“By contributing to an open-source, transnational effort that aligns with its own industrial priorities, Vietnam inserts itself not as a peripheral adopter but as a co-author of global AI infrastructure. This is asymmetry as strategy: composing relevance not by competing at the centre, but by accruing influence at the edge.” I’ve now read this essay […]
This is why you need to study ancient history: we’ve been here before
I’m obsessed with the idea of just how much our current global moment of transition resonates with the transition in ancient China from the Spring and Autumn period (770 to 476 BCE) to the Warring States period (475 to 221BCE). More accurately, my obsession is with this recent essay from Noema by Shanghai-based Chinese scholar […]
Dark Enlightenment, the bonfire of the vanities and being countercultural
This is the 10 February 2025 FT Swamp Notes from Rana Foroohar and Richard Waters. [The Notes is a great @financialtimes newsletter to which I strongly recommend you sign up if you haven’t already]. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in the torrent of analysis and speculation about exactly what the Trump/Musk […]
“We are as gods and might as well get used to it.”
I’ve borrowed the title for this blog from a recent review article from Foreign Affairs. It references Stewart Brand’s introduction to the first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog, “an encyclopedic compendium of resources for back-to-the-land living that became a foundational document of Silicon Valley’s techno-utopian culture.” This wonderful review essay is built around a […]
Why I care about a moonshot for care
I love the idea of moonshots. There is something stirring and hopeful in the conception of setting a venture for change or accomplishment whose virtue lies primarily in its scale and boldness. Mariana Mazzucato has taken the idea as far as anyone including in her latest book. In her framing, moonshots are not just big […]
What is government for?
This is the 19 July email from US historian Heather Cox Richardson, part of a free “letter from an American historian” to which you can subscribe here. If you want to join the comments discussion it will cost you $5 a month. Richardson is a Professor of History at Boston College. Her emails, to which […]
