Essays on power, routes, energy, chips, trade, and global fragmentation.
2026 Will Be the Year of Infrastructure: Energy, Chips, Data, and Security2026 will be the year infrastructure returns to the center: energy, chips, data and security. After the years of software and AI as application, the bottleneck shifts to the infrastructure that sustains them. Whoever controls the energy, the chips, the data and the security controls the floor on which everything runs.
The Trade War Is Now a War of Routes, Chips, and EnergyThe trade war stopped being about generic tariffs and became specific: a war over routes, chips and energy. Whoever controls the routes, the chips and the energy controls the bottlenecks of the modern economy. The fragmentation of global trade concentrates on these three choke points.
Tariffs Show Globalization Now Has an Explicit Political PriceThe return of tariffs shows that globalization now has an explicit political price. Before, operating globally seemed a question only of efficiency, with politics as a backdrop. Now politics charges an explicit price — tariffs, restrictions — that enters the calculation. Globalization stopped being politically free.
The War in the Middle East Puts Geopolitical Risk Back Into Energy PricesThe war in the Middle East puts back into energy prices a premium the calm had removed: geopolitical risk. The price of energy carries a geopolitical risk that periodically disappears from the calculation and periodically returns. Whoever priced energy without it is reminded that it never vanished.
Europe Will Learn That Cheap Energy Was Industrial StrategyThe energy crisis will teach Europe that its cheap energy was, without it recognizing, an industrial strategy. Its competitiveness rested on a cheap input it did not treat as strategic. Losing it exposes the dependence: what was an invisible advantage becomes a visible vulnerability.
War, Commodities, and Inflation Form the Worst Environment for Weak ManagersWar, rising commodities and inflation form a simultaneous shock that exposes the weak manager. Easy conditions hid the weakness; the hard environment reveals it. Like a stress test, the simultaneous shock separates those who actually manage from those who only surfed the favorable tide.
Ukraine Shows Geopolitics Returned to the Center of the Balance SheetThe invasion shows that geopolitics stopped being a footnote and returned to the center of the balance sheet. Energy, supplies, sanctions enter the accounts directly. What was an external variable, managed by diplomats, became a central variable that defines costs, chains and the viability of entire operations.
Afghanistan Shows Planning Without Local Reality Is Expensive FictionThe withdrawal from Afghanistan exposes a hard truth: plans built without local reality are expensive fiction. They look complete on paper, but collapse on contact with the reality they ignored. The map is not the territory, and whoever plans by the map, ignoring the territory, pays dearly for the fiction.
The Trade War Becomes a War of Logistics MapsThe trade war stops being about tariffs and becomes a contest over the maps — who controls which routes, chains and choke points of global logistics. It is a war over the geography of supply: where things are made and through where they pass.
The Trade War Begins When Efficiency Becomes Political DependenceGlobal chains were optimized for efficiency, and that created dependence between rivals. When efficiency becomes dependence on a rival, it stops being an advantage and becomes a political vulnerability. The trade war is the attempt to undo the dependence efficiency created.
2018 Will Be the Year Platform and State CollidePlatforms accumulated a power — over data, attention, communication, commerce — that rivals the State's. 2018 will be the year that accumulation meets state power and the collision between the two, once latent, becomes open. Two powers, one territory.
China Begins Treating Data as SovereigntyChina begins treating data as sovereign territory — something that belongs to the nation, not to companies, and that cannot freely cross borders. Data becomes a geopolitical category, and the single internet begins to fragment into data territories.
Trump Won Because the Establishment Confused the Model With RealityThe establishment had a model of what was possible — polls, consensus, what "could" happen. And it trusted the model more than reality. Trump won because reality did not match the model they mistook for reality. Confusing the map with the territory is the central error.
Brexit Is the Failure of European Political ManagementBrexit is not just a vote; it is a management failure. The elites managed the structure — currency, integration, rules — without managing legitimacy and consent. The unmanaged resentment accumulated and broke. Political management that ignores consent fails.
China Matters Too Much to IgnoreThe Chinese turbulence at the start of the year transmits to the whole world, and that settles a debate: China has become too large and integrated to be treated as one market among others. It has become a systemic node — its cycles are now global cycles.
Paris Shows Physical Risk Is Back on the Corporate AgendaFor years, the risk that mattered was financial and digital — physical risk seemed a thing of the past. The Paris attacks remind us that physical risk did not disappear; it had merely fallen off the radar. And what falls off the radar is precisely what catches the company unprepared.
China Falling Shows That Planning Also Has CyclesThe belief was that central planning would abolish the cycle — that a managed economy would have no ups and downs. The fall of the Chinese market disproves it: planning does not eliminate the cycle, it merely postpones and hides it, often making it larger when it finally breaks.
Greece Returned Because Calendars Do Not Fix StructureThe Greek crisis returned, and this is not a new problem — it is the same one, never solved. Time passed, but the structural flaw (currency without government) is still there. Calendars do not fix structure. Structural problems return until they are treated in the structure.
Crimea Reminds Us That Borders Still MatterIn the enthusiasm for the digital, borderless world, we forgot something Crimea brings back brutally: territory, force and borders still matter. The digital did not abolish the physical. Geography has returned to collect the bill.
Europe Needs a Sentence, Not More CommitteesThe euro crisis is one of belief, not of spreadsheets. A self-fulfilling panic is not stopped by more committees, reports or technical plans — it is stopped by a credible sentence that makes the fear irrational. Europe does not need more process. It needs a commitment.
Occupy Wall Street Is a Reaction to a System Without Skin in the GameBeneath the diffuse demands, Occupy reacts to the crisis's deepest injustice: those who took the risks and caused the collapse did not pay for it, while those who took no risk at all paid the bill. The symmetry between deciding and bearing was broken — and it is that break the crowd feels.
The U.S. Downgrade Is Symbolic, but Symbols Move CapitalThe U.S. prints its own currency; in mechanical terms, the downgrade does not change the ability to pay. But markets run on shared belief, and a symbol that says 'not even the U.S. is untouchable' reorganizes the mental category of safety. A symbol is nothing — and it moves everything.
The Euro Needs a Promise Larger Than FearA currency, at bottom, is a belief. In the crisis, the fear that the euro will fall apart feeds on itself and becomes prophecy. Only a promise of support so large and so credible that it makes the panic irrational can defeat it — and that promise has not yet been made.
The Arab Spring Shows That Networks Change CoordinationWhat held regimes up was not only force; it was the difficulty of people coordinating against them. Networks collapse that difficulty — and when coordinating becomes cheap, every power that depended on others' disorganization becomes vulnerable.
The Modern Manager Must Understand Geopolitics as Well as MarginCurrencies, energy and state decisions have stopped being background and become a line on the balance sheet. The manager who understands margin but ignores geopolitics is flying blind over the largest risk he is not measuring.
Greece Is Europe's Bear StearnsGreece is too small to matter on its own and too connected to fall on its own. Like Bear Stearns, it is not the problem — it is the test that reveals the fragility of the entire architecture.
Europe Has a Currency Without an Equivalent Political SystemThe Greek crisis is not a Greek problem. It is the first visible crack in a construction that gave several countries the same currency without giving them the same government — and a currency without an equivalent politics is a structural flaw waiting for the stress.
China Is Not Just Growing. It Is Buying the Next CycleWhile the West repairs balance sheets, China uses the crisis to buy resources, build infrastructure and position itself. A crisis is an event of relative position — and it is playing to emerge ahead.