What Caught My Eye (no. 61)
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.
Cristopher Caldwell, “America Is Officially an Empire in Decline,” New York Times, May 3, 2026. Caldwell argues that the American-Israeli attack on Iran has squandered Trump’s genuine opportunity to manage U.S. imperial decline gracefully — in the manner Britain did after WWII — by instead plunging into an open-ended military commitment for no vital national interest. The military costs are already severe: the U.S. has burned through over 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles and 1,000 Tomahawks, depleting stockpiles earmarked for Asia and Europe. America now faces three bad options — withdraw and expose military weakness, strip assets from vital theaters, or escalate to extreme measures. Netanyahu, Caldwell argues, understood perfectly that U.S. capacity to protect Israel was waning and exploited Trump’s gullibility for one last intervention. The Iran war, in his telling, is the moment American overextension became undeniable.
Henry Bodkin, “Buffer Zone Invasions Ignite Battle Over Greater Israel,” The Telegraph, May 4, 2026. Since October 7, Israel has seized roughly 530 square miles of territory across Gaza, southern Lebanon, and Syria, establishing “buffer zones” that it shows no intention of vacating until Hamas and Hezbollah disarm — an outcome few expect anytime soon. The security rationale is genuine and widely held within Israel’s establishment, but it increasingly blends with a parallel ideological current — the “Greater Israel” vision of permanent territorial expansion along biblical lines — embodied by figures like Finance Minister Smotrich and, ambiguously, Netanyahu himself. The critical departure from Israel’s earlier buffer zone experiences (Sinai, southern Lebanon 1982–2000) is the systematic depopulation of seized territories, which experts describe as a radical shift that Western policy discussion has barely absorbed. Whether the buffer zones represent a temporary security measure or the opening phase of permanent annexation remains the central unanswered question — and the answer may depend entirely on what happens in Iran.
Christof Rühl, “The Oil Price Crunch Is Looming,” Financial Times, May 2026.
The world is caught between two blockades — Washington strangling Iran’s oil revenues, Tehran threatening the Strait of Hormuz — and markets have so far remained surprisingly calm, buoyed by high inventories and expectations that the disruption will be short-lived. Rühl pushes back on the reassuring argument that oil matters less to modern economies than it once did: yes, global oil intensity has dropped 60% since 1973, but that efficiency gain is a double-edged sword — remaining oil consumption is now concentrated in irreplaceable, load-bearing uses like freight and maritime shipping where there are no substitutes. A major supply disruption therefore no longer produces the slow-burn recessions of the past; instead it risks sudden, cascading economic shocks disproportionate to oil’s share of GDP — more like a rare-earth supply crisis than a standard energy price spike.
Bigg, Mpoke Matthew, John Eligon, and Zimasa Matiwane, “’The Death Zone’: How Russia Is Luring Africans to Ukraine,” The New York Times, May 4, 2026. A growing number of young African men — lured by promises of civilian jobs as cooks, bodyguards, or laborers — are ending up as involuntary soldiers in Russia’s war in Ukraine, recruited through fly-by-night agencies advertising on WhatsApp and Telegram across at least nine African countries. Kenya’s National Intelligence Service estimates around 1,000 Kenyans alone have ended up in Ukraine, of whom only 30 have returned alive. The scheme exploits Africa’s acute youth unemployment crisis: men are flown to Russia, handed contracts written only in Russian, and coerced into signing through debt bondage or physical intimidation before being rushed through minimal military training and sent to the front.
Yaroslav Trofimov, “Putin’s Strongman Image Is Fading as Ukraine Brings War Home to Russia,” The Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2026. With Russian casualties topping one million, the front line stalled, the economy deteriorating, and Ukrainian drone strikes now reaching 70% of Russian territory, a deepening mood of discontent is eroding Putin’s carefully cultivated image as protector and strongman. The psychological turning point came in January when the war surpassed the duration of the Soviet “Great Patriotic War” against Nazi Germany — a milestone that has caused Putin’s own Victory Day cult to backfire, with Russians asking why their grandfathers reached Berlin but this war grinds on without resolution. Popular discontent is now surfacing from unexpected quarters: nationalist bloggers, a pro-war media celebrity, and an apolitical Instagram influencer with 1.6 million likes all publicly challenging Putin, while rumors of coup preparations and security establishment infighting circulate in Moscow.
Rosalind Mathieson, Miaojung Lin, and Yian Lee, “Hormuz Crisis Shows Gaps in Taiwan’s High-Tech ‘Silicon Shield,’” Bloomberg, May 6, 2026. The Hormuz crisis has delivered Taiwan a sobering preview of what a Chinese blockade would look like: with LNG shipments from Qatar halted since March, Taiwan — which imports 96% of its energy and holds only an 11-day gas reserve — is scrambling to source expensive spot-market supplies while officials acknowledge the island could run dry within weeks under a sustained blockade. The cruel irony is that Taiwan’s extraordinary economic success, built on producing 90% of the world’s most advanced chips, has made it simultaneously more indispensable to the global economy and more energy-hungry and vulnerable — its semiconductor sector alone consumes 18% of total national power. Taiwan is buying time through costly LNG spot purchases, preliminary deals for U.S. LNG, nuclear plant restarts planned for 2028, and lessons drawn from Ukraine on drone warfare and infrastructure protection — but with Trump potentially using Taiwan as a bargaining chip in his upcoming summit with Xi, the “Silicon Shield” looks thinner than ever.
George Packer, “The Venture-Capital Populist,” The Atlantic, May 4, 2026.
George Packer’s long profile of David Sacks is a case study of how Big Tech captured the State. Packer traces how the South African-born PayPal alumnus and venture capitalist went from calling January 6 an “insurrection” to becoming Trump’s AI and crypto czar — a journey driven less by ideological conversion than by ruthless self-interest dressed up as libertarian principle. As White House special adviser, Sacks delivered his two central goals: legitimizing cryptocurrency through the GENIUS Act and keeping AI free of federal regulation, while also engineering the lifting of export controls on advanced Nvidia chips to China — a decision that alarmed national security officials and conservative hawks alike but benefited the tech industry in which Sacks remains financially embedded. Having stepped down after his 130 permitted days, Sacks now co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — a roster Packer drily describes as “almost a parody of crony capitalism.”
Peter Slevin, “Barack Obama Considers His Role in the Age of Trump,” The New Yorker, May 4, 2026. A long, reflective profile of Obama navigating the tension between public demand for his leadership and his own considered judgment about how to deploy his influence without diminishing it. Obama acknowledges his early confidence that Trump could roll back only a modest fraction of his achievements has proved badly wrong, but he resists the call to become a daily commentator, arguing that doing so would reduce him from political leader to pundit. Instead, he works selectively — campaigning in election cycles, mentoring younger Democrats, fighting gerrymandering, developing an AI policy agenda, and reaching audiences through podcasters and influencers rather than legacy media.
Chris Buckley, “How China’s Leader Lost Faith in His Generals,” The New York Times, May 9, 2026. Xi Jinping’s sweeping purge of China’s military leadership — which has now claimed dozens of senior generals, two former defense ministers sentenced to death, and ultimately his top commander Zhang Youxia — reveals a deepening contradiction at the heart of his rule: the more he tightened control over the People’s Liberation Army, the more he discovered corruption and disloyalty among the very men he had handpicked and promoted. The final break with Zhang Youxia came when the general objected to Xi’s plan to elevate the chief military inquisitor, Zhang Shengmin, to a powerful command position — an act of pushback Xi interpreted as a challenge to his “chairman responsibility system” and could not tolerate. The result is that Xi has replaced a battle-experienced modernizer with a loyalty enforcer as his sole remaining military confidant, raising serious questions about China’s combat readiness at precisely the moment U.S. military vulnerabilities are on vivid display in Iran.
Finally, below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
I wrote about the ever-diminishing role of Marco Rubio in my regular Politico column.
I convened the first of the monthly “Ask Ivo” sessions on Substack Live.
I joined Stephanie Ruhl on the MSNOW’s 11th Hour and Bianna Golodryga on CNN’s Amanpour to discuss the latest on Iran, NATO, and Ukraine.
This week’s World Review focused on justice in Syria, differences in the Gulf, and growing tensions across the Atlantic.
Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.