Nigeria’s Overpaid Lawmakers: Feasting While the Lights Go Out

 

Nigeria is not being misgoverned; it is being slowly looted, as overpaid elites feast while darkness, hunger, and fear spread—until one spark triggers a collapse no one will be ready for.

In Nigeria today, while ordinary citizens struggle to survive blackouts, hunger, and daily fear, a tiny political elite is quietly bleeding the nation dry, turning public offices into private vaults and pushing the country toward a sudden, unstoppable collapse no one will see coming until it explodes. This is not a slogan. It is a pattern, repeated so often that it has begun to feel normal. And normal, in a failing state, is the most dangerous lie of all.

This is not mismanagement anymore. Mismanagement sounds clumsy, like a dropped plate. What is happening now is deliberate extraction. The kind that wears a suit, smiles for cameras, and signs budgets with steady hands. Nigeria’s lawmakers sit at the center of this storm. On paper, their salaries look harmless. A senator’s basic annual salary has long been officially placed at roughly 13.5 million naira. That figure is waved around whenever critics raise their voices. But everyone knows the paper salary is a decoy. The real money lives elsewhere.

Allowances are where the vault opens. Housing, furniture, vehicle loans, constituency projects, travel, hardship claims, and running costs stack on top of one another like bricks in a private fortress. Over the years, civil society groups, budget analysts, and investigative journalists have repeatedly estimated that when all allowances are added, the annual cost of a single senator to the Nigerian state runs well above 200 million naira. Multiply that by 109  senators, then add 360 members of the House of Representatives, each with their own river of perks, and the picture stops being abstract. It becomes grotesque. When the bucket is gold, the well dries faster.

All this happens in a country where the minimum wage struggles to keep pace with inflation and where a large share of the population survives on the edge. Recent poverty assessments have placed more than 60 percent of Nigerians below the poverty line. That is not a typo. More than half the country wakes up every day calculating how to eat, how to move, how to stay alive. Food inflation has surged. Rice, bread, cooking oil, and fuel prices jump so often that salaries feel like rumors. Yet the political class remains insulated, sealed off by convoys, security details, and allowances that rise even when the economy falls.

Electricity tells the story better than speeches ever could. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and one of its largest economies, still struggles to generate more than 4000 to 5000 megawatts of power for over 200 million people. Blackouts are not emergencies; they are routines. Businesses burn diesel to survive. Hospitals ration power. Students read by phone light. The cost of private generators drains households and companies alike, acting as an invisible tax on survival. Meanwhile, legislative budgets remain bloated, defended as the price of democracy. When the lights go out, excuses glow brighter.

Security is no better. Kidnapping for ransom has spread from remote highways into villages and city streets. Armed groups roam rural areas, forcing farmers off their land. Food insecurity deepens not only because of climate pressure or global shocks but because people are afraid to plant and transport what they grow. Official figures and independent tallies over the past few years have shown thousands of kidnapping cases annually, with ransoms running into billions of naira. Communities pay because the state cannot protect them. Yet lawmakers’ security votes and personal protection never seem to shrink. Fear is privatized. Safety is reserved.

History does not whisper here; it shouts. Nigeria has seen this movie before. In the years leading up to past political ruptures and military takeovers, the same signals flashed red. A ruling elite grew richer. Institutions weakened. Public trust collapsed. Ordinary people adapted by lowering expectations, then by lowering hope. When the break came, it felt sudden only because denial had been loud. A crack ignored becomes a collapse remembered.

The psychology of this moment is as dangerous as the economics. Overpaid lawmakers do not just drain resources; they drain empathy. When leaders no longer experience darkness, hunger, or fear, they begin to treat suffering as background noise. Policy becomes theater. Accountability becomes a joke told in private. Citizens, watching from the outside, begin to see the state as something that happens to them, not something that belongs to them. That is when loyalty dies quietly.

Fuel policy offers a sharp example. The removal of fuel subsidies in 2023 sent petrol prices skyrocketing, doubling or worse in many areas almost overnight. Transport costs exploded. Food prices followed. Ordinary Nigerians were told to endure the pain for long-term reform. Some reforms are necessary. But pain without shared sacrifice is poison. Lawmakers did not slash their allowances. Convoys did not shrink. The message was clear even without words. Endure means you. Adjust means you. When belts tighten, only the poor feel the pinch.

Corruption scandals deepen the rot. Constituency projects are approved, funded, and then abandoned. Schools exist only on paper. Clinics have signboards but no staff. Each uncompleted project is a small betrayal, but together they form a pattern of contempt. Investigations come and go. Prosecutions stall. The cycle repeats. People stop asking when things will improve and start asking how to escape. Emigration becomes a dream. Survival becomes a plan.

What makes this moment explosive is the youth factor. Nigeria is young, restless, and online. Millions of young people face unemployment or jobs that barely pay. They see the numbers. They see the luxury. Social media does the accounting in public. Every allowance, every convoy, every careless statement is screenshotted and shared. Anger travels faster than reform. When patience dies young, rage grows fast.

States rarely collapse with fireworks and warnings. They collapse like a chair with termites, holding steady until the moment it doesn’t. Nigeria risks that kind of fall. A disputed election. A sudden spike in prices. A major security failure. Any spark could ignite a system already soaked in resentment. When that happens, no legislative privilege will buy immunity.

This is why the image of lawmakers feasting while the lights go out is not exaggeration. It is diagnosis. A country where representation becomes extraction cannot stand forever. Numbers do not lie, even when politicians do. You can drain a nation quietly for only so long before the silence breaks. And when it does, the collapse will feel sudden only to those who refused to count.

 

 

On a different but equally important note, readers who enjoy thoughtful analysis may also find the titles in my  “Brief Book Series” worth exploring. You can also read the books  here on Google Play: BriefBook Series.

Snowed In, Cut Off, and Unprepared: When Nature Turns Cruel

 

When snow keeps falling, nature proves it needs no permission to trap cities, break systems, and turn ordinary homes into freezing cages with no timeline for rescue.

Nature does not negotiate during a snowstorm. I am watching it prove that again, hour by hour, street by street. Roads vanish under white weight. Power lines go silent like cut throats. Ordinary neighborhoods turn into cold, isolated cages overnight, and nobody gets a pass. Not the elderly. Not the sick. Not the careful. Not the confident. Snow does not ask who you voted for, how much you saved, or whether you followed the rules. It shows up, uninvited and unbothered, and it takes what it wants.

Right now, across Baltimore, New York, New Jersey, and much of the Northeast, the evidence is piling up as fast as the snow itself. Entire blocks are locked in place. Cars sit abandoned like bad decisions frozen mid-thought. Side streets disappear first, then main roads follow. Emergency sirens sound farther away than they should, slower than people need. Power outages spread in the dark like rumors, and suddenly the modern world feels very old and very thin. I hear a neighbor shout through the snow, asking if anyone has heat. Someone else yells back, “We’re burning candles and praying.” That’s not a metaphor. That’s logistics.

More than 700,000 people across the country have already lost electricity during this storm, and tens of thousands of flights have been canceled or delayed. Airports that usually move like machines are reduced to waiting rooms full of coats, fear, and phone chargers. Roughly 245 million people across 40 states are in the storm’s path, from Texas to New England. Governors didn’t issue emergency declarations because they felt dramatic. They did it because history taught them what happens when snow gets mean and nobody listens.

I have seen this movie before, and it never ends well. In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri crushed Texas. Power failed for days. At least 200 people died, many from hypothermia inside homes that were never designed to go cold. Water systems collapsed. People melted snow in bathtubs like it was a frontier problem, not a modern one. The lesson was clear and brutal: when infrastructure meets ice, ice often wins. Nature didn’t care that Texas prides itself on independence. Pipes still burst. Heaters still failed. People still froze.

Go further back. The Blizzard of 1996 and 2010  buried the East Coast under feet of snow and ice, shutting down cities and killing more than 200 people. In 1978, the Great Blizzard paralyzed New England with hurricane-force winds and record snowfall, stranding drivers on highways overnight. Some never made it home. In 1888, the Great Blizzard killed hundreds across the Northeast, snapping telegraph lines and trapping people inside buildings for days. Technology has changed since then. Human vulnerability has not.

Snowstorms are cruel not because they are loud, but because they are patient. They don’t rush. They grind. They let panic bloom slowly as supplies thin out. Grocery trucks stop coming. Pharmacies close early. Dialysis patients start worrying. Parents stare at thermostats like they’re life support machines. I overheard a man on the sidewalk mutter into his phone, “If the power doesn’t come back tonight, we’re in trouble.” He didn’t sound dramatic. He sounded factual.

There is a special kind of fear that comes with winter storms. It’s quiet. It seeps in. It doesn’t scream like a hurricane or roar like a wildfire. It just removes options one by one. Roads close. Then bridges. Then help. You realize the heat in your house depends on a grid you don’t control, maintained by workers who may not be able to reach you. When the roof leaks, the wise man looks to the sky and the fool blames the floor. Snowstorms turn everyone into students of that lesson.

Officials urge people to stay indoors and stock emergency supplies, but that advice assumes time and money exist in equal measure for everyone. It assumes people can prepare. Many cannot. The storm does not adjust for that. It does not slow down because a neighborhood is poor or elderly or overlooked. It just keeps falling. I hear someone joke, “At least it looks pretty.” That joke always comes before the fear. Pretty snow becomes dangerous snow once the lights go out.

The National Weather Service has warned that bitter cold following the storm will slow cleanup and prolong outages. That matters because cold doesn’t forgive delays. Hypothermia doesn’t care about explanations. Carbon monoxide poisoning spikes when people turn to unsafe heating methods. Emergency rooms see more heart attacks from shoveling snow than from most other winter activities. This is documented, measured, repeated. Winter kills quietly and often after the headlines move on.

What makes snowstorms especially unsettling is how fast control evaporates. One day you’re complaining about traffic. The next day, traffic no longer exists. I heard a woman yell across a buried sidewalk, “We didn’t think it would be this bad.” That sentence is winter’s greatest hit. Every major storm leaves behind a chorus of it. We underestimate nature because it looks familiar. Snow falls every year. Cold comes every winter. But when they align just right, they stop being seasonal and start being savage.

There is no moral arc to a blizzard. No lesson it intends to teach. Any meaning we find is our own invention. Snowstorms are cruel because they are indifferent. They expose the thinness of our systems and the fragility of our confidence. They remind us that comfort is rented, not owned, and the landlord doesn’t answer calls during a storm.

As I watch plows struggle, power trucks crawl, and neighborhoods seal themselves into silence, one truth keeps pressing in. Nature does not negotiate. It does not compromise. It does not care who you are. When snow decides to take a city hostage, it does so without malice and without mercy. And the scariest part is not that this is rare. The scariest part is that it keeps happening, and we keep acting surprised, as if winter hasn’t been warning us all along.

 

If you’re looking for something different to read, Brief Book Series titles is available on Google Play Books. You can also read the books in the series here on Google Play: Brief BookSeries.

 

The Age of Paranoid Power: Why Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Jerusalem No Longer Trust Reality

 

Today’s greatest threat isn’t one aggressive nation, but a world of terrified leaders who distrust reality, overreact to shadows, and govern as if disaster is always seconds away.

I watch the world like a man standing in a room full of twitchy strangers, fingers hovering over triggers, eyes darting at shadows. This is modern geopolitics. Not the chessboard of calm grandmasters we were promised in textbooks, but a cracked mirror where every state sees an enemy staring back. Strategy used to be about patience and planning. Now it’s about fear management, about who panics first and who panics louder. Governments don’t act like sober adults weighing costs and benefits anymore. They act like traumatized survivors, convinced betrayal is always one step away and catastrophe is already late.

In the United States, fear wears a suit and calls itself vigilance. Every election is treated like a crime scene before the votes are even counted. Foreign interference is no longer a risk to be assessed; it’s an assumption baked into the system. Since the 2016 election, investigations, intelligence briefings, and congressional hearings have kept the country locked in a permanent posture of suspicion. Cyber intrusions, disinformation campaigns, and influence operations are real, but the response has turned existential. Washington behaves like a house that’s been robbed once and now hears footsteps in every creak of the floor. The result is a foreign policy that often treats ambiguity as aggression and uncertainty as intent. When you expect sabotage everywhere, restraint starts to look like weakness. A scared guard shoots first and asks questions at the morgue.

China operates from a deeper wound. Its leaders don’t just remember humiliation; they institutionalize it. The century of foreign domination is not ancient history in Beijing. It is curriculum, propaganda, and political oxygen. Every naval patrol in the South China Sea, every semiconductor restriction, every alliance meeting in Asia is read through the same lens: containment is coming, betrayal is inevitable, and survival requires control. The ruling party governs as if losing grip for even a second means national collapse. Internal dissent is treated as foreign manipulation. Economic pressure is framed as siege warfare. When a government believes history is out to get it, paranoia becomes policy. Pre-emption feels rational. Waiting feels suicidal.

Russia is fear forged into muscle memory. Decades of NATO expansion, real or perceived, fused with the collapse of the Soviet Union to create a state that sees encirclement in every neighbor’s handshake. Protests are not grievances; they are Western plots. Sanctions are not punishment; they are acts of war. Even peaceful alliances are treated like loaded guns pointed at Moscow’s door. This mindset did not begin with the invasion of Ukraine, but it found its most violent expression there. The Kremlin acted not because invasion made strategic sense in the long run, but because delay felt dangerous. When leaders convince themselves that tomorrow will be worse than today, they choose escalation and call it defense. A cornered bear doesn’t negotiate; it lashes out.

In Iran and Israel, fear is not abstract. It is lived, rehearsed, and passed down. Iran’s leadership governs with the memory of coups, invasions, and sanctions that crippled its economy and legitimacy. Israel governs with the memory of annihilation narrowly avoided and violence constantly returning. In both cases, survival psychology dominates. Pre-emption feels safer than patience. A missile not launched today is imagined landing tomorrow. This logic turns intelligence estimates into self-fulfilling prophecies. When both sides assume the other is minutes away from catastrophe, diplomacy shrinks and trigger fingers grow restless. The past does not merely inform policy; it haunts it.

The numbers tell the same ugly story. Global military spending surpassed $2 trillion in the early 2020s, the highest level ever recorded. That is not the behavior of a confident world. That is the behavior of a nervous one. Arms races thrive on distrust. Missile defense systems, hypersonic weapons, cyber commands, and space forces are sold as stabilizers, but they often do the opposite. They shorten decision windows and magnify worst-case thinking. When leaders believe an enemy can strike faster than ever, they feel pressured to strike first. When the clock runs faster, mistakes multiply.

Information warfare pours gasoline on this fire. Social media floods leaders and citizens alike with rumors, leaks, and half-truths moving at the speed of outrage. Reality becomes slippery. Every video might be fake, every silence suspicious, every denial proof of guilt. Governing in that environment is like steering through fog while being screamed at from all sides. Trust collapses not just between nations, but between leaders and facts themselves. When reality is doubted, paranoia fills the gap. Decisions get made on vibes, instincts, and worst nightmares.

I hear diplomats talk about de-escalation, but their voices sound small in rooms dominated by security hawks. Fear has better talking points. Fear is easier to sell to voters than patience. Fear wins elections. Leaders learn quickly that calming people down is risky, but scaring them straight is profitable. So they inflate threats, dramatize intelligence, and frame every compromise as surrender. Over time, this performance becomes belief. The mask sticks. Leaders start trusting their own propaganda. If you lie to yourself long enough, the lie starts giving orders.

This is how misjudgment becomes inevitable. When everyone assumes hostile intent, every move confirms it. A military exercise becomes a rehearsal for invasion. A sanction becomes proof of aggression. A defensive alliance becomes a noose. Diplomacy weakens not because it fails, but because no one believes in it anymore. Talking looks naive in a world addicted to suspicion. And so conflict stops being an accident. It becomes the expected outcome of a system designed around fear.

The greatest danger we face is not one rogue state or one mad leader. It is a global mindset that treats catastrophe as normal and paranoia as wisdom. A world where leaders no longer trust reality itself is a world that governs in permanent emergency mode. Emergency mode shortcuts judgment. It rewards speed over accuracy and force over understanding. History shows where this leads. In 1914, nations sleepwalked into war believing mobilization was defense and delay was death. Millions paid for that paranoia with their lives.

I don’t pretend fear will disappear. It is human, and states are run by humans with scars. But when fear becomes the primary driver of policy, it stops protecting and starts destroying. We are living in an age where nations flinch first and think later, where overreaction is praised as strength and restraint is mocked as weakness. When everyone lives like the sky is falling, someone eventually pulls it down.

If this system doesn’t relearn how to breathe, to pause, to trust something other than its own nightmares, then conflict will keep writing itself. Not because war is inevitable, but because paranoia makes it so. And that, more than any missile or tank, is the real weapon pointed at the future.

 

An update for those who follow my work: “China’s Military Mirage: The Overestimated Power of the People's Liberation Army” is now available on Google Play Books. Read it here on Google Play: China’s Military Mirage.

 

 

A Million Dead Is Not a Rounding Error

 

A dictator like Putin can burn a million lives without blinking, and Europe keeps waiting; Ukraine has proven it can break Putin, but delay means more blood, more wreckage, and a war that metastasizes across the continent.

I keep staring at the numbers until they blur, and then I stare harder. Tanks burned into black husks. Artillery smashed into scrap. Drones falling from the sky like dead birds. And people—so many people—that the math stops feeling human. The estimates say Russian casualties in Ukraine may have crossed a line no modern European war should ever cross. Killed and wounded together could be over one million. Even if that figure makes some people nervous, even if you shave it down and argue over margins, the scale is still obscene. This isn’t fog-of-war confusion. This is industrial loss. This is a meat grinder running day and night while a dictator shrugs.

Independent investigators counting obituaries, graves, and casualty records have confirmed that more than 1,000,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded by early 2026. Broader estimates push the number of fatalities even higher. Add the unaccounted-for wounded, the captured, the missing, and the broken, and the total swells into a figure that should have ended any sane leader’s career. In a real democracy, this kind of blood price would crash a government. Parties would be voted out. Presidents would face inquiries, tribunals, maybe prison. Parents would riot in the streets. Generals would resign. The country would demand answers. But Russia is not a real democracy, and Vladimir Putin is not a leader who answers to voters. He answers to power, and to him, power is a ledger where bodies are expendable and money is fuel.

I imagine the Kremlin counting losses the way a casino counts chips after a long night. The house always wins, right? Except the house is burning. Russian equipment losses stack up into the tens of thousands. Tanks alone run into five figures, armored vehicles into the tens of thousands, artillery pieces destroyed faster than factories can replace them, aircraft shot down, helicopters gone, ships sunk, submarines lost, drones erased by the tens of thousands. Every field in Ukraine holds rusting proof that this war is not strategy but stubbornness. Billions of dollars lie twisted in the mud. The Russian economy bleeds to keep the fantasy alive, and Putin doesn’t flinch. A tyrant counts silence as consent, and in Russia, silence is enforced.

The cruelty here isn’t just the scale; it’s the indifference. Putin does not care how many soldiers die. He does not care how many are captured. He does not care how many families are ruined. He does not care if Russia is hollowed out to fund a war that gains nothing but more graves. This is not conjecture. This is pattern. When losses mount, he mobilizes more men. When equipment runs short, he sends older gear. When sanctions bite, he tightens control. When the public murmurs, he crushes dissent. The war continues because stopping would mean admitting failure, and for a dictator, admission is weakness. Pride rides shotgun while reason bleeds out in the back seat.

Now here’s where Europe has a problem, and it’s a problem Europe keeps trying to solve with meetings, statements, and waiting. Waiting for America to lead. Waiting for elections elsewhere. Waiting for some magic off-ramp. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been fighting for three years and proving something Europe should already know: Ukraine can do the job. Ukrainian forces have humiliated the Russian military again and again, not with miracles but with competence. They’ve shattered the myth of Russian invincibility. They’ve adapted faster, fought smarter, and turned Western support into battlefield results. They’ve defended cities, reclaimed territory, and held lines against a numerically larger enemy. This is not charity. This is performance.

I’ve heard the cautious voices. They warn about escalation. They worry about costs. They whisper about fatigue. But I look at the facts and I see a different danger. The danger is dragging this out until the body count becomes background noise. The danger is letting a dictator normalize mass death because democracies are afraid of decisive action. The danger is pretending that time is neutral. Time is not neutral. Time favors the man who doesn’t care how many die. When patience meets brutality, patience loses.

History doesn’t flatter appeasement. Democracies that hesitate in the face of aggression often pay later in higher costs and wider wars. The lesson isn’t subtle. When aggressors believe their opponents lack will, they push harder. Ukraine has shown will. Europe must now show capacity. Not someday. Now. Europe has the industry, the money, the technology, and the manpower to fortify Ukraine without waiting for America to carry the load. This isn’t about replacing American support; it’s about ending dependency. Europe’s security is being decided in Ukrainian trenches, and pretending otherwise is a luxury bought with Ukrainian blood.

I write this because I’m tired of watching debates circle while the casualty numbers climb. I’m tired of hearing that a million casualties are “disputed” as if dispute makes them vanish. Even the lower-bound estimates are catastrophic. Even the most conservative counts describe a disaster. And the equipment losses alone tell a story of waste so vast it should have ended the war years ago. But it didn’t, because dictators don’t stop when logic tells them to stop. They stop when they’re stopped.

Europe’s solution is simple, even if it isn’t easy. Fortify Ukraine to finish the job. Give them the tools to break Russian logistics, to dominate the air, to defend their cities, to strike back with precision. Stop rationing support like it’s a favor. Treat it like a firewall. Because that’s what it is. Every Ukrainian success reduces the space in which Putin can pretend this war is working. Every delay extends the slaughter.

I can already hear the cynics calling this naive, or dangerous, or reckless. But what’s truly reckless is letting a million casualties become acceptable because confronting a dictator feels uncomfortable. What’s naive is believing Putin will tire of killing before he’s forced to stop. And what’s dangerous is the idea that Europe can outsource its security forever. Ukraine has done the hard part. They’ve proven courage, competence, and resilience under fire. They’ve shown that Putin’s army bleeds like any other. Europe’s job now is to stop watching and start finishing.

This war has stripped away illusions. It has shown what happens when power is unchecked and accountability is absent. It has shown how quickly a state can turn human beings into numbers and numbers into noise. I refuse to let that noise fade. If democracy means anything, it means consequences. And if Europe believes in its own safety, it will act like it. Because a fire ignored does not go out; it waits for more fuel.

 

 

For readers who want the full picture, “Putin’s Dangerous Gamble: How the Invasion of Ukraine Backfired on Russia” is available now on Google Play Books. You can also read it here on Google Play: Putin’s Dangerous Gamble.

 

 

The Nuclear Bluff That Holds the World Hostage

 

The real danger isn’t nuclear war—it’s a world that no longer fears it, daring fate to prove us wrong through miscalculation, pride, or one leader with nothing left to lose.

I grew up believing nuclear weapons were the end of the world. One button. One mistake. One flash, and history stops breathing. That fear used to hang over politics like a permanent storm cloud. But today, something strange has happened. The fear is gone. The bomb is still there, bigger and smarter than ever, but the terror has faded. And that is exactly why I think we are living in a more dangerous world than before.

Nuclear weapons are now too powerful to use. Everyone knows it. Every general, every president, every intelligence analyst understands the math. One nuclear strike does not end a war; it ends legitimacy, alliances, markets, and often the regime that launched it. That shared knowledge has turned the most terrifying weapons in human history into something closer to a bluff. We still point at the red button, but no one expects it to be pressed. Global security now runs on fragile ego, public posturing, and the silent prayer that no leader ever wakes up one morning with nothing left to lose. When fear stops working, the floor gets slippery.

I think of nuclear weapons the way I think of roadside assistance. To countries that possess them, nukes now function like a political “AAA subscription”. You don’t buy it because you want your car to break down. You buy it for peace of mind. You wave the card when you argue with other drivers. You feel safer knowing help exists somewhere out there. But the moment you actually have to call, the trip is already ruined. In nuclear terms, pressing the button means the system failed. The driver lost control. Survival itself is in question. Like roadside assistance, nukes are meant to be displayed, not used. The value lies in never dialing the number. A fire extinguisher is proof of safety only until it is sprayed.

History backs this up in uncomfortable ways. During the Cold War, fear worked. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 brought the United States and the Soviet Union closer to nuclear war than most people will ever realize, and both sides pulled back not because they were calm, but because they were terrified. Leaders on both sides believed nuclear war meant mutual annihilation. That fear froze their hands. It forced compromise. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction was brutal, but it was honest. Everyone knew the price.

Fast forward to today, and fear has been replaced by confidence in restraint. Since 1945, nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare, despite dozens of wars involving nuclear-armed states. India and Pakistan have clashed repeatedly. North Korea has tested missiles and threatened cities. Russia has invaded Ukraine while openly rattling its nuclear arsenal. The common thread is not restraint born of morality. It is restraint born of self-preservation. Leaders understand that using nukes would trigger consequences so severe they would not survive them politically, and possibly not survive them at all.

Take Russia and Ukraine. I hear people ask why nuclear weapons have not been used. The answer is simple and terrifying. If Vladimir Putin ever ordered a nuclear strike on Ukraine, the retaliation would not just be military. It would be total. His remaining allies would vanish. Global sanctions would harden into isolation. Internal elites would calculate survival. History shows that regimes collapse faster after catastrophic decisions than after battlefield defeats. Putin knows this. So do the people around him. The bomb is not a weapon. It is a threat he cannot afford to test. A king who swings the last sword often loses the crown.

That turns nuclear weapons into political theater. They are props rolled onto the stage during arguments, not tools meant for real action. Leaders posture. Analysts debate red lines. The public grows numb. And that numbness is where danger lives. When everyone assumes the button will never be pressed, risk-taking becomes cheaper. Wars drag on longer. Provocations grow bolder. Miscalculations become more likely. The system depends on everyone continuing to believe that everyone else is rational.

But history is unkind to systems built on perfect rationality. In 1983, a Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov was alerted to what appeared to be incoming American missiles. Protocol told him to report it, which could have triggered retaliation. He hesitated. He judged it was likely a false alarm. He was right. One man’s doubt prevented catastrophe. That was not a system working. That was luck wearing a uniform. We have had similar near-misses caused by faulty radar, computer glitches, and misread signals. Each time, we survived because someone blinked. Luck is not a strategy.

What scares me now is not the bomb itself, but the illusion surrounding it. Nuclear weapons have become symbols of status, not tools of war. They sit in silos and submarines like expensive insurance policies no one plans to cash. But insurance works only if disaster remains hypothetical. The moment it becomes real, the policy cannot save you. It can only confirm that everything has gone wrong.

The greatest danger is the leader who stops caring about consequences. History gives us examples of regimes in collapse making reckless decisions. As defeat closes in, calculations change. When survival is already lost, deterrence loses its teeth. The world pretends this scenario is unthinkable, but politics has never respected what polite people call unthinkable. A cornered animal does not read white papers.

I write this in the first person because I do not stand outside this system. I live under it. We all do. We scroll past nuclear threats the way we scroll past weather warnings that never seem to hit our street. We have learned to live without fear. That adaptation feels like maturity, but it may be complacency in disguise. Nuclear weapons no longer scare us because we believe they cannot be used. And because we believe that, we are slowly building a world that dares them to prove us wrong.

The bomb has not become less dangerous. We have simply trained ourselves to stop flinching. And in a system held together by bluff, ego, and hope, the most dangerous moment is not when everyone is afraid. It is when everyone is sure the worst will never happen.

 

 

This article stands on its own, but some readers may also enjoy the titles in my  “Brief Book Series”. They can also read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

 

The Algorithm Knows You’re Hungry—and It’s Already Raising the Grocery Prices in Maryland

 

If dynamic pricing hits grocery stores, Maryland shoppers won’t buy food anymore—they’ll be tracked, analyzed, and squeezed by invisible machines that raise prices precisely when hunger, weather, or paydays leave no escape. 

I walk into a grocery store expecting the usual ritual. Grab a cart. Nod at the automatic doors. Drift toward the cereal aisle like a sleepwalker with a list. Prices used to sit still, quiet and dumb, printed on paper tags like they were ashamed to move. Now imagine those prices blinking back at me, alive, twitchy, watching. That is the future being debated in Maryland, and it smells less like fresh bread and more like a trap.

The warning came wrapped in a calm news voice, but I heard the alarm screaming underneath. Electronic shelf labels are creeping in. Algorithms already track how we shop. Put the two together and you don’t have a grocery store anymore. You have a live market experiment where every shopper is data and every dollar is fair game. If this technology spreads unchecked, I won’t be buying food. I’ll be hunted by invisible pricing machines that watch, learn, and squeeze, turning a normal run for milk into a real-time financial ambush.

We’ve seen this movie before. Rideshares wrote the script. Airlines perfected it. Sports teams cashed the checks. The price jumps when demand spikes. The spike happens when people have no choice. Miss a flight, need a ride home in the rain, want to see your kid’s favorite team. Surge pricing isn’t an accident; it’s a strategy. The same math that decides when to raise an Uber fare can decide when to raise the price of eggs. The difference is that you can skip a concert. You can’t skip dinner.

Supporters of this tech say it’s efficient. I say efficiency is just a clean word for extraction. Algorithms don’t have empathy. They have objectives. Increase margin. Optimize yield. When retailers map shopping habits, time of day, weather, local events, and income patterns, they aren’t guessing. They are predicting. And prediction is power. When the fox writes the rules, the henhouse becomes a spreadsheet.

There’s a reason people recoil when they hear that food prices could change by the hour. Food is not a luxury. It is survival. In basic economics, markets work when buyers and sellers share information. Dynamic pricing breaks that balance. The seller knows everything. The buyer knows nothing until the register beeps. That’s not a market; that’s a stacked deck.

History backs this up. During disasters, price spikes follow like clockwork. After Hurricane Katrina, investigations documented dramatic increases in gasoline, ice, and food prices in affected regions. Economists argued about incentives while families argued about dinner. The public reaction was fierce enough that states tightened price-gouging laws. The lesson was simple and brutal. When necessities get priced like stocks, trust collapses.

More recently, digital markets have shown how fast this can go wrong. Investigations into online retail pricing found that some platforms adjust prices multiple times a day based on demand signals and consumer behavior. A well-known study of e-commerce pricing patterns showed frequent price discrimination, where different users saw different prices for the same product based on browsing history and location. That was for electronics and books. Now imagine it for bread and baby formula. The hand that feeds you shouldn’t also be picking your pocket.

This is why the debate in Maryland matters. Governor Wes Moore and state leaders aren’t arguing about technology in the abstract. They’re arguing about boundaries. The proposed Protection from Predatory Price Act aims to freeze grocery prices for at least one business day and block the use of surveillance data for price manipulation. Critics call it heavy-handed. I call it a seatbelt before the crash.

Retailers already use electronic shelf labels. That part is real and documented. The labels save labor and reduce errors. Fine. The danger isn’t the label; it’s the wire behind it. Once prices can change in seconds, temptation follows. A heat wave hits. Bottled water creeps up. A snowstorm rolls in. Bread ticks higher. Paydays cluster on Fridays. By Friday afternoon, the algorithm smiles. No one announces the increase. No clerk shrugs in apology. The shelf just updates, silent as a pickpocket.

We’ve seen how fast public trust erodes when companies admit to “testing” dynamic pricing. In early 2024, a major fast-food chain floated the idea of dynamic pricing using digital menus. The backlash was immediate and vicious. Customers heard what I hear. If you’ll do this to a burger, you’ll do it to anything. The company walked it back, but the signal was clear. The industry is thinking about it because the math works.

And the math always works best on the poor. Studies on price sensitivity show that lower-income shoppers are more likely to shop during off-hours, more likely to buy staples, and less able to absorb sudden increases. An algorithm trained on behavior will learn that pain point fast. A rising tide lifts yachts, not rowboats. Supporters say competition will keep prices honest. That’s a fairy tale from a different century. Grocery markets are consolidated. A handful of chains dominate regions. If they all install the same tech, the same vendors, the same analytics, competition becomes theater. Prices won’t collude in smoke-filled rooms. They’ll harmonize in the cloud.

The fines in the proposed law—up to $10,000 for a first offense and $25,000 for subsequent ones—sound big, but compared to grocery revenues, they are warnings, not weapons. Still, enforcement matters. Treating violations as unfair or deceptive trade practices puts teeth behind the words. It tells retailers that food is different. It tells consumers someone is watching the watchers.

I don’t hate technology. I hate asymmetry. I hate systems that smile while they squeeze. I hate the idea that a parent standing in a cereal aisle could be outgunned by code written a thousand miles away. The future doesn’t have to be this way. We can draw lines. We can say that some prices should stand still long enough for people to breathe. Because once food pricing goes fully dynamic, the grocery store stops being a place of choice and becomes a place of exposure. Every step is tracked. Every pause is priced. Every need is monetized in real time. That isn’t shopping. That’s hunting season, and the shoppers are the prey.

If Maryland gets this wrong, the blinking labels won’t just show prices. They’ll show who we decided to protect and who we decided to test. And once the machines learn how to squeeze, they never forget.

 

 

As a side note for regular readers, I’ve also written “Swept Away: The Heartbreaking Camp Mystic Flood That Shook America”, now available on Google Play Books. You can also read it here on Google Play: Swept Away.

 

 

Greenland or Goodbye: How American Tariffs, Not Russian Tanks, Could End NATO

 

President Trump’s  near-bloodless grab of Greenland could detonate NATO overnight, paralyze joint forces, and invite chaos from the Arctic to the Mediterranean.

I have watched alliances die before. They rarely die the way textbooks predict. They don’t always end with tanks rolling across borders or bombs lighting up capitals. More often, they die quietly, poisoned from the inside by arrogance, coercion, and the belief that power excuses everything. President Trump’s hunger for Greenland is exactly that kind of poison. This is how alliances end—not with a Russian tank, but with an American tariff and an ultimatum.

When the president threatened a 10% tariff on imports from European countries that dared to send troops to Greenland, the message was not subtle. Obey, or pay. When he warned that the tariff would jump to 25% unless Europe agreed to the “Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,” the mask fell completely. This was not strategy. This was pressure politics dressed up as national interest. It was a landlord’s tactic, not a statesman’s move. Pay the rent, or I lock the door.

I imagine the room when European leaders read that post. Silence first. Then disbelief. Then anger. Emmanuel Macron saying he would not be bullied. Sweden’s prime minister calling it blackmail. Britain’s leader saying it was completely wrong. These were not the words of rivals. These were the words of allies realizing that the ground beneath them had started to crack. When the shepherd threatens the flock, the wolves do not need to howl.

I have heard the argument that NATO has survived worse. People point to the cod wars, when British and Icelandic ships fired at each other in the 1970s. They mention Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Greece’s withdrawal from NATO’s military command, dogfights over the Aegean, and even a Turkish warship locking radar onto a French frigate in 2020. All true. All dangerous. And all survivable. Why? Because none of those moments involved the alliance’s backbone threatening to tear off a limb.

America is not just another NATO member. It is the spine. For 75 years, an American general has served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe. American officers sit at the top of NATO’s command structure like load-bearing beams in a building. NATO’s defense plans, including those covering Greenland, assume American intelligence, American air power, and American logistics. Without them, Europe’s defenses do not just weaken; they warp.

This is why Greenland matters far beyond its ice and minerals. If America absorbs Greenland by legal sleight of hand or raw pressure, the damage will not stop at Nuuk. European trust in Article 5 would collapse. I do not mean wobble. I mean collapse. If the United States is willing to dismember one European country, why would it defend another when Russia applies pressure in the Baltics, probes in the Arctic, or tests the Black Sea? Once that question enters the bloodstream of an alliance, it never leaves.

History is brutally clear on this point. Alliances are built on belief, not paperwork. In 1914, Europe was webbed together by treaties. They did not prevent catastrophe because trust had already eroded. In 1938, appeasement taught aggressors that pressure works. A concession made under threat does not buy peace; it buys the next demand. A near-bloodless grab of Greenland would echo that lesson in modern form, proving that borders can be changed without consequences if the bully is big enough.

Some argue that no bloodshed means no real harm. That is dangerously naïve. A bloodless Anschluss is still an Anschluss. The shock would be psychological and irreversible. NATO could continue to exist on paper, meetings would still be held, communiqués would still be drafted, but the soul would be gone. Joint military systems would freeze as trust evaporated. Intelligence sharing would become cautious, then selective, then transactional. European air forces flying F-35s would suddenly realize they cannot fully operate their most advanced jets without American data, software, and munitions. Britain would face quiet panic over its signals intelligence and nuclear deterrent. Across the continent, planners would ask the same chilling question: what if the Americans pull the plug?

I can already hear the counterargument. Greenland is small. Is it worth breaking the transatlantic bond? That logic is exactly how large disasters begin. Small concessions normalize big violations. Russia did not start with Kyiv. It started with Crimea. Each step tested the world’s nerve. If America takes Greenland and nothing happens, the lesson will be learned everywhere. Power rewrites rules. Might makes right. The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

Europe would then face an ugly menu of options. Do nothing and swallow humiliation. Retaliate economically and risk a trade war that would tear at already strained budgets. Target American tech companies and invite retaliation. Raise defense spending in a panic while trying to replace capabilities that took decades to integrate. None of these are good choices. All of them are the choices of an alliance already bleeding.

The base issue is leverage. American power in Europe depends on European cooperation. Ramstein Air Base in Germany is not decoration; it is a hub that allows the United States to project power into Africa and the Middle East. Recent American operations have depended on British airfields and Danish support. Arctic surveillance depends on Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Britain working together. Tear that web, and American reach shrinks fast. This is why the situation is so reckless. The pursuit of Greenland in the name of security could end up shredding the very network that makes American security possible.

Public opinion is already shifting. Polls showing that a majority of Germans would support Denmark in a conflict with America are not trivia. They are warning flares. Leaders may hesitate, but publics remember humiliation. Once anger hardens into identity, repair becomes impossible. Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.

I do not believe NATO would collapse in a single day. That is not how complex systems fail. They rot. Meetings become colder. Commitments become conditional. Response times slow. Rivals notice. Russia probes. China watches. And Europe, caught between dependence and defiance, stares at a future where war has rules again—written by whoever is strongest at the moment.

This is why Greenland is not a sideshow. It is the test. If American tariffs and ultimatums succeed here, alliances everywhere will take note. If they fail, something precious might yet be saved. Because once allies learn that loyalty is answered with coercion, the end does not come with a bang. It comes with silence, suspicion, and the long, lonely sound of doors quietly closing.

 

 

Separate from today’s article, I recently published “Operation Absolute Resolve: How America Crashed Caracas and Ended Maduro’s Rule (The Night the Western Hemisphere Changed Forever)”   for readers interested in a deeper, standalone idea. You can also read it here on Google Play: Operation Absolute Resolve.