Multipolarity

This week, we touch down in a world on the edge of a crack-up. A steep tech selloff has exposed cracks in the AI investment bubble. With PIMCO dumping half its AI debt ahead of the midterms and companies like Intel shedding nearly 30% in a day, we ask: is this a politically timed market move, the beginning of a bear market, or both? Meanwhile, in Poland, Donald Tusk has attempted what looks very m...

This week: a tale of two essays. Philip Pilkington is 'live from Belgrade' (almost), as he picks over the embers of the Serbian election. Is this really the picaresque rise of student protest it is made out to be? Or is the hand of Big Brussels somewhere in the background? Meanwhile, Andrew Collingwood is revisiting Europe's recent attack of hubris. Why aren't the Europeans going to Mars? The answ...

A gutbuster blockbuster this week: Policy Tensor, our sometime Friend Of The Show , has been taking some serious flak online in recent weeks over his view that the Hormuz crisis is basically over. Here, he speaks with Andrew Collingwood to clarify his position: an initial US victory has morphed into a broader loss, as Iran has recalibrated its strategy and returned to the fight with new systems. T...

Last time Albania blew up it was because the entire country had become embroiled in a Ponzi scheme, led by a gypsy soothsayer. That incident was generally classed as a Civil War, with breakaway militias staking out territory across the country, after about a fifth of the nation's supposed wealth evaporated overnight. The leader of the opposition at the time? Edi Rama. Now, thirty years on, Edi Ram...

We've been tracking the story for weeks, and now the authorities are waking up to it. The CFTC, the US commodities markets watchdog, is investigating oil futures bets that appeared to be timed perfectly to profit from President Trump's statements related to the Iran War. There is an obvious domestic political angle to the return of the Democrats to power after the midterms But there are longer ter...

A record-breaking week down in Hormuz, where twelve oil tankers have been hit in a matter of days. Back on Wall Street, the cost of oil has pipped $100 a barrel. Last week, a third US aircraft carrier set sail for the region. It could mean that three carriers are in the region as early as the end of October. The narrative that the Strait is open and back to pre war oil flows is collapsing already....

What can we know about the oil that gets through Hormuz? Turns out most of what we know filters through a single data point: a company called Kpler. Before the war, Kpler's numbers were solid. They combined transponder tracking with loading and unloading records, following each ship payload from port to port. But then the shadow fleet tankers switched their transponders off. No one reports their c...

Lately, European leaders seem panicked. By the beginning of July, the EU had begun acting in an increasingly assertive, confident way. On China – they announced new anti-dumping, anti-subsidy measures. On Ukraine, they pushed forward with plans to release even more materiel to the front. On the question of democracy and centralisation, they were happy to roll over the Romanians, and put their thum...

Donald Trump’s year of smashing things continues apace. Iran, Greenland, Canada… At some point, there is no more china in the shop for the bull to break. But not yet. With his comments that he wants to see a united Ireland, the President has jabbed the Special Relationship in the eye, kneed it in the balls, and burst its spleen. Breaking up the territorial integrity of an ally? Bad sport, old chap...

Super-Size Me II. 140 episodes ago, Malcolm Kyeyune launched a piece of verbal artillery into the mess hall of online discourse. The Burger Theory of History. It quickly became one of our most quoted episodes. The Burger Theory is the idea that, since the pandemic of 2020, the rising costs of basic necessities is feeding a malaise that is eating into our society. The sense not that we are in yet a...

September is here. As the calendar page tugs away, the madness of the dog days of summer blows away. The madness of the autumn is upon us. With the Pina Colada mix in the recycling bin, the sense of happy impermanence is over, and all the bills we’ve rung up are about to fall due. Now, with the put-upon air of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s lawyers, we’re counting the cost. Taking the medium-range v...

Two audio essays, one smouldering fuse. This week, Philip Pilkington takes on a financial cascade emerging from the Japanese Bond situation. Ever since its one-day bond market heart attack in March, Japan has been trapped: it can't raise rates, it can't let the yen fall, so it has sold the very US Treasuries that hold the US system together. Knowing how perilous things are, in the background, Scot...

Multipolarity Dialogues is a series of special multipolarity interviews that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers, and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical. In this episode, Steve Hsu. Where to start with Steve? He’s a member of that tiny sliver of humans who have managed to make significant contributions to m...

Coming up this week, last week, and the week before… A massive multi-part episode. The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order is with the death doula right now. The new one has yet to go through lamaze class. The only thing that can save us is podcasting. More of it. Longer. Harder. More esoteric. More riffs on the Thirty Years War. Bigger tangents into the exact mechanics of USAF...

The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order dies of smoke inhalation in a dumpster fire. The new one has yet to be lifted out by C-Section. The only thing that can save us is podcasting. More of it. Longer. Harder. More esoteric. More riffs on the Thirty Years War. Bigger tangents into the exact mechanics of USAF recruitment in Tallahassee. As our old sense-making apparatus breaks d...

Coming up this week and next week and the week after… A massive multi-part episode. The world is shifting in unpredictable ways. The old order dies of smoke inhalation in a dumpster fire. The new one has yet to be lifted out by C-Section. Iran, it is now clear, represents the smouldering conflagration that will consume US power. As its strength is sapped, this lumbering giant will make ever-poorer...

You’ve heard of de-Baathification? Now what about de-baseification? The gradual chipping back of US strategic assets in the Gulf as each in turn comes under pressure from drone and rocket fire… till only a handful of super-bases remain. Iran’s president says country is in ‘full-scale war’ after an expansion of US attacks. They’ve struck US interests in Bahrain, Kuwait - and the Houthis are blockad...

This week: two audio essays, on one big Iran cluster-frig. In the Collingwood corner: Donald Trump has become an unreadable politician. His credibility has burst through various levels of ‘madman theory’ negotiating prowess, into a place where it may not even be clear to his most intimate subordinates where his true intent begins and ends. The result is that US policy is now a broken sail, flappin...

It’s an oil rush. Fill your boots, fellers, America is releasing its strategic petroleum reserves, ostensibly to see down Iranian pressure. Good news for voters, great news for foreign countries who want to sponge of the US teat. But in its ducking and diving haste, has the Trump administration inadvertently drunk its own milkshake? Then in the second half of a two-parter, we’re digging into the b...

This week on Multipolarity, we’re taking your questions. It’s a Q&A episode, involving queries sent in by our loyal listeners. Questions like: How did you guys meet? (Drunk, at a party). Which EU country will be first to do its own deal on Ukraine? (The first to fall to the populists) Where should young Euros emigrate to if Europe is ‘screwed’? (Find your bliss in the emerging world) Is the Ro...

Iran’s 14 points: making the world safe for Shia Theocracy. Obviously, Donald Trump putting his John Hancock to the Islamabad Memorandum at Versailles carries absolutely no historical resonance. But after the occupation of the Ruhr and the abdication of the Kaiser, what else could the Mullahs possibly put on their shopping list? We’ll be picking through the carcrash, looking for signs of life in D...

Fable — a short fantastical tale with a moral message. For weeks, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei was telling anyone who’d listen that he’d invented an AI so powerful it could walk through walls, shoot sparrows from the sky, talk to horses, invent trees. A death star of tech. Whether this was part of the sales pitch or genuine alarm, the US Government has taken him at his word, and shut off access to it...

It’s war in our time. After flirting with peace for a few miserable hours, the US and Iran are back to what they know best: taking uneven chunks out of each other amidst the world’s prime oil pathway. This week, Iran levelled a terminal of Kuwait’s airport, and attacked the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Then there was that mysterious Apache helicopter crash off Hormuz. Now, after the crisp kinetic strik...

This week: two audio essays. First up, they’re calling it the Poor Man’s Tomahawk . Ukraine is firing up to 2000 long range drones a week into Russia. The production facilities supplying them are scattered across Western Europe. These production facilities have an artificial shield, in that they are diplomatically protected. But how long this will last is unclear. For its part, Ukraine would like...

Russia has rained Oreshnik hypersonic missiles on Kiev. Four people killed. 549 missiles apparently shot down. This was a message. The Oreshnik travels at Mach 10. It was designed to deliver nukes. As fighting season starts in earnest, year five looks like it might be the start of real escalation. But, if Russian munitions start tiptoeing ever further West, could this be the year of, you know, rea...