The Mirage: Why Mexico’s Nearshoring Boom Is Stalling Before It Starts
The site at Santa Catarina, on the northern edge of Monterrey, was prepared in 2023. Trees were cleared. Earthworks were levelled. A perimeter fence was raised. Tesla had…
Intelligence Briefings
Reports
Brussels Bets on the Sovereign Stack
The European Commission’s Tech Sovereignty Package, set for unveiling on 27 May, marks a quiet but consequential pivot in how Brussels engages with American technology. For most of…
The Phosphate Throne: How Morocco Quietly Became the World’s Food-Security Pivot
The 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries published by the United States Geological Survey contain a single line that ought to keep European agriculture ministries awake. Of the 74 billion…
The Hollow Yards: How the West Forgot How to Build Hulls
On 4 August 2025, in a dry dock on the Delaware River, a 420-tonne block of marine engine room was lowered into position under a Korean banner. Coins…
The Erdős Threshold: How an AI Quietly Crossed the Frontier of Original Discovery
On 20 May 2026 OpenAI published a paper claiming that one of its internal reasoning models had disproved a conjecture of Paul Erdős that had stood since 1946.…
The Conscript Cliff: Why South Korea’s Birth Rate Is a Defence Story
On 25 February 2026, Statistics Korea announced that the country’s total fertility rate had risen to 0.80 in 2025, up from 0.75 the previous year and 0.72 at…
The Wall: Africa’s 2026-2027 Eurobond Cliff and the Brady Plan That Isn’t Coming
On 12 March 2026, the central bank of Senegal moved €380 million to the holders of its 4.75 percent 2028 notes, plus a further $33 million to the…
The Nordic Reversal: Sweden Cuts the State in Half
For four decades, Sweden has been quietly dismantling the model the rest of the world still associates with its name. The country that defined “cradle-to-grave” welfare has, with…
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…
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…