Under the Rock: Lies, Lists, and the Rot Beneath Epstein’s Empire

 

The Epstein files rip open a vault of elite deception, exposing a power network that lied, minimized, and protected itself while over 1,000 victims were reduced to redactions. The emails show a culture of access and arrogance where powerful names circled a predator, then swore they barely knew him.

I keep hearing that we should move on. That it was just one monster, one island, one bad apple with a private jet. But every time I lift that rock called Epstein, it’s not a few bugs crawling around. It’s a colony. It’s a system. It’s rot with a Rolodex.

Jeffrey Epstein died on August 10, 2019, in a Manhattan jail cell. The official ruling was suicide. Cameras malfunctioned. Guards falsified logs. A man who had tried to kill himself weeks earlier was left unmonitored. If this were a movie script, an editor would send it back as too obvious. Yet here we are. A high-profile defendant facing federal sex trafficking charges, dead before trial, and the world’s most powerful people suddenly breathing easier. When the lights go out at the exact wrong moment, you don’t just blame the bulb.

Now the Department of Justice has released more than 3 million pages of documents, dumped on January 30 in a tidal wave of paper so massive it felt like accountability by avalanche. Volunteer software engineers had to convert the files into searchable formats just so the public could read them. That alone tells me something. Transparency delayed is truth diluted.

When analysts combed through 1.4 million emails, around 1,500 threads fell into the most severe category, including messages that made light of abusing Epstein’s “littlest girl.” That phrase alone should freeze the blood. Over 1,000 victims were abused, according to court filings and investigative reporting. Over 1,000 lives. And yet for years the headlines were about the guest list, not the girls. The powerful always want the story to be about them.

Nearly 60% of Epstein’s emails were to people he paid to make his life easier. Fixers. Lawyers. Reputation scrubbers. People who handled the bureaucratic headaches that come with being a registered sex offender. People who tried to erase the digital trail of his 2008 plea deal in Florida, when he secured a non-prosecution agreement that allowed him to serve 13 months in a county jail with work release privileges. Thirteen months. For crimes involving minors. If that isn’t velvet-glove justice, I don’t know what is.

And then there’s the network. Of his 500 main correspondents, about 20% were financiers. Ten percent were scientists or doctors. Eight percent were media and public relations figures. Six percent each were lawyers, politicians, academics, and businesspeople. That isn’t a fringe crowd. That’s the boardroom of the republic. That’s the people who lecture us about ethics on television and write books about progress. When almost every pillar of elite society appears in a trafficker’s inbox, I start asking harder questions.

Who had been there for years? Who kept showing up? Who claimed later they barely knew him? Some may truly not have understood the scale of his crimes. The concealment was real. Money buys silence. Money buys introductions. Money buys doubt. But others lied. We know that because emails, calendars, flight logs, and photos contradict public denials. When someone says, “I never met him,” and then their name appears in correspondence arranging meetings, that isn’t a misunderstanding. That’s damage control.

I’m not saying everyone in those files committed crimes. That would be reckless. Some were one-sided contacts. Some were brief acquaintances. Some, like J.K. Rowling, were pilloried despite evidence suggesting the contact came only from him. But others deserve moral scrutiny. The physicist Lawrence Krauss, for example, has faced criticism for his association. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick was criticized for initially minimizing dealings. Even if no criminal charge sticks, dishonesty matters. In a democracy, trust is currency. When leaders shade the truth about even minor ties, it feeds the suspicion that bigger truths are buried.

And then there are the whispers about big names like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Some emails include claims written by Epstein himself, including bizarre allegations about personal matters. But here’s the hard part: Epstein was a manipulator. He exaggerated. He bragged. He wrote things that may have been lies. So every sensational claim must be weighed carefully. Being mentioned in a document is not the same as being guilty of a crime. Yet when multiple elites first deny contact and later admit to meetings, the pattern starts to look less like coincidence and more like choreography.

What truly fuels the fire is the lack of progress. Seven years have passed since Epstein’s 2019 arrest. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking. That was one step. But with over 1,000 victims identified in civil and criminal proceedings, why have so few additional charges been filed? Why does it feel like the machinery of justice moves slower when the accused have private jets?

Redactions complicate everything. Names blacked out. Faces blurred. Victims protected, as they must be. But the haphazard nature of some redactions has shielded possible abusers while exposing peripheral figures. It has turned a story about exploited girls into a circus about celebrity names. Female bodies became footnotes in their own tragedy. When the smoke clears, the powerful are still standing and the victims are still blurred. I look at this and I don’t just see a criminal case. I see a stress test for the idea of meritocracy. We’re told the best rise to the top through talent and grit. But too often, the best and brightest are seduced by flattery, vanity, and access. Epstein offered proximity to wealth and power. He hosted dinners with Nobel laureates. He courted politicians. He donated to universities. In return, he got legitimacy. He got photos. He got doors opened. He wrapped himself in the aura of brilliance to mask brutality.

The nihilism creeping into public life didn’t start here, but Epstein poured gasoline on it. When people see a man accused of trafficking minors dine with royalty, socialize with billionaires, and negotiate a sweetheart plea deal, they stop believing the rules apply equally. When surveillance footage goes missing and answers arrive years late, they don’t shrug. They spiral.

And here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: this isn’t just about who’s on the list. It’s about who helped him operate. Who handled the money. Who cleaned the reputation. Who introduced him to fresh rooms. Trafficking at this scale requires logistics. It requires enablers. It requires a web. And webs don’t spin themselves. I don’t need wild conspiracies to be angry. The confirmed facts are damning enough. A convicted sex offender built a global network of influence. Over 1,000 victims were abused. Over 3 million pages of documents were released in a chaotic flood. Years later, accountability still feels partial. That alone should shake anyone who believes in justice.

So when I hear people joke about orange shapes on surveillance video, I get the dark humor. It’s easier to laugh than to accept how deep this might go. But beneath the jokes is a simple, brutal truth. Too many powerful people got close to a predator. Too many denied it. Too many minimized it. And too many still haven’t answered fully for what they knew and when they knew it.

The more I lift that rock, the more I see that this was never just about one man. It was about a culture that confuses access with virtue and wealth with wisdom. It was about institutions that bent instead of breaking him. And until every credible lead is pursued and every proven abuser is charged, that rock stays lifted. Because when the foundation smells this bad, you don’t cover it with perfume. You tear it down to the studs.

 

 

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 them here on Google Play: Brief BookSeries.

 

Bunker Britain: Starmer’s Fall and the Leftward Drift Before the Storm

 

Starmer is wounded, Labour is drifting left, and Britain is sleepwalking into fiscal danger as debt, stagnation and political fear tighten their grip on a country running out of time.

I have seen this movie before. The triumphant leader walks into Downing Street like a conqueror. The polls sing. The cameras flash. Then the lights flicker. Ratings crash. Allies scatter. And Number 10 turns into a bunker with better wallpaper. Britain does not just have instability anymore. It has made it a habit.

Sir Keir Starmer was supposed to end the chaos. After Labour’s landslide in 2024, he spoke like a man planning to govern for a decade. Now he is Britain’s fourth prime minister in 4 years. That is not a transition. That is turbulence. Local elections loom in 12 weeks, and the air smells like panic.

The scandal that detonated his authority was not a thunderclap. It was a slow fuse. The revelation that Peter Mandelson was appointed ambassador to America despite Sir Keir knowing about the length of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein shattered the carefully polished image of a dull but competent reformer. Epstein’s name is political napalm. Once it sticks, it stains. Mandelson has long been a survivor of political storms, but this time the splash damage hit the prime minister himself. The aides who built Sir Keir’s swaggering machine resigned. The cabinet secretary is leaving. The strongman image evaporated. What remains is a leader clinging to office but not power.

I can almost hear the muttering in Westminster corridors. “Just survive,” one voice says. “Don’t rock the boat,” another whispers. Survival is not strategy. It is drift with better lighting. Britain does not have the luxury of drift. Growth is sluggish. The Office for National Statistics shows UK GDP growth in 2023 at 0.1%. In 2024 it improved modestly, but living standards remain under pressure. Real wages only recently recovered to pre-2008 levels after more than a decade of stagnation. That is not just an economic statistic. That is a lost era.

Public debt hovers around 100% of GDP. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that debt interest payments have surged as rates climbed, reaching levels not seen since the late 1980s as a share of GDP. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has repeatedly said that demographic pressure, especially an ageing population, will strain health and pension spending in coming decades. Rearmament is back on the table as NATO members respond to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Defence spending targets of 2% of GDP look modest in a world on edge.

So what does a weakened prime minister do in this storm? He retreats. And when Labour retreats, it does not drift right. It drifts left.

Sir Keir once sold himself as the brake on his party’s left wing. He purged Jeremy Corbyn. He promised discipline. He talked about fiscal responsibility. But power is physics. When gravity shifts, leaders fall. The parliamentary Labour Party today is not the New Labour of Tony Blair. The centre of gravity moved during the austerity years of the 2010s. Many MPs came of age politically during spending cuts and public sector restraint. They do not want restraint. They want reversal.

Labour members will choose the next leader if Sir Keir falls. Surveys of party members have shown strong support for higher taxes and higher public spending. The gap between members and voters is wide. Only about 20% of voters consistently support large tax increases to fund more spending, according to long-running British Social Attitudes surveys. Inside the party, the appetite is stronger. That tension will not disappear. It will pull policy leftward.

Already Sir Keir has shifted tone. He now talks about “putting money in people’s pockets” as the priority, rather than focusing first on productivity and growth. That sounds compassionate. It is also expensive. Without growth, redistribution becomes a shrinking pie fight. I have seen that movie too. It ends in bond market lectures.

Remember 2022. Liz Truss unveiled unfunded tax cuts. Gilt yields spiked. Pension funds wobbled. The Bank of England intervened. Markets can humble governments faster than voters. If Labour responds to political weakness by handing out fiscal sweets without structural reform, investors may test its nerve. Debt markets are not sentimental. They price risk.

The instinct inside a shaken party is unity at all costs. Unity sounds noble. In practice it means lowest-common-denominator politics. Welfare reform becomes radioactive. Education reform stalls if it irritates unions. Civil service overhaul gets postponed because confrontation feels risky. Planning reform, one of the few bright spots, may soften as environmental concerns and local opposition regain ground. Nature versus developers is not just a slogan. It is a vote bank.

I imagine the closed-door meeting. An MP pounds the table. “We didn’t get into politics to cut benefits.” Another adds, “Our voters expect help, not lectures.” The prime minister nods. He backs down. The “Ming vase” strategy that protected him in opposition now sits empty. It was designed to avoid breaking anything. Governing requires breaking inertia.

History offers a warning. In the 1970s Britain faced stagnation, high inflation, industrial unrest. Governments lurched. Markets lost confidence. In 1976 the UK sought an IMF bailout. That humiliation reshaped politics for a generation. Today inflation has fallen from its 2022 peak above 11% back toward target, but the scars remain. Productivity growth has been weak since the global financial crisis. The Resolution Foundation has described the UK’s productivity slowdown as one of the worst among advanced economies.

Political fragmentation adds another layer. Voter loyalty to major parties has eroded. Smaller parties like Reform UK and the Greens siphon off chunks of the electorate. Governing on a low vote share is the new normal. Call an election now and Labour could lose hundreds of seats. Fear of that scenario will paralyse bold reform.

And so the drift begins. More scepticism of big tech. Palantir becomes a symbol in internal debates. Louder pro-European tones, which may be sensible economically, but only if matched with tough negotiation. More spending promises. Fewer structural fights. Meanwhile the numbers tick. Debt interest accumulates. Health and social care demands rise. Defence commitments expand. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that long-term pressures from ageing and climate transition could push debt higher without policy change. Ignoring that warning is not compassion. It is postponement.

I walk through this argument with a grim smile. Britain wanted stability after years of Conservative drama. It got a landslide. But landslides can bury their architects. Sir Keir’s humiliation is greater precisely because expectations were higher. He promised a decade. He may be lucky to survive the season.

What happens next? Perhaps a moderniser emerges from Labour’s ranks, someone willing to confront the fiscal math and the party’s comfort zones. Perhaps the Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch craft a sharper economic narrative from the right. Reform UK currently leads some polls, but beyond anti-immigration rhetoric it offers thin policy detail. Disruption is not a plan.

For now, I see a government that governs cautiously because it is afraid. Afraid of its members. Afraid of markets. Afraid of voters who sour quickly. Fear makes leaders shrink. And when leaders shrink, policy slides toward the path of least resistance. Britain’s predicament will get worse before it gets better. The economic headwinds are real. The fiscal arithmetic is stubborn. The political centre is fragile. With Sir Keir Starmer weakened, the gravitational pull inside Labour will drag the government leftward, toward spending promises and away from painful reform. That may soothe party nerves. It will not solve structural decline.

I do not say this with pleasure. I say it because I have watched Westminster long enough to know that drift feels comfortable until it meets the wall. And Britain, boxed in by debt, demographics and distrust, is inching toward that wall. The only question is who is holding the wheel when the impact comes.

 

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

 

 

Nigeria’s Expanding Kill Zone: Nigeria’s Cities Are Next

 

 Jihadists and bandits are no longer hiding in Northern Nigeria’s forests—they are marching toward its cities, and if the state keeps blinking, the next massacre could explode in the heart of urban Nigeria. Indeed, Northern Nigeria is a place where poverty bites so hard that a rifle starts to look like a résumé.

I keep replaying February 3rd in my head. The call to prayer rose over Kaiama, soft and holy, and then the gunshots answered back. Men walking to the mosque never made it. Armed attackers stormed two villages near the Benin border in Kwara state. They shot people at close range. They slit throats. They burned homes with families inside. Around 170 people were killed before the gunmen melted into the bush. That is not rumor. That is a body count.

President Bola Tinubu blamed “Boko Haram.” That name used to mean one specific jihadist group founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002. Now it has become shorthand for chaos itself. Boko Haram splintered after its leader Abubakar Shekau died in 2021 during clashes with a rival faction aligned with Islamic State West Africa Province. Since then, the alphabet soup of violence has grown thicker. JAS, one Boko Haram faction, fights rivals, targets Muslims and Christians alike, and has been pushing westward. Another suspect is Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, an al-Qaeda-linked group active across the Sahel that formally announced its presence in Nigeria in 2025 with an attack in Kwara. When groups start issuing press releases about entering your state, that is not expansion. That is conquest by installment.

I have watched Nigeria’s security crisis mutate for years. In 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. The world shouted “Bring Back Our Girls.” Some were rescued. Many were not. That single act put Nigeria on the global terrorism map. According to the Global Terrorism Index, Nigeria ranked among the countries most impacted by terrorism for much of the past decade. At its peak around 2014 to 2015, Boko Haram was responsible for thousands of deaths annually. The United Nations estimated that more than 35,000 people have been killed in the north-east insurgency since 2009, and over 2 million displaced. That war never really ended. It just changed shape.

What makes the Kaiama massacre different is geography. Kwara sits in the mid-west, not the traditional north-eastern heartland of Borno and Yobe. Violence is creeping south, closer to urban centers that once felt insulated. Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, lies only a few hours away by road. Ilorin, the state capital, is not some remote outpost. When blood spills near better-governed regions, the old comfort story collapses. Fire does not ask permission before it spreads.

Then there are the bandits. They are not ideologues. They are entrepreneurs of violence. Hundreds of loosely organized armed groups operate across Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina and Niger states. They started with cattle rustling. Then kidnapping for ransom became an industry. In 2022, SBM Intelligence estimated that between July 2021 and June 2022 alone, kidnappers collected more than $1 million in ransom payments nationwide, and that figure likely undercounts cash delivered in sacks at night. Villages pay protection money. Parents pay for children. If you cannot pay, you disappear.

Illegal gold mining in Zamfara has poured fuel on this fire. Gold is easy to move and hard to trace. Armed groups tax miners or control sites outright. More money means better weapons. Better weapons mean bolder attacks. I have seen this movie before. When crime syndicates discover natural resources, they do not retire. They expand.

The line between jihadist and bandit is thin and shifting. Sometimes jihadists offer “protection” to villages terrorized by bandits, collecting taxes in exchange for safety. Sometimes bandits pledge allegiance to jihadists for branding and training. Sometimes they fight each other. Civilians are trapped in between. You can switch sides. You cannot switch geography.

The Nigerian government has responded with force. Troops are deployed. Air strikes are launched. Joint Task Forces sweep forests. In 2024 and 2025, major operations were launched in parts of the north-west. Villagers celebrated. Then the reprisals came. Gunmen returned with vengeance. The army withdrew from some areas after brutal counterattacks. Another group moved into the vacuum. It is a grim cycle. Clear, hold, fail, repeat.

America has sent a small counter-terrorism team to assist. The United States has supported Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram for years, providing intelligence and training. But foreign advisers cannot fix what is deeply local. Nigeria has more than 200 million people, complex ethnic ties, porous borders and vast ungoverned forests. Policing that terrain requires more than drones and speeches.

Governance is the real battlefield. In many rural areas, the state is barely present. Police are underfunded. Courts are slow. Young men face unemployment rates that hover painfully high, especially in the north. When poverty bites hard enough, a rifle starts to look like a résumé. The World Bank has repeatedly warned that northern Nigeria suffers from higher poverty rates than the south. In some states, more than 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. That is not just an economic statistic. That is a recruitment pool.

President Tinubu has promised reforms. More police. State-level security structures. Better coordination. Those are good words. But words do not patrol highways at night. Words do not stand guard at village entrances. Residents of Kaiama reportedly warned authorities about rising threats before the massacre. They say nothing changed. When citizens cry wolf and the wolf actually comes, trust dies with the victims.

I worry most about the big cities. Abuja has already seen kidnappings on its outskirts. Kaduna’s airport road has been attacked before. If armed groups begin targeting major urban centers consistently, the economic fallout will be brutal. Investors flee instability. Businesses close early. Insurance premiums spike. A nation of 200 million people cannot afford to let fear become routine.

There is a small hope that these groups overextend as they move south. Jihadists rely on ethnic and kinship networks rooted in specific regions. Bandits thrive in lawless spaces. Southern states tend to have stronger institutions and denser urban surveillance. But hope is not a strategy. And for the people already caught in this widening storm, theoretical limits offer no comfort. When I look at the map, I see pressure building. The Sahel is unstable. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have faced coups and surging jihadist violence in recent years. Borders are lines on paper, not walls in the sand. Weapons flow. Fighters migrate. Ideology travels by phone.

Kaiama was not an isolated tragedy. It was a warning shot. Around 170 lives erased in a morning. That is not random. That is momentum.

I do not say Nigeria is doomed. I say Nigeria is at a crossroads. If governance improves, if security becomes local and accountable, if economic despair is addressed, the tide can turn. Nigeria has beaten back insurgents before. But if the current drift continues, if armed groups keep advancing west and south, if bandits keep getting richer and bolder, then the next headline may not be about a remote border village.

It may be about a city skyline under smoke.

And when that day comes, nobody will be able to say they were not warned.

  

If you’re looking for something different to read, some of the titles in my “Brief Book Series” is available on Google Play Books. You can also read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

The $2 Million Warning Shot: Why Pediatric Trans-Gender Medicine May Be Heading for a Courtroom Collapse

 

When medicine outruns evidence, juries slow it down. One de-transitioner won $2m. Dozens more are lining up. The next courtroom wave could turn pediatric gender medicine into the next billion-dollar liability storm.

When medicine moves faster than proof, the courtroom becomes the reckoning, and I believe that reckoning has already begun. The $2m verdict handed down in New York is not a footnote. It is a flare shot into a night sky that many in medicine assumed would stay dark. Between 2016 and 2020, 3,215 girls aged 12 to 18 underwent elective double mastectomies as part of gender-transition treatment, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. That figure ends at 2020. It does not count what happened after. It does not measure long-term regret. It does not capture the full arc of adolescence colliding with irreversible change. When I look at those numbers, I do not see a culture war. I see liability exposure on a scale that could reshape an entire field.

Fox Varian’s case changed the tone. At 16, after years marked by depression, anxiety, and an autism diagnosis, she underwent a double mastectomy. She later detransitioned and told a jury she was “really, really mentally ill” at the time of surgery. The jury awarded her $1.6m for past and future pain and $400,000 for future medical costs. Total: $2m. That award matters because it crossed a line from theory to verdict. For years, critics warned that weak evidence and irreversible interventions would collide in court. Now that collision has a price tag. You can debate ideology in a seminar room; you debate negligence in front of 12 jurors.

The ground under the medical profession is shifting. On February 3, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons stated that evidence supporting gender-related surgery in patients under 19 has “limitations in study quality, consistency and follow-up,” and noted emerging evidence of complications and potential harms. The following day, the American Medical Association agreed that because evidence for surgical intervention in minors is insufficient, such procedures should generally be deferred to adulthood. That is not a minor edit to a guideline. That is a recalibration of risk. In 2024, Britain’s Cass Review concluded that evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children and adolescents was “remarkably weak.” The Department of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump issued a similar assessment questioning the strength of benefit claims. When institutions begin using phrases like “insufficient evidence” and “remarkably weak,” I hear not politics but exposure.

In malpractice law, standards of care are oxygen. If a physician can show that treatment aligned with accepted professional guidelines, liability narrows. But when guidelines fracture, oxygen thins. Plaintiffs’ attorneys do not need to prove bad intent; they need to show deviation from a defensible standard and failure to secure informed consent. How does informed consent look when long-term data are limited? How does it look when sterility is a possible outcome? How does it look when a teenager with complex mental-health diagnoses is told surgery may prevent suicide? These are not abstract questions. They are trial exhibits waiting to be numbered.

Public sentiment adds fuel. A 2025 New York Times poll found that 90% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats oppose giving puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors. Jurors are drawn from that public. They bring their intuitions into deliberation rooms. Even if courts instruct them to focus narrowly on evidence, context seeps in. When trust in institutions wobbles, verdicts wobble with it. Medicine does not operate in a vacuum; it operates in a society already polarized and skeptical.

Some medical bodies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, continue to support access to adolescent transition treatments, with its president Andrew Racine arguing that families and physicians, not politicians, should decide. That principle has weight. But autonomy does not cancel liability. The American system lacks a centralized health service; professional associations shape practice. If those associations begin retreating from earlier confidence, plaintiffs will argue that yesterday’s reassurance was premature. Already, more than 2 dozen detransitioners have filed lawsuits. Observers estimate potential damages could reach hundreds of millions. Even if only a fraction prevail, insurers will adjust premiums, hospitals will reassess policies, and risk managers will tighten protocols.

I have seen this arc before in other contexts. The opioid crisis began with confident assurances about safety and limited addiction risk. Litigation later produced settlements exceeding $50bn nationwide. Tobacco litigation followed a similar pattern decades earlier: isolated suits at first, then waves. I am not claiming identical outcomes here. I am saying that when evidence is contested and harm is alleged, civil courts become arenas for reckoning. First comes the whisper, then the subpoena.

None of this erases the reality that some young people experience deep distress and seek relief. It does not deny that clinicians often act with sincere intent. It does, however, raise a brutal question: what happens when evolving standards collide with irreversible interventions performed on minors? If future courts conclude that caution should have been greater, verdicts will multiply. If appellate courts uphold awards like Varian’s, settlement pressure will mount. The financial consequences could reshape pediatric gender medicine more decisively than any legislative fight.

When medicine moves faster than proof, the courtroom becomes the reckoning. The $2m award is not the final chapter. It is the opening paragraph of a legal saga that may test the boundaries of consent, evidence, and professional responsibility. Doctors who performed irreversible procedures on teens are not facing a headline problem; they may be facing a liability era. And eras are not outrun. They are endured.

 

 

I couldn’t let this go, so I wrote “Stolen Innocence: The Hidden Regret of Teens Who Transitioned Too Soon”  to work through it honestly and completely. You can also read it here on Google Play: Stolen Innocence.

 

Get the Bomb or Get Conquered

 

In a collapsing world order, trust is dead. When nuclear powers bully freely, even democracies may chase the bomb. Survival now whispers one terrifying rule: get nukes, or gamble your existence.

I used to think nuclear weapons were relics of black-and-white footage, mushroom clouds frozen in time like a bad memory the world promised never to repeat. That was the fairy tale. The real story feels colder. The old nuclear order is cracking, and I can hear the ice breaking beneath our boots.

For almost 80 years, the system held together on a simple, terrifying bargain. The United States would extend a nuclear umbrella over its allies. In return, they would not build bombs of their own. It was trust mixed with fear, stitched together by treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which now has 191 member states. Nuclear states were supposed to disarm. Non-nuclear states were supposed to stay clean. You scratch my back, I won’t vaporize yours.

But that deal is fraying. As New START, the last major arms-control treaty between America and Russia, edges toward expiration in 2026, the guardrails are coming off. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported in 2024 that the world holds about 12,121 nuclear warheads. Around 9,585 are in military stockpiles, and roughly 3,904 are deployed. Russia and America still dominate the count, but China is sprinting. The Pentagon estimated in 2023 that China had more than 500 operational warheads and could reach 1,000 by 2030. That is not a slow drift. That is a surge.

So when Nordic strategists whisper about a “Nordic nuke,” I do not laugh. I listen. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have long wrapped themselves in the comfort of alliances and diplomacy. The Danish word hygge suggests warmth, socks by the fire, cocoa steaming in winter air. Now some in that region talk as if only a warhead can deliver inner peace. That tells me something has shifted.

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said recently that as long as dangerous countries possess nuclear weapons, sound democracies must also have access to them. That is not the language of pacifists. That is the voice of a world recalculating risk.

I look east and see Vladimir Putin brandishing nuclear threats over Ukraine. Since the 2022 invasion, Russian officials have repeatedly warned of nuclear escalation. When a nuclear-armed state invades a neighbor and waves its arsenal like a loaded pistol, others take notes. They ask a hard question: if Ukraine had kept the weapons it inherited after the Soviet Union collapsed, would Russia have dared?

In 1994, Ukraine agreed under the Budapest Memorandum to give up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, America and Britain. Those assurances did not stop tanks from rolling in 2014 or 2022. That fact echoes in every capital watching from the sidelines. Paper promises burn fast under artillery fire.

Now I hear Poland talking about hosting nuclear weapons. Japan and South Korea, long under America’s nuclear umbrella, are debating openly whether they should consider their own bombs. Polls in South Korea in recent years have shown that more than 60% of respondents support developing indigenous nuclear weapons. That is not fringe talk. That is mainstream anxiety.

For decades, American guarantees were enough. Even when Charles de Gaulle asked John F. Kennedy in 1961 whether he would trade New York for Paris, the umbrella held. Countries like Sweden and Taiwan stepped back from the brink. They believed Washington would show up if the worst happened. But faith in that guarantee is wobbling. When President Donald Trump questioned whether America would automatically defend NATO allies who do not meet defense spending targets, ears perked up from Warsaw to Seoul. Even if another administration tries to restore confidence, the doubt lingers. Once you question the bodyguard, you start shopping for your own gun.

I do not romanticize this shift. More nuclear states mean more fingers near red buttons. The risk of miscalculation multiplies. During the Cold War, we came close to catastrophe more than once. In 1983, Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov judged that a warning of incoming American missiles was a false alarm and chose not to retaliate. His decision may have prevented nuclear war. Add more nuclear powers, more tense borders, more hair-trigger systems, and the odds of a mistake rise. The more loaded dice on the table, the more likely someone rolls snake eyes.

But here is the brutal logic I cannot ignore. In a might-makes-right world, power deters power. North Korea tested its first nuclear device in 2006. Since then, it has conducted 6 nuclear tests and built an arsenal estimated by some analysts at 30 to 50 warheads. The regime remains isolated, sanctioned, and condemned. Yet no one is invading Pyongyang. The lesson many draw is simple: get the bomb, buy regime survival.

Iran sits at the edge, enriching uranium to levels that alarm inspectors. Israel, widely believed to possess around 90 nuclear warheads, has never confirmed it, but its neighbors assume it. India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Since then, they have fought skirmishes and crises, including the 2019 standoff after the Pulwama attack, but full-scale war has been restrained by mutual fear of escalation. Deterrence is ugly. It is also, so far, effective.

So I watch as democracies once comfortable under American protection rethink their calculus. If America, China and Russia slide into a fresh arms race, why should Berlin, Stockholm or Seoul sit idle? If Washington’s shield looks thinner, self-reliance starts to look like insurance. Insurance is expensive. A nuclear program costs billions, maybe tens of billions, and takes years. It diverts funds from tanks, jets, cyber defenses. It provokes rivals who might strike before the program matures. But from the perspective of a small state staring at a larger, nuclear-armed neighbor, the math may feel unavoidable.

I can hear the moralists protest. Proliferation makes the world more dangerous. They are right. The more nuclear states, the greater the chance of accident, theft, or unauthorized launch. A regional conflict could turn radioactive. A cyberattack could spoof early-warning systems. We would be gambling with civilization. Yet morality bends under fear. If Russia threatens nuclear use. If China expands its arsenal at record speed. If treaties collapse and superpowers modernize their warheads instead of dismantling them, the message to everyone else is clear: the age of disarmament is over. We are back to raw power.

Some European leaders talk about extending Britain’s and France’s nuclear deterrents across the continent. That might slow the rush. Britain holds around 225 warheads. France has about 290. Coordinated umbrellas, shared doctrine, hotlines to reduce miscalculation, these are smarter paths than a dozen new nuclear programs. But even those steps admit the core truth: conventional forces alone may not feel sufficient.

I do not celebrate this. I feel the chill of it. The temptation is nostalgia, to pretend we can rewind to a safer era. But the old order depended on trust in America’s promise and restraint among major powers. Both are eroding.

When I strip away the rhetoric and look at the street-level logic, it is simple. If a bully carries a knife, you think twice before going empty-handed. If your survival hangs on someone else’s courage, you sleep lightly. In a world where might makes right, the bomb looks less like madness and more like armor.

That is the dark conclusion many capitals are inching toward. I do not have to like it. I only have to see it. And what I see is a world where the quiet hum of nuclear reactors may soon sound like the only lullaby leaders trust.

  

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

 

The Dollar Is Bleeding—and the Knife Is in America’s Own Hand

 

The dollar is losing its safe-haven magic because America is now the risk, not the refuge, and global investors are quietly preparing for a long, painful decline that could hit wallets worldwide.

I have seen this movie before, and it never ends well. The hero thinks he is invincible. The crowd cheers. The lights flash. Then the floor gives way. That is where the dollar is standing right now—on a stage built from confidence, daring gravity to blink first. Confidence, as William Treiber warned the Federal Reserve back in 1961, is a fragile flower. Step on it once, and it does not grow back the same. Today, I can almost hear that stem snapping.

The dollar is supposed to be the safe house when the storm hits. When markets panic, people run to Treasuries. When wars break out, they clutch greenbacks. That has been the rule for decades. But here is the twist that feels ripped straight out of a noir script: the trouble is no longer outside the house. The trouble is American-made. Tariffs, debt, political noise, and erratic policy have turned the dollar from a fire escape into a question mark. When the call comes from inside the house, nobody sleeps.

Since the beginning of 2025, the dollar has already fallen by about 10%. That is not a rounding error. That is the sound of international investors quietly shuffling their feet toward the exit. Markets reacted instantly when Kevin Warsh emerged as President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve in May. Warsh talks dovish now, but markets remember his hawkish instincts. That memory briefly slowed the dollar’s slide. Briefly. Because this is not just about interest rates. It is about trust.

For years, analysts comforted themselves with one idea: even if America stumbles, the dollar will survive because there is no alternative. That logic is lazy. The dollar does not need a rival to fall. It just needs investors to stop believing it is the least bad option. Central banks around the world have already sent a signal. In 1999, about 72% of global foreign-exchange reserves were held in dollars. Today, that figure is about 57%. Gold has surged back into vaults. The Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, and Japanese yen have picked up crumbs from the table. This is not rebellion. It is insurance. When the roof creaks, people buy umbrellas.

What really keeps me up at night is not reserves. It is risk. Seventeen years ago, about 38% of foreign portfolio investment into America came from governments and central banks buying safe debt. Back then, politicians obsessed over the $1trn-plus in Treasuries held by China. Today, sovereign holdings make up just 13% of foreign-owned American portfolio assets, the lowest level in modern history. The rest is risk money. Stocks. Tech. Growth dreams.

Foreign investors are not buying America for safety anymore. They are buying it for returns. Since the global financial crisis of 2007–09, the share of foreign-owned American assets held in stocks has nearly tripled, jumping from 21% to about 58%. That tells me everything. This is not about shelter. This is about chasing upside. And upside has a habit of vanishing fast.

For a while, the bet paid off. American companies were innovative, aggressive, and wildly profitable. Tech stocks sucked in global capital like a vacuum. But cracks are spreading. Last year, as tariffs returned and fears of an artificial-intelligence bubble grew teeth, American stocks underperformed their global peers by 5 percentage points. That was the worst gap since 2009. The so-called Magnificent 7, the tech giants that carried the market on their backs, have gone mostly flat for 4 months. Software stocks have slid. Emerging markets are waking up. Europe and Asia are starting to look interesting again. That is how rotations begin—quietly, then all at once.

Here is the moment that should scare anyone who still believes in the dollar’s invincibility myth. During several tariff-driven shocks—April, October, January—stocks fell, and long-term Treasury yields rose. Read that again. When fear hit, Treasuries did not rally. They sold off. That breaks the script. For decades, Treasuries were the reflex trade in chaos. Now they wobble because the American government itself is the source of the chaos. You cannot sell fire insurance while striking the match.

Some investors are already acting. Pablo Bernengo of Alecta, a Swedish pension fund managing more than $150bn, admitted they have reduced their US government bond holdings in stages since early 2025. His reasons were blunt: policy unpredictability, budget deficits, and rising national debt. That is not ideology. That is risk management. Others are still piling in. Sovereign investors poured about $132bn into American assets in 2025, nearly double the 2024 total. Strip out the Saudi purchase of EA Games, and investment still hit a 6-year high. On the surface, that looks reassuring. Underneath, it hides a darker move.

Hedging.

Investors may not be selling America yet, but they are selling dollars. Hedging unprotected exposure means dumping greenbacks to cover risk. That mechanically pushes the currency lower. Hedging surged in April after Trump’s tariff announcement. Foreign money flowed into hedged exchange-traded funds and avoided unhedged ones. That is not panic. That is preparation. And preparation tends to spread. One foreign pension investor put it plainly: fast money moved in 2025, slower money will follow. Another wave, and another wave. That is how tides work.

The bond market is whispering too. Government bonds issued by other G7 countries now yield about 2.8%, the highest level since 2008. The yield gap between those bonds and US Treasuries has shrunk from 2.2 percentage points at the end of 2024 to about 1.2 today. The premium America once enjoyed is thinning. If returns elsewhere start to look competitive, loyalty evaporates. Money has no homeland.

I remember the last time this happened. Between 2002 and 2008, after the dotcom bust, American stocks lagged Europe and emerging markets. The dollar fell by about 40%. That decline happened while central banks were still stockpiling dollars. Today, they are not. If history rhymes, the verse could be uglier this time.

Kevin Warsh stands at the center of this storm. He knows the risks. In 2010, during the European debt crisis, he warned that the dollar’s privilege is not a birthright. It must be earned and re-earned. Now he may inherit a currency weakened by politics, debt, and doubt. No rival is ready to replace the dollar. But it does not need replacing to be wounded. If American assets stop outperforming, the feedback loop turns vicious. A weaker dollar reduces America’s weight in global indices. Index funds sell. Stocks fall. The dollar weakens further. The spiral tightens.

I do not see collapse tomorrow. I see erosion. And erosion is worse because it feels slow—until the cliff disappears beneath your feet. The dollar’s power rests less on faith now and more on performance. That is a dangerous place to be when the world is watching, waiting, and hedging.

 

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

 

Nemesis Has a Long Memory: China’s Copycat Past Is Finally Collecting Interest

 

China built an empire by copying others. Now its own ideas are being stolen, its courts are clogged, and the monster it fed is turning inward—with lawsuits, raids, and global backlash.

I have watched China’s rise for years like a long street fight caught on slow-motion replay. First came the punches it threw at everyone else’s ideas. Then came the trophies built from borrowed blueprints. Now comes the twist nobody in Beijing can dodge. China wants protection. Hard protection. Courtroom protection. And the irony hits harder than any sanction ever did. Nemesis doesn’t knock; it kicks the door in.

The image says it all. A six-inch plush toy named Labubu, born inside China’s own creative economy, now has an evil twin called Lafufu. Factories crank them out like counterfeit conscience. Police raid warehouses. Shanghai cops seize fake toys worth 12m yuan in one swoop. I almost laughed when I read it. Not because it’s funny, but because history has a brutal sense of humor. The country that once told foreign firms to stop whining about stolen designs is now crying foul over stolen dolls.

Let’s not rewrite history with soft lighting. China was the world’s factory for imitation long before it became the world’s courtroom for intellectual property. Walk through markets in the 1990s and early 2000s and you’d find fake Nike shoes stacked next to fake Nestlé seasoning, all sold with a straight face. Western companies knew the risks but came anyway. The market was too big. The labor was too cheap. The rules were too flexible. And flexibility often meant your trade secrets walking out the back door.

General Motors learned that lesson the hard way in 2003 when a Chinese partner rolled out a car that looked suspiciously like GM’s own model. Kawasaki and Siemens watched China’s high-speed rail miracle unfold and wondered how their proprietary technology suddenly felt so familiar in someone else’s hands. At the time, complaints were brushed aside. Growth mattered more than ownership. Speed mattered more than permission. Borrow first, apologize never.

But here’s the pivot nobody wants to say out loud. China grew up. And grown-ups hate thieves even more than children do. Today’s Chinese economy isn’t just an assembly line. It’s a laboratory, a design studio, a patent office on fire. Chinese firms now dominate smartphones, electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, and telecom equipment. They file more patents than any other country on earth. According to global IP data, China has led the world in patent filings for several consecutive years, with millions of active patents on the books. Suddenly, loose rules aren’t a growth strategy anymore. They’re a liability.

That’s why Chinese courts are drowning. More than 550,000 IP cases flood the system every year, turning judges into factory workers of justice, processing roughly one case per day. Shanghai has become the preferred battleground because its judges actually know IP law. Even then, companies wait 3 months just to get a case on the docket. Justice may be blind, but here it’s also backed up like rush-hour traffic.

The root of the problem isn’t mystery. It’s excess. Too many factories. Too much capacity. Not enough original demand. Idle plants don’t like sitting still. They copy because copying keeps the lights on. I read about lawyers like Li Hongjiang who describe the same nightmare on loop. Win against one counterfeiter today, face another tomorrow. It’s industrial whack-a-mole. Cut one head off, two grow back. And this mess doesn’t stay inside China’s borders. It leaks. It floods. It shows up on Amazon listings with suspiciously low prices and suspiciously familiar designs. In the United States, patent-related cases involving Chinese businesses jumped by 56% in 2023 alone. Many of them involved Chinese sellers clashing with Western rights holders over copied products in electronics, communications gear, and consumer goods. This isn’t ideological warfare. It’s commercial chaos.

Part of the blame sits squarely with inexperience. Many Chinese firms expanded abroad without running proper freedom-to-operate checks. They built first and asked questions later. That approach works at home when enforcement is uneven. It fails fast in courts where injunctions hit like a hammer. Now these companies are scrambling, hiring senior in-house IP lawyers and paying top dollar to clean up mistakes that never should have crossed borders. Cheap shortcuts become expensive detours.

Then comes the final irony, the one that makes this story sting. Chinese companies are no longer just defendants. They’re plaintiffs. They’re accusing foreigners of stealing Chinese ideas. Luckin Coffee sued a Thai business for copying its name and logo and won. Trina Solar sued Canadian Solar in American courts, arguing that its technology had been infringed. Read that again slowly. Chinese firms are now asking Western judges to defend Chinese innovation.

This is where nemesis steps fully into frame. China built a system where imitation was tolerated, even encouraged, because it accelerated development. That same system now threatens to eat its own children. You can’t train an entire economy to cut corners and then expect it to suddenly respect boundaries. Habits don’t vanish because policy changes. They linger. They resist. They bite back.

I don’t see this as moral awakening. I see it as economic self-interest wearing a judge’s robe. China didn’t discover the value of intellectual property because it found religion. It discovered it because it finally has something worth stealing. The courts are full because the mirror is finally clear. The thief now owns the jewelry. And ownership changes everything.

The coming years will be uglier. More lawsuits. More raids. More global clashes. Chinese firms will demand protection abroad while struggling to enforce discipline at home. Western companies will keep pressing back. And somewhere in the middle, a plush toy named Labubu will sit on a shelf, a soft reminder that when you spend decades copying the world, the world eventually copies you back.

Nemesis always collects. With interest.

 

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