What Caught My Eye (no. 25)
Some interesting articles and podcasts that caught my eye this week
Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.
Andy Bounds, Henry Foy, and Ban Hall, How the EU succumbed to Trump’s tariff steamroller, Financial Times, July 27, 2025. An inside look on how the EU decided to cave to Trump’s tariff threats—putting faith in stability and a US commitment to Europe above giving Trump some of his own medicine.
Marc De Vos, Europe’s summer of humiliation, Financial Times, July 30, 2025. The co-CEO of the Brussels-based Itinera Institute pens a devastating opinion piece showing how Europe caved to Trump on NATO, Ukraine, and trade. “Jean Monnet said that ‘Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises’. His fellow EU founding father, Paul-Henri Spaak, on the other hand, observed that ‘there are only two types of states in Europe: small states, and small states that have not yet realised that they are small’. If Europe’s humiliation is to end, its leading nations must remember Spaak and relearn Monnet.
Patrick Kingsley, ‘Total Failure’: Israel’s Return to War Heaped Ruin on Gaza and Did Little for Israelis, New York Times, July 28, 2025. The Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief reports that an increasing number of Israeli national security experts believe Netanyahu’s decision to restart the war in March has been a “total failure.”
Emma Graham-Harrison, The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza, The Guardian, July 31, 2025. The chief Middle East correspondent of the Guardian goes thru the math of aid shipments into Gaza to demonstrate Israel has failed to supply what it judges as the minimum necessary to feed people each day — or even the absolute minimum amount there UN believes is necessary to avoid starvation.
FT Reporters, Inside the relentless race for AI capacity, Financial Times, July 30, 2025. A detailed visualization of how the AI race is driving the electricity demand in the United States and around the world. This is the first of a three-part series on the AI Race.
Ross Anderson, How Scientific Empires End, The Atlantic, July 31, 2025. Every scientific empire ends, the former deputy editor of the magazine writes. But few end as swiftly and by self-inflicted wounds as the US scientific empire is undergoing today.
John O. Brenna and James Clapper, Let’s Set the Record Straight on Russia and 2016, New York Times, July 30, 2025. The directors of the CIA and National Intelligence in the Obama administration demonstrate that recent claims from Trump intelligence heads that they concocted the story about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election is false.
Tom Lehrer found matter worth roasting everywhere he looked, The Economist, July 31, 2025. The brilliant songwriter and satirist, Tom Lehrer, died last month. He hadn’t performed publicly since the 1960s (though I had the pleasure to hear him in the mid-1980s at someone’s home). Words cannot capture the man’s brilliance. So, let’s listen to one of my favorite songs.
Finally, in case you missed it here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
Last week, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs partnered with P33 and Intersect Illinois to host the first ever Global Quantum Forum. I spoke at the opening panel on the foreign policy implications of a new Quantum technology race, and warned about the dangers to our scientific and innovative lead. You can watch the whole session on A New Global Foreign Policy Race.
Relatedly, I write my bimonthly column for Politico Europe on the US-Chinese competition and argued that the United States was in danger of losing the race,. https://www.politico.eu/article/china-us-nato-donald-trump-politics-trade-war/
I spoke with NPR’s White House correspondent to Tamara Keith about how world leaders use flattery to try and get their way with Trump for a story on The Art of the Praise.
My weekly World Review post covered the trade talks, starvation in Gaza, and Trump’s turn against Russia.
Happy reading, watching, and listening!