Tatsu’s Newsletter Podcast

In February 2026, a fraud defendant in the Southern District of New York did something that felt, at the time, entirely reasonable. He had received a grand jury subpoena. He knew he was a target. So he opened the consumer version of Claude and worked through his own legal exposure: what the government might have, what he could argue, where the facts cut against him. Judge Jed Rakoff ordered those...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 40+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. This preview is public. Share it with anyone who still thinks the Epstein story is about one dead man. On April 19, 2026, the Italian state broadcaster RAI aired a segment of its investigative program Report titled "La guerra di Epstein," Epstein's...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. Share this preview with others. On December 15, 2025, Jared Kushner publicly withdrew from a project nobody outside the Western Balkans knew he had been negotiating. The site was the bombed-out former headquarters of the Yugoslav General Staff in c...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu, footnoted and on the record: $8/month, 14-day free trial. This post is public. Send it to anyone who spent 116 days telling you the Iranian regime was about to fall. On February 28, the day Israeli and American strikes killed Ali Khamenei in the opening hours of the war, I published a piece with...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 40+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. Share this preview with anyone still describing military neurotechnology as "therapeutic." "Biotechnology will become the new strategic commanding heights of national defense, from biomaterials to brain control weapons." Major General He Fuchu, the...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. This post is public. Share it with anyone still waiting for the Iranian regime to collapse. On or about Sunday, June 14, US Vice President JD Vance is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohamm...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. This post is public. Share it with anyone who reflexively calls every Chinese voice an asset of one state or another. On January 18, 2026, a Substack newsletter called The Political Economist , authored by **@politicaleconomist** (SM Muller), publi...

CLASSIFICATION : Professional Analysis, Founding Member Tier PREPARED : 2026-05-04 | COVERAGE : April 1 to May 4, 2026 | WORD COUNT : ~10,800 REPORT TYPE : Monthly Strategic Assessment Phase 1: Regional Stability Rankings Region | Stability | Trend vs. March | Key Driver --------------+-----------+-----------------+----------------------------- Middle East | 1/10 | ▼ -1 | Iran war frozen but not |...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. This post is public. Share it with anyone still describing the Iran war as a US victory. Three structural facts from the past 48 hours that the standard war-coverage narrative cannot accommodate. One. President Trump on June 4 publicly stated of Ir...

CLASSIFICATION : Professional Analysis, Institutional Clients PREPARED : 2026-03-30 | COVERAGE : February 28 to March 30, 2026 | WORD COUNT : ~10,500 REPORT TYPE : Monthly Strategic Assessment Professional geopolitical intelligence: $99/month | Wall Street pays Stratfor: $40,000/year ($3,333/month) | You save: 97% Phase 1: Regional Stability Rankings Region | Stability (1 to 10) | Trend | Key Driv...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 40+ footnotes: $8/month, 14-day free trial. This post is public. Share it with anyone still describing the Iran war as a ceasefire. Three structural facts from the past twelve hours that the standard ceasefire narrative cannot accommodate. One. The United States Air Force struck Bandar Abbas...

(00:00:00): An FPV suicide drone rushes straight towards you. (00:00:03): Instinctively, you raise your rifle and open fire, but the drone is too fast and too small. (00:00:09): Your bullets can’t hit it, and in the end, it blows you apart on the spot. (00:00:13): A second drone comes screaming. (00:00:15): This time, your teammate switches to blinding rounds. (00:00:18): The moment the round deto...

He didn't destroy democracy. He made a copy of it that he controlled. And then the copy went global. In Part 1 of this series , we traced the biography of the man: a half-Chechen theater student who reinvented himself into the most powerful political operative in modern Russia. In Part 2 , we examined what he built inside Russia: "sovereign democracy," a simulation of pluralism so convincing that...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month. Share this with anyone still describing the Iran war as "winding down." Three numbers from the past seventy-two hours that the Trump administration has not addressed publicly. Forty-two. The Congressional Research Service issued a report on May 19 confirming that the...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month. This post is public. Share it with anyone still describing the Iran war as a ceasefire. Two structural facts from the past 72 hours that the standard ceasefire narrative cannot accommodate. One. The Wall Street Journal reported May 26 that the United States Navy is r...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month. Share this with anyone still describing the Beijing trip as a peace summit. Air Force One landed in Beijing this morning with twelve American CEOs on board. Combined market capitalization of those twelve executives: approximately $11.5 to $12.2 trillion, or roughly 6...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month. Share this preview with anyone still describing the UAE as a non-combatant. Three days ago I wrote that the Iran war had moved from the Panmunjom-talks-while-fighting-tapers phase to the Outpost War combat phase.[1] In the past 72 hours, the war added an active comba...

In Part 1 of this series , we traced the biography of Vladislav Surkov: the half-Chechen theater student who reinvented himself as the most powerful political operative in modern Russia, built the machinery of Putin's state from inside the Presidential Administration, and eventually vanished into the silence of house arrest or exile. That was the story of the man. This is the story of what he buil...

In Part 1 of this series , we traced the biography of the man: the half-Chechen theater student who remade himself into Putin's most powerful political operative. In Part 2 , we examined what he built inside Russia: "sovereign democracy," a simulation of pluralism so convincing it neutralized genuine democracy without appearing to destroy it. Now we follow the method as it crosses Russia's borders...

This post is public. Share it with anyone who builds with AI. Full disclosure: I am a digital builder, but I am also a healthy skeptic of technology. While I don't believe yet in an AI apocalypse, there are definitely going to be roiling changes in society, industries and economies. Winners, losers, perhaps even more wealth disparity. I have tons of IT experience, in everything from systems engine...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month. This post is public. Share it with anyone still watching cable news for Iran war analysis. On July 27, 1951, the Korean War armistice negotiations had been running for 17 days. The line was already frozen. The fighting was supposed to taper. Instead, the United Natio...

Bloomberg: $35/month. Financial Times: $42/month. The Economist: $17/month. Original analysis by Tatsu with 30+ footnotes: $8/month. Share this preview with anyone who thinks "ceasefire" means peace. On July 10, 1951, the Korean War armistice negotiations opened at Kaesong, the 38th parallel. The talks lasted 158 meetings spread over two years and seventeen days before the armistice was signed at...

April 10, 2026 "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." I.F. Stone "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." George Orwell In Part 1, I showed that the anti-establishment commentariat, from Peter Schiff to Yuval Noah Harari, is captured by its own business model....

April 1, 2026 I have a theory that I would like to prove to you. In the beginning, land was the original resource and the world was lit up by Sperm Whale oil harvested from New Bedford, Massachusetts. Investors poured money into whaling ships to go harvest "biological compute" (whale brains/blubber) to light lamps in London. Then we got coal to power the First Industrial Revolution, then we got to...

April 8, 2026 "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." Linji Yixuan, 9th century In April 2022, Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector turned Russia commentator, declared that "Russia has won this war." In April 2023, he told his audience that the conflict in Ukraine was "finished." By March 2026, the war had entered its fourth year, Russia had lost an estimated 300,000 casualties, Ukr...