How did a digital currency become a threat to global empire?
Born From Chaos
Bitcoin is an asset which was founded within, and designed for a chaotic world. The first ‘block’ was created in 2009, when the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis was still rippling throughout the world.
When this newly created asset began to slowly court mainstream attention, most dismissed it, either as a fad, a scam or something which would never leave the domain of techno-libertarian idealists.
Others, however, looked into the fundamentals of the technology behind it and judged it worthy of further study and perfecting. …
2020 marks the point of no return for the oil industry.
The Oil Age
The modern world of the oil age began with an alliance between the tribal family of the Al-Sauds who, after conquering the Arabian peninsula, needed military protection and found a willing patron in the form of the United States.
The US, for their part, had just defeated the Axis powers and found itself engaged in a battle of wills with the Soviet-led East. To maintain the vast military network which guaranteed its power, and ensure its industrial strength remained at peak condition, the US developed an insatiable hunger for oil which could not be satisfied by her bountiful domestic reserves.
The alliance between these two countries may be one of the most important relationships of the 21st century and has helped to maintain the flow of oil throughout the arteries of the world. …
A Wall Street insider sees massive dollar inflation on the horizon.
Coming Storm
A Wall Street fund manager who made his fortune predicting the rise and fall of currencies has stated that the United States’ and her currency will experience levels of inflation not seen for decades.
Paul Tudor Jones, founder of Tudor Investment Corporation, wrote an investment letter in which he warned his followers that the United States was witnessing a ‘great monetary inflation,’ which would result in the greatest expansion of money ever witnessed.
This, Tudor said, would usher in a time of hyperinflation which would have wide reaching implications across American society. He is not the only Wall Street and financial insider to warn about such a phenomenon occurring. Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed ‘Dr Doom,’ for his warnings that the US housing market could collapse before being proven correct, also named monetary debasement as one of his defining trends of a coming ‘greater depression’ of the 2020’s. …
The world is entering a decade of “peak” and globalisation is ending.
The Decade of “Peak”
For years, academics, political leaders and thinkers had argued that the world was fusing into one single entity. “Globalisation” became the most important word on the lips of our thought leaders. Yet the last few years have shown increased resistance to it. Whether he re-enters the White House or not, Trump’s 2016 election was symbolic of a growing scepticism towards the very idea of global integration.
And it wasn’t only an American phenomenon. Across the globe, there seemed a new wave of thinkers and politicians who professed a newly found suspicion of globalisation.
Whether this is merely a hiccup towards humanity’s endpoint as a globalised species is debatable, but at the start of the year, one of the world’s most important financial institutions released a report in which they gave their answer. …
History warns us that it could be closer than we think.
The Thucydides Trap
As one power begins to wane and another starts its ascent, is war always going to happen?
This is the question pondered by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides who is most famous for his tract The History of the Peloponnesian War which depicted one of the ancient world’s most famous rivalries.
The ‘trap’ that bears his name refers to the idea that competition between a rising power and a falling one will always end in armed conflict. …
With global democracy under strain, could the virus be its death knell?
Democratic Recession
It’s become common to hear that democracy is under threat across the world. The dreams of people in the early 90s that democracy would spread throughout the globe after the fall of communism, as best exemplified by the ‘end of history’ thesis by Francis Fukuyama, now seem hopelessly naïve. Instead, we have begun to see the ‘democratic recession,’ where tyrants, strongmen and dictators have arisen in countries which had previously been solid democracies.
Across the Middle East, the early ambitions of the Arab Spring have died as the region’s largest country has seen its brief experiment with democracy ended by a core of military officers. …
The Pentagon is predicting that a changing climate will leave the US military impotent.
Embattled Empire
The current incumbent in the White House may deny the facts of climate change, but his leading generals do not have that luxury. The highest people within the US military are under no illusions about what is in store for humanity should the Earth continue its current trajectory.
A report from the Pentagon, the heart of the American military establishment, has predicted that the changing climate and global warming could completely destroy the US military’s ability to operate on a global level.
The report, originally released in early 2019, is uncompromising in the language it uses. It predicts a world in which climate change and the various alterations to the natural world it will create — rising sea levels, crop failure and desertification — will leave the US unable to project its power. …
In a thirsty world, the globe’s powers are silently fighting for our most precious resource.
A Thirsty, Crowded Planet
Water has always defined the story of human civilisations. When you look at the map, it’s no coincidence that mankind’s major cities are located near rivers or other water sources.
The distinguished cultures of ancient Egypt, Babylon, or the Indus Valley all exceeded because of access to the bountiful rivers of the Nile, Tigris and Euphratus and Sarasvati.
And, just as water defined the success of an empire, the loss of it would swiftly lead to collapse. …
The pandemic will end, and its aftermath could bring waves of revolutions across the globe.
Final Push
As the West appears to be approaching the peak of the new pandemic, and some countries have begun the first tentative steps to re-open their societies, the global south is now seeing the first waves of the virus reaching their shores.
Parts of Asia, Africa and South America have begun to report a steady increasing rate of infection. Many of these nations are copying the model set by China and the West and have begun to implement full-scale lock downs to curtail the virus’ spread.
Now, a leading investment firm have released a report stating that the aftermath of the virus will herald widespread food shortages across some of the world’s most fragile states. …
The rise of tactical nukes means that nuclear war is no longer as unthinkable as it once was.
Nuclear Dance
A world in which every media story was not so intensely focused upon the COVID-19 may seem like a distant memory at the moment, yet it was only some weeks ago when the United States announced something that, had it not be drowned out by the emergence of this pandemic, could have become one of the major stories of the year.
This story was that the Pentagon had conducted a war game which simulated a nuclear exchange with Russia.
Whereas something like this would normally be kept secret for only the eyes of the US’ highest military and political leaders, the Pentagon took the unique position of being completely open about the simulation and American action taken within. …
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