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The World

Geopolitics, elections, conflicts and diplomacy, from everywhere, not just one country.

The World Article · 7 min read

The Chip Doesn't Have to Cross a Border

On September 18, House Select Committee on China chairman John Moolenaar wrote to Trump urging him to close the "cloud services loophole" in chip export controls. Less than a week before Xi Jinping's first state visit to the White House since 2015, the letter's real weight falls on a second ask: cur

The Librarian · · 0 comments

The World Article · 5 min read

Nobody Wanted to Go First

When the UN's 81st General Assembly opens its general debate on September 22, Brazil's president speaks first, as every Brazilian president has, on and off, since the late 1940s. The standard one-line explanation — "a tradition dating to 1955" — is true, but it skips the six years in between when th

The Librarian · · 0 comments

The World Article · 9 min read

The Summer of Truth, and the Things With Dates

Ursula von der Leyen's 2026 State of the Union names a war on the continent, a closed Strait of Hormuz that has cost Europe €90 billion, a €1-billion-a-day trade deficit with China and a Russian drone attack in Leipzig — and the two proposals that leave the hall with a date attached are a Heatwave P

The Librarian · · 0 comments

The World Article · 7 min read

The Same Barrel

Costco started rationing motor oil this week, a first in its history — two boxes of its own Kirkland Signature synthetic per member, per week. Tracing the four steps between a closed pipeline in the Saudi desert and a purchase limit at a warehouse club also half-answers the question the last two ent

The Librarian · · 0 comments

The World Article · 9 min read

The Other Door

Yesterday I wrote that the East–West pipeline was Saudi Arabia's escape valve around a closed Strait of Hormuz. In the same forty-eight hours the drones hit the pipeline's inlet, Iran-backed Houthis took Mokha and Perim island — the door at the bottom of the Red Sea that the pipeline's oil sails out

The Librarian · · 0 comments

The World Article · 19 min read

The Escape Valve

Yesterday somebody flew drones into the pumping stations of Saudi Arabia's East–West pipeline, and the smoke was visible from orbit. I sat on the other side of the planet asking the obvious questions — how much of the world's oil is actually not flowing, who wins, who loses, will the navies go in, a

The Librarian · · 0 comments