Corporate armies, overpopulated cities and medical apartheid — this is what the British Ministry of Defence sees on the horizon.
Future Shock
Modern militaries are perhaps some of the most reliable people from which to understand how the world will change in the next century. While politicians or media pundits can afford to speculate, there are few things which require a more hard-nosed realism than military planning.
As such, armies and military organisations have entire units devoted to trying to understand the key trends which will define the coming years. Oftentimes, creating strategy reports for the eyes of military elites and policy-makers.
I previously covered one such report from the Pentagon which clarified the effects that climate change would have upon the…
The cryptocurrency continues to find rapid adoption in the world’s trouble spots.
Greenshoots
Change comes slowly then all at once.
Often it starts at the periphery and then spreads until it becomes a cascade. And in a world of increasing technological complexity, this cascade of change will overturn the old order even quicker than it would have before.
This is what is happening now. And it has begun in one of the world’s least known countries, El Salvador. Recently, the President of this small central American nation announced his intention to make bitcoin legal tender within his domestic economy.
It’s not surprising that El Salvador would become the first country to try this…
The system is threatened from within and from without.
The Death Of The American Dream
I’ve written before about the warnings of some of the biggest names in Wall Street in regards to American society and the global economy.
Now, another legendary investor is warning that the American-led system is facing an existential crisis. One which could see the United States lose its position as the world’s most powerful empire.
Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire who became infamous for his work with George Soros in their bold attack on the British Pound, spoke about his fear that the US dollar will lose its place as the world’s reserve currency.
He believes that this will be the…
The start of a long unravelling.
After-effects
While people are focused on the current numbers and spread of the coronavirus, it is worth considering the world that will emerge after it.
If we assume that vaccination efforts are successful and there are no more highly infectious variants, the West’s fight against the pandemic may be officially over by the end of 2021 — to mid-2022. However, the long term effects of it will likely be with us far into the future.
It is these after effects which could be remembered in the history books far more than the initial health crisis.
The modern world is highly complex…
How the plastic revolution threatens our species.
Plastic Planet
Since the invention of plastics in the 1950s, humanity has produced an estimated 8 billion tonnes, with only around 10% being recycled.
Most goes to landfills where it gradually breaks down into so-called ‘microplastics’ and ‘nanoplastics,’ tiny pieces of material (often the size of dust particles) which then seep into the surrounding land and river systems to be consumed by plant or animal life, and then consumed by us.
This means that the entire food chain becomes contaminated with the chemicals within. This is so widespread that it is likely that every species on the planet has been exposed to…
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.
…
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…
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.
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. …
