Disorder

In late January 2024, New Hampshire residents received a strange phone call. The voice of Joe Biden was telling them not to vote in the Democratic Primaries.  But it wasn’t actually the President on the line… It was a deep faked robot. This was part of an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election. That disinformation campaign was created by easily accessible technology...

In the days following Navalny’s murder, Western leaders have made all too predictable speeches and issued all too predictable condemnations. But as of yet, very little concrete action has been taken to respond to the murder of Russia’s most prominent opposition politician. The West talks the talk, but has yet to walk the walk...

When it comes to working together to face external challenges, no challenge could be greater than extraterrestrial life… and this seemingly abstract problem could be more pressing than you think. In 2023, Air Force Colonel David Grusch spoke before Congress to present his firsthand evidence of alien spacecraft remains and non-human ‘biologics’. In his testimony, he claimed that parts of the United States Government and defense contractors were hiding these facts from disclosure to Congress...

In this year of monumental elections, there is none which looms larger than the grandaddy of them all: the 2024 US Presidential Elections. With the US Primary season all but over, the match up appears set between the “disorderer-in-chief” Donald Trump and Joe Biden...

Every year, Freedom House releases an annual ‘global democracy health check’. According to it, the world is getting sicker. In this year’s ‘Freedom in the World’ report -- which reviews the state of democracy, civil, and political rights in every country -- political and civil liberties have got worse in 52 countries, while in only 21 countries have they improved...

Can we ever truly achieve Order in the international system? Or is life itself just a deterministic jumble of uncontrollable events? Do humans crave order so much that they perceive it even when it is absent – leading to conspiracy theories? And should policymakers avoid optimization and prediction and embrace experimentation, resilience, and slack to fix the problems of our era of Global Enduring Disorder?    This week we celebrate the six-month anniversary of Disorder, by talking with a guest...

India is arguably the world’s only rising great power. As the world’s largest democracy and soon to be third largest economy it is the globe’s most serious aspirant for becoming the 6th permanent member of the UN Security Council. Despite this economic and foreign policy heft, since independence in 1947, India has stridently resisted being aligned with any one particular geopolitical “camp”...

Beneath the Caribbean’s idyllic seafronts and sandy beaches lies a darker truth. Illicit money flows, corruption, and organised crime leave these small states hollowed out and open to state capture. In fact, the failure of Caribbean states to provide services to their populations and to generate income has led some of them to sell their sovereignty to their highest bidder...

In the early morning hours of April 14th Iranian drones and missiles were launched towards Israel. The launch was framed as retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1st.      Nearly 99% of the projectiles were intercepted...

Taiwan is not only the epicentre of the world’s semi-conductor industry and a vibrant democracy. It is arguably the most important square on the chessboard of East Asian geopolitics. And the Taiwanese have watched very carefully how China has absorbed Hong Kong.  The ‘one country, two systems’ mantra was a total failure.    China is not planning a peaceful union with Taiwan. China is building its military at a rate not seen since World War II...