chain is not just about procuring as much chicken meat as quickly and cheaply as possible. It’s about delivering wholesome chicken from birds that are fed hormone-free food and raised on farms that don’t produce the environmental degradation of a Tyson or Perdue.

The story of Lyfe’s local brussels sprouts begins at one of the two farms that Synergy’s Campbell has enlisted in San Mateo and Monterey counties. After spending the first 50 to 60 days of their lives in nurseries, the sprouts head to the fields. The tightly wrapped leaf balls grow from axils that form a helical pattern around the stalks and can be harvested for the first time after roughly 110 days. Later the plants can be harvested again, up to five times over a period of seven weeks, delivering as many as 100 sprouts from every stalk. After they’re cut from the stalks, the sprouts are washed, cooled, sanitized, packed, and stored in a cold room. At this point, the clock begins to tick: Their shelf life is just 20 days. And so the brussels sprouts are carried by refrigerated trucks to Lyfe’s Bay Area distributors, where they are usually turned around within 24 hours. Stored at 34 degrees Fahrenheit, they await their second truck ride, which will deliver them to Lyfe. There they are immediately stowed in the walk-in cooler at the back of the restaurant.

Unlike the sit-down bistros where gourmet food is generally prepared and served, Lyfe sees each brussels sprout as merely a cog in a vast clockwork, a system that is set into motion as a customer approaches the counter, gives their name, and places an order. Once that order is sent electronically to the kitchen, a cashier hands the customer a coaster. RFID strips beneath every table pick up the signal from the coaster and send it back to the kitchen. That’s how the runner—someone other than the person who took your order—knows where you are sitting, what you have ordered, and your name. Now that the order has gone into the kitchen, the software-based cooking system kicks in. It’s smart enough to separate the elements of your order and send each of them to the monitor that hangs above the relevant food-prep station. The flatbread maker sees flatbread orders; the pantry chef, who makes all the salads and desserts, sees the salad order; the rôtisseur at the broiler station—you get the picture. So everything everyone needs to cook shows up in a queue, and the chefs each hit a plastic button beneath the screen to signal that they have begun. When they’re done, they press a button that “bumps” the food order to the “quarterback,” who gathers the finished product and puts it on a plate with all the other stuff you want to eat.

Also left unmentioned is the problem of seasonality. As of now, no one at Lyfe claims that 100 percent of ingredients can be obtained from organic sources year-round. “The answer has always been no, it cannot be done,” Campbell says. No matter how energy-efficient the kitchen, no matter how technically astute the procurement practices—weather happens. Too much rain rots tomatoes. Oranges freeze. Texas onions shrivel in a drought.

None of this troubles Mike Roberts, though. Lyfe sees Whole Foods as a model for how responsible food consumption can shift the marketplace. “We’re really, really early,” Roberts says. “There are 80 million people who have become much more aware of the food they eat. And that’s going to continue as far out as we can see.”

Russia’s defining geographic characteristic is its indefensibility, which means its main strategy is to secure itself.

In short, for Russia to be secure it must create some kind of empire.

Russian empires have faced difficulties providing for vast numbers of people and suppressing those who did not conform

This leads to an inherently weak economy

Russian power must be measured in terms of the strength of the state and its ability to rule the people. This is not the same as the Russian government’s popularity (though former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s popularity is undeniable)

It is when the Russian leadership loses control over the security apparatus that Russian regimes collapse. For example, when the czar lost control of the army during World War I, he lost power and the Russian empire fell apart.

Under Josef Stalin, there was massive economic dysfunction and widespread discontent, but Stalin maintained firm control over both the security apparatuses and the army, which he used to deal with any hint of dissent.

Moscow is using the same logic and strategies today.

Putin had just seen the United States encroach on the territory Russia deemed imperative to its survival: Washington helped usher most Central European states and the former Soviet Baltic states into NATO and the European Union; supported pro-Western “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; set up military bases in Central Asia; and announced plans to place ballistic missile defense installations in Central Europe. To Russia, it seemed the United States was devouring its periphery to ensure that Moscow would forever remain vulnerable.

Over the past six years, Russia has pushed back to some degree

Washington has held the misconception that Russia will not formally attempt to re-create a kind of empire. But, as has been seen throughout history, it must.

Putin announced in September that he would seek to return to the Russian presidency in 2012, and he has started laying out his goals for his new reign.

Russia will begin this new iteration of a Russian empire by creating a union with former Soviet states based on Moscow’s current associations, such as the Customs Union, the Union State and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. This will allow the EuU to strategically encompass both the economic and security spheres.

Putin is creating a union in which Moscow would influence foreign policy and security but would not be responsible for most of the inner workings of each country.

It is the creation of a new version of the Russian empire, combined with the U.S. consolidation of influence on that empire’s periphery, that most likely will spark new hostilities between Moscow and Washington.

The country’s demographics are among some of the world’s worst, having declined steadily since World War I. Its birth rates are well below death rates, and it already has more citizens in their 50s than in their teens. Russia could be a major power without a solid economy, but no country can be a global power without people. This is why Putin is attempting to strengthen and secure Russia now, before demographics weaken it. However, even taking its demographics into account, Russia will be able to sustain its current growth in power for at least another generation. This means that the next few years likely are Russia’s last great moment — one that will be marked by the country’s return as a regional empire and a new confrontation with its previous adversary, the United States.