Claire’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts

Having failed to secure the guest I’d hoped to secure for tomorrow’s symposium, I’ve decided to lead it myself. On n’est jamais mieux servi que par soi-même.

Stars and Stripes was a remarkable American arrangement: It was a newspaper funded by the Pentagon but empowered to report on the military, rather than speak for it. Its independence has never been entirely to the liking of the institution it covers. Now, Pete Hegseth is determined to stamp it out. Bob Reid is the former editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes.

Vladislav Davidzon earlier today sent me this article in The Scroll titled, Why Did John Ratcliffe Fly to Moscow? They’re not the only ones wondering: The Atlantic: Why Did John Ratcliffe Go to Moscow? FirstPost: Why did the CIA chief make a secret Moscow visit? Euronews: What message did the CIA director deliver to Moscow? MoneyControl: Why did CIA chief John Ratcliffe go to Moscow? International News:Why did CIA chief John Ratcliffe secretly visit Moscow?

This study is devastating. It made the front page of The New York Times yesterday for a reason. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a devastating neurodegenerative disease. It’s caused by repeated trauma to the head. Between 2016 and 2021, 878 former NFL players died. Researchers from Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion and CTE Foundation examined 235 of their brains. They found that 215 had CTE. 91.4 percent. Usually, this disease is extremely rare.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -0:40 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. America has two vast oceans on either side of it and Canada to the north. Donald Trump has decided that this represents an intolerable strategic advantage. After negotiations collapsed at the eleventh hour, Washington imposed 50 percent tariffs on US$20 billion in Canadian exports.

I am so sorry. I’ve been working on an essay that has me so absorbed that I simply forgot what day it was. (Dan’s been on vacation, so my week has lost its structure: One day is just like the next.) I was so fascinated by what I was learning that it made me lose track of the external world. But I just realized that it’s Sunday, not Friday, as I’d somehow thought—and that I forgot completely to let everyone know that there won’t be a symposium today.

Dan was good enough to phone in from his family vacation in Kefalonia, an Ionian island with—he tells us—dazzling beaches, murderous roads, and a shockingly ugly history, one I knew nothing about A very appropriate place from which to survey a world that’s once again discovering what happens when alliances disintegrate and great powers begin improvising. Trump has declared the Strait of Hormuz an American possession. He’s threatened to bomb Oman.

I recently woke up with a clear, calm, but terrible thought: We may not make it through the next two years. It wasn’t an entirely new thought. I’ve said and written many times, in recent years, that given the combination of catastrophic and existential risks we now face—almost all owed to astonishing new technological powers we have acquired but not mastered—there are grounds to worry that humanity will not survive this century.

We’re convening in half an hour with Dalibor Roháč to discuss his new book Unshackled: How Economic Growth Can Defeat the World’s Dictators. From the invitation: The West has spent the past decade rediscovering geopolitics. Defense budgets are rising. Governments speak of economic security, strategic autonomy, resilient supply chains, industrial policy, stockpiles, export controls, and the restoration of manufacturing.

This insignificant, preposterous woman is going to rescue Donald Trump: That is the co-chair of the DSA. If you don’t know who she is, you’re about to learn, because Republican strategists will spend every day between now and the midterm elections introducing her to you. They won’t need to distort her views, invent a quotation, or selectively edit the video. They’ll just have to show you the interview. You will see her stupid, beaming, self-satisfied face on ad after ad.