What Caught My Eye (no. 32)
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.
Steve Coll, The education of Steve Witkoff, The Economist, September 18, 2025. A detailed look at Trump’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and how his inexperience in Middle East politics undermined efforts to keep a ceasefire in place, end the war, and bring hostages back home.
David Lynch, ‘The World’s Worst Bet’: Bill Clinton looks back on the world he built, Washington Post, September 5, 2025. The Post financial writer talks to Bill Clinton about his confidence that globalization would liberalize China and prove a boon to everyone as part of Lynch’s new book on globalization.
Vivek Viswanathan, The Art of the Decline, The Atlantic, September 22, 2025. A former Biden official, now at Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, argues that Trump’s dealmaking has not only come short but actually contributes to America’s rapid decline in power.
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, Behind the Curtain: Trump and the most unprecedented presidency in 250 years, Axios, September 23, 2025. The co-founders of Axios detail the 15 reasons why Trump’s presidency is unprecedented—its assault on the rule of law, silencing of opposition, usurping of Congress’s power of the purse, and more.
Paul Krugman, Hey, Let’s Undermine America’s Technology, Education and Research!, Substack, September 22, 2025. The former Times columnist and Nobel Prize economist takes a look at the decision to start $100,000 for H1B visas at a time when competition for talent and technology is increasingly shifting from the United States to other parts of the world.
Helen Warrell, Chris Cook, Daria Mosolova, and David Djambazov, The Russian spy ship stalking Europe’s subsea cables, Financial Times, September 25, 2025. An FT investigation into how Russian spy ships have increasingly surveyed all the key undersea cables and nodes that carry data, power, and more across the Atlantic and among European countries.
George Paker, America’s Zombie Democracy, The Atlantic, September 24, 2025. “We are living in an authoritarian state,” the Atlantic writer begins this stunning essay. “You can feel the onset of authoritarianism in your central nervous system: shock, disbelief, fear, paralysis. Familiar norms and rules disintegrate every day, but the ultimate consequences remain unclear, and Americans don’t know how to assess the danger. We haven’t lived under authoritarianism.”
Giuliano da Empoli, How tech lords and populists changed the rules of power, Financial Times, September 26, 2025. This fascinating essay by former adviser to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and author of the novel “The Wizard of the Kremlin” makes a convincing case that today’s tech bosses have far more in common with populist, far-right leaders than their corporate predecessors did—with big consequences for politics and business.
Eliot Brown and Robbie Whelan, Tech companies are pouring hundreds of billions into AI data centers, taking on heavy debt, but current revenue is relatively tiny, Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2025. Is the AI boom the next bubble to burst—but this time bigger than the dot.com bubble that burst at the beginning of this century? The Journal reporters look at the stupendous growth of AI investments based on a growing indebtedness that be difficult to recoup.
Finally, in case you missed it here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
I joined CNN to talk about the NATO response to Russia’s incursion into Estonian airspace.
I wrote about Russia’s strategy to undermine western support for Ukraine in my bimonthly column in Politico Europe and about the continuing divisions within NATO about the Russian threat in The Observer.
My weekly World Review focused on my visit to NATO headquarters last week
Happy reading, watching, and listening!