The Other Strait: How Bab el-Mandeb Quietly Repriced Global Trade
On 21 August 2024, the MV Sounion, a Greek-flagged Suezmax tanker carrying one million barrels of Iraqi crude, was struck by Houthi small-arms and missile fire off the…
Intelligence Briefings
Category: Reports
The New Patrons: How Gulf Sovereign Wealth Quietly Bought the West’s Industrial Spine
On 17 December 2024, Ferrovial completed the sale of its remaining stake in Heathrow Airport Holdings. The Spanish builder walked away with cash. The Public Investment Fund of…
Private Credit’s Infrastructure Moment: Shadow Banking Meets the AI Capex Supercycle
In October 2025, Meta and Blue Owl Capital closed a $27 billion financing for a single data-center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana. It was the largest private-credit transaction…
Mines Without Markets: Why the West’s Critical Minerals Pact Needs a Pricing Layer
On 24 April 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič signed a Memorandum of Understanding on a Strategic Partnership for Critical Minerals…
The New Cyber-Industrial Complex: AI Defence Against State-Backed Attacks
On 22 April 2026, Richard Horne, chief executive of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre, told the audience at CYBERUK in Glasgow that the centre had handled…
The Glut Nobody’s Pricing: How a Coming Wall of LNG Capacity Will Reset European Energy Politics
On 22 April 2026, the first cargo of liquefied natural gas sailed out of the Golden Pass terminal at Sabine Pass, Texas. It was the ninth American LNG…
China Closes the Founders Exit
China’s National Development and Reform Commission this morning issued a brief statement ordering the cancellation of Meta Platforms’ two-billion-dollar acquisition of Manus, a Beijing-born agentic AI company that…
California and the Logic of Scale
An economy with the mass of a major country, the cultural reach of an empire core, and the administrative pathologies of a place that became too successful for…
The Capital Pivot: AI, Extinction Events, and the Hollowing of the Global Tech Middle Class
NOIDA, India. Before sunrise in the National Capital Region, a veteran Oracle engineer with more than a decade at the company opens a bike-hailing app on his phone.…
OpenAI’s $122bn raise is not what it seems — and that is the point
The largest private capital raise in history is less a fundraise than a barter system for the age of artificial intelligence When OpenAI announced on March 31 that…