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Slowly and without fanfare, around the end of the aughts, social media took its place. The change was almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences. Instead of facilitating the modest use of existing connections—largely for offline life (to organize a birthday party, say)—social software turned those connections into a latent broadcast channel. All at once, billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits, and tastemakers.

A global broadcast network where anyone can say anything to anyone else as often as possible, and where such people have come to think they deserve such a capacity, or even that withholding it amounts to censorship or suppression—that’s just a terrible idea from the outset. And it’s a terrible idea that is entirely and completely bound up with the concept of social media itself: systems erected and used exclusively to deliver an endless stream of content.

“social media,” a name so familiar that it has ceased to bear meaning. But two decades ago, that term didn’t exist

Post-Covid, the geopolitical order has been thrown into tumult. At the beginning of the pandemic, commentators wondered about the fate of the United States, its indifferent political leadership and its apparently diminished “state capacity.” Lately, they have focused more on the sudden weakness of China: its population in decline, its economy struggling more than it has in decades, its “zero Covid” reversal

the descent of Britain is in many ways more dramatic. By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.

On the campaign trail and in office, promising a new prosperity, Boris Johnson used to talk incessantly about “leveling up.” But the last dozen years of uninterrupted Tory rule have produced, in economic terms, something much more like a national flatlining.

t what will they conclude? The most likely path is to improve regulation of the centralised exchanges – the firms that help individuals store and trade cryptocurrencies “off chain”

The fact that a multibillion-dollar financial intermediary was not subject to normal record-keeping requirements is stupefying, no matter what one thinks about the future of crypto.

effective regulation could restore confidence, benefiting firms aiming to operate honestly, which are surely the majority, at least if one weights these exchanges by size. Greater confidence in the remaining exchanges could even lead to higher crypto prices, though much would depend on the extent to which regulatory demands, particularly on individual identities, ultimately undermined demand

After the end of the Cold War, the United States forged a new world. The driving, animating idea behind this new world was the belief that global trade integration would restrain international conflict.

We didn’t just pay lip service to this theory; we bet the entire world on it. The U.S. and Europe championed the admission of China into the World Trade Organization, and deliberately looked the other way on a number of things that might have given us reason to restrict trade with China (currency manipulation in the 00s, various mercantilist policies, poor labor and environmental standards). As a result, the global economy underwent a titanic shift. Whereas global manufacturing, trading networks, and supply chains had once been dominated by the U.S., Japan, and Germany, China now came to occupy the central place in all of these:

As of 2021, China’s manufacturing output was equal to that of the U.S. and all of Europe combined.

while wars of attrition may open with a stalemate and lack the dash and drama of those of manoeuvre they can still lead to victory. This may be because they create the conditions for a return to manoeuvre warfare or it may be because the losing side recognises that its position can only get worse and needs to find a way out

Moreover there are different ways of fighting an attritional war, and some strategies can be more effective than others.

The word ‘attrition’ derives from a Latin word for rubbing away which came to refer to repressing a vice

Planning for the potential that Russia would use nuclear weapons is imperative; the danger would be greatest if the war were to turn decisively in Ukraine’s favor.

There are three general options within which U.S. policymakers would find a variation to respond to a Russian nuclear attack against Ukraine

The United States could opt to rhetorically decry a nuclear detonation but do nothing militarily. It could unleash nuclear weapons of its own. Or it could refrain from a nuclear counterattack but enter the war directly with large-scale conventional airstrikes and the mobilization of ground forces.

Today, Britain is very much not on the edge of national annihilation, whatever the hyperbolic coverage of the past few weeks might suggest. But it is in the grip of chaotic mismanagement that has left the country poorer and weaker, having lost its fourth prime minister in six turbulent years since the Brexit referendum and with an economy pushed close to its breaking point.

when did this era of the small people begin? What was its genesis?

He had also signed up to a new European treaty that left a fatal tension at the heart of Britain’s membership in the European Union. Major’s European compromise left Britain inside the European Union but outside its single currency. In time, the inherent tension in this position would reveal itself in disastrous fashion—the historian Niall Ferguson has called it “Brexit 1.0.”

COWEN: How has the decline of American religiosity influenced US foreign policy?

MEAD: Well, I think the most important way is that it has diminished our coherence as a society and undermined the psychological strength of individuals in our foreign policy world.

What do I mean by that? If you think about what it’s like to do foreign policy, or even think about foreign policy in today’s world, what are we looking at? Existential threats to human existence. You led us off with nuclear weapons. In the book, I talk about how, as a 10-year-old, my friends and I used to stand around on the playground, debating whether our town, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, would be destroyed in a nuclear attack.

Cochran identifies four different blame narratives he found in his historical survey:

The pretender narrative targets political leadership’s lack of judgement and competence in instigating a failed war. The decision to go to war was misguided and based on faulty assessments or narrow interests, and any assurances of victory made at the outset have proven a façade. In contrast, the bungler narrative maligns political leadership for ineffective prosecution of the war regardless of who started the war. Associated critiques relate to inadequately resourcing the military, tying the military’s hands, or otherwise adopting a “no win” approach. The backstabber narrative cites political leadership for prematurely and unnecessarily terminating a war that was still winnable and still worth fighting. Success remained within reach, but political leadership pulled the plug before the military could finish the job and thus snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Finally, the sellout narrative focuses on political leadership’s failure to procure the best possible outcome despite military defeat, highlighting leadership’s role in an unfair peace settlement that betrays the nation’s sacrifice. 

Of these four narratives, only the “pretender” narrative leaves room for the new leader to walk away from the failed war. The other three more or less commit the new guy to keep fighting.

For the first time in my adult life, there is a genuine sense of decay in Britain—a realization that something has been lost that will be difficult to recover, something more profound than pounds and pence, political personalities, or even prime ministers

Over the past three weeks, the U.K. has been gripped by a crisis of crushing stupidity, one that has gone beyond all the turmoil of Brexit, Boris, even the great bank bailouts of 2007, and touched that most precious of things: core national credibility.

Never before has Britain found itself in such a humiliatingly risible position. It is the stuff of nightmares: the national equivalent of getting caught short onstage in front of your entire school because you chose not to go to the bathroom when you had the chance.

the story doesn’t end here. While the pro-life movement has won the right to legislate against abortion, it has not yet proven that it can do so in a way that can command durable majority support. Its weaknesses will not disappear in victory. Its foes and critics have been radicalized by its judicial success. And the vicissitudes of politics and its own compromises have linked the anti-abortion cause to various toxic forces on the right — some libertine and hyperindividualist, others simply hostile to synthesis, conciliation and majoritarian politics.

among its own writers and activists, the movement has understood itself to also be carrying on the best of America’s tradition of social reform, including causes associated with liberalism and progressivism.

To win the long-term battle, to persuade the country’s vast disquieted middle, abortion opponents need models that prove this critique wrong. They need to show how abortion restrictions are compatible with the goods that abortion advocates accuse them of compromising — the health of the poorest women, the flourishing of their children, the dignity of motherhood even when it comes unexpectedly or amid great difficulty.

Why did we think big protests reliably brought about social change? Because it seemed to be the case in the past

In the past, a truly big march was the culmination of long-term organizing, an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, indicating prior planning and strength.

they didn’t just manage to hold a protest; lacking easier ways to organize, they ended up having to build organizational capacity, which then helped navigate what came after.

In our collective psyche there is the problem of mentally ill people committing crimes on the streets, and there is also the problem of everyone constantly seeing videos of mentally ill people committing crimes on the streets

It distorts our judgment; it privileges the vivid and violent over the lucid and peaceful. It normalizes and numbs us to violence and can incentivize it. And this emotive tribal priming makes us more likely to react to the deaths of our political opponents with glee.

The distortion affects both tribes

Despite the turmoil in the streets, the ruling coalition refused to accept the fact that with a slim majority, it could not enforce such big changes without consensus, plowing ahead with ever more anxiety-inducing policies day by day.

As a nation, Israelis acted as if we could afford the luxury of a vicious internal fight, the kind in which your political rival becomes your enemy. We let animosity, demagogy and the poisonous discourse of social media take over our society, rip apart the only Jewish army in the world. This is our tragedy.

And it carries a lesson for other polarized democracies: There is someone out there waiting to gain from your self-made weakness. This someone is your enemy.

The more I covered Biden, the more I came to feel affection and respect for him. Then, as now, he could be a tough boss, occasionally angry and hard on his staff. But throughout his life, Biden has usually been on the side of the underdog. I’ve rarely met a politician so rooted in the unpretentious middle-class ethos of the neighborhood he grew up in. He has a seemingly instinctive ability to bond with those who are hurting.

He has his faults — the tendency to talk too much, the chip on his shoulder about those who think they are smarter than he is, the gaffes, that episode of plagiarism and the moments of confusion — but I’ve always thought: Give me a leader who identifies with those who feel looked down upon. Give me a leader whose moral compass generally sends him in the right direction.

But I’ve also come to fear and loathe Donald Trump. I cannot fathom what damage that increasingly deranged man might do to this country if given a second term. And the fact is that as the polls and the mood of the electorate stand today, Trump has a decent chance of beating Biden in November of next year and regaining power in 2025.

First, that atheist materialism is too weak a base upon which to ground Western liberalism in a world where it’s increasingly beset, and the biblical tradition from which the liberal West emerged offers a surer foundation for her values.

Second, that despite the sense of liberation from punitive religion that atheism once offered her, in the longer run she found “life without any spiritual solace unendurable.”

I have no criticisms to offer myself. Some sort of religious attitude is essentially demanded, in my view, by what we know about the universe and the human place within it, but every sincere searcher is likely to follow their own idiosyncratic path

One reason that the idea of free trade has fallen out of fashion in recent years is the perception that trade agreements reflect the wishes of big American corporations, at everybody else’s expense.

U.S. officials fought for trade agreements that protect intellectual property — and drug companies got the chance to extend the life of patents, raising the price of medicine around the world. U.S. officials fought for investor protections — and mining companies got the right to sue for billions in “lost profit” if a country moved to protect its drinking water or the Amazon ecosystem. And for years, U.S. officials have fought for digital trade rules that allow data to move freely across national borders — prompting fears that the world’s most powerful tech companies would use those rules to stay ahead of competitors and shield themselves from regulations aimed at protecting consumers and privacy.

That’s why the Biden administration, which came into office promising to fight for trade agreements that better reflect the interests of ordinary people, has dropped its advocacy for tech-friendly digital trade rules that American officials have championed for more than a decade.

When European Union leaders introduced a 125-page draft law to regulate artificial intelligence in April 2021, they hailed it as a global model for handling the technology.

E.U. lawmakers had gotten input from thousands of experts for three years about A.I., when the topic was not even on the table in other countries. The result was a “landmark” policy that was “future proof,” declared Margrethe Vestager, the head of digital policy for the 27-nation bloc.

Then came ChatGPT.

there was widespread concern that the pandemic would leave lasting economic scars. After all, the 2008 financial crisis was followed by a weak recovery that left real gross domestic product in many countries far below the pre-crisis trend even a decade later. Indeed, as we approach Covid’s four-year mark, many of the world’s economies remain well short of full recovery.

But not the United States. Not only have we had the strongest recovery in the advanced world, but the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook also points out that American growth since 2019 has actually exceeded pre-Covid projections.

let’s take a moment to celebrate this good economic news — and try to figure out what went right with the U.S. economy.

“I consider Mark and Elon to be role models to children in their embrace of fighting,” Andreessen writes.

Modern American society, at least in the big cities, is turning on law enforcement and tolerating crime, so you need combat skills to protect your loved ones. We are also fat and depressed, and learning to fight might help on both counts. In conclusion, “if it was good enough for Heracles and Theseus, it’s good enough for us.”

what caught my eye was the veneration of the virile aggression of the Greeks, the call to rediscover the ways of the ancients. A list of things that were good enough for the Greeks but not good enough for us would run long: Slavery, pederasty and bloodletting come to mind