What Caught My Eye (no. 63)
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.
Maria Abi-Habib and Lazaro Gamio, “The Secretive Conglomerate That Controls Cuba’s Economy,” The New York Times, May 16, 2026. GAESA, the Cuban military’s sprawling business conglomerate, controls an estimated three times the revenue of Cuba’s entire state budget — yet its finances are so opaque that when the government’s own comptroller admitted she had no insight into them in 2024, she was fired after 14 years on the job. Born out of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when Raúl Castro convinced Fidel to let the military take over key sectors to keep the country afloat, GAESA has metastasized under family control into a self-serving monopoly: Raúl installed his son-in-law to run it in 2011, and his son remains closely tied to current leadership. The conglomerate’s strategic failures are stark: betting heavily on tourism after the Obama-era opening, GAESA built 121 hotels by 2025 — nearly doubling capacity — even as American tourists were barred again and the pandemic crushed arrivals, leaving occupancy rates at a dismal 30% while Cuba spent 11 times more on tourism and hospitality than on education and healthcare combined.
Lingling Wei, “The Hidden Chinese Influence in AI,” The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2026. A peer-reviewed study by researchers from five universities has found the first hard evidence that Chinese state media has infiltrated AI training data. When datasets are filtered for content mentioning Xi Jinping or key Chinese Communist Party institutions, state-media content accounts for roughly one in four documents, making it 41 times more abundant than Chinese-language Wikipedia. The practical effect is measurable: major chatbots answer politically sensitive questions about China more favorably in Chinese than in English, and the pattern repeats for Russia and North Korea. No one had to do anything sinister — propaganda is simply free on the open web while serious journalism sits behind paywalls, structurally advantaging authoritarian state media. The question of whether Beijing is shaping what your chatbot says has now been answered; what to do about it has not.
Jeffrey Gettleman, Maya Tekeli, Anton Troianovski, and Eric Schmitt, “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland,” The New York Times, May 18, 2026. While the Iran war has pushed Greenland off the front pages, secret negotiations between the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland have been quietly underway in Washington for four months — and Greenlandic officials are alarmed by what’s being demanded. The U.S. wants permanent basing rights that would survive even Greenland’s independence, effective veto power over major foreign investment deals, and cooperation on natural resource extraction — terms that Greenland parliament member Justus Hansen says would mean never achieving “real independence.” Greenlanders have little leverage, and some are already marking their calendars: they fear Trump will refocus on the island once the Iran conflict winds down, with his birthday on June 14 and the Fourth of July seen as potential flashpoints.
Elbridge Colby, Remarks at the National War College, May 19, 2026. In his most comprehensive public statement of the Trump administration’s military strategy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby laid out a framework built around three core concepts: denial defense (preventing an adversary from seizing and holding key allied territory), favorable escalation management (placing the burden of escalation on the opponent), and a binding strategy (structuring conflicts so that adversary escalation strengthens rather than fractures the U.S. coalition). The through-line is Clausewitzian discipline — military force must always remain proportionate to Americans’ concrete interests, ruling out both strategies aimed at total victory over nuclear-armed powers and purely punitive cost-imposition that invites retaliation without achieving political objectives. Colby was notably direct that allies must do far more for their own defense, and that American strategy depends on leveraging their capabilities and resolve rather than shouldering burdens alone. The ultimate goal, he said, is a “decent peace” — but one that requires being credibly prepared to fight for it. If only Colby’s theory matched the administration’s strategic reality in Iran and elsewhere.
Peter S. Goodman, “Catastrophe Is Emerging in the World’s Most Vulnerable Places,” The New York Times, May 18, 2026. The Iran war has delivered a devastating second blow to the world’s most vulnerable populations: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has doubled food, fuel, and fertilizer prices in import-dependent countries like Somalia, compounding the damage already done by the dismantling of USAID and sweeping cuts to global humanitarian funding. The World Food Program warns that if hostilities continue past June, the number facing acute hunger will swell to 363 million — 45 million more than before the war — yet the agency’s Somalia operation has funding only through July, and twelve of its thirteen warehouse tents there are already empty. Aid workers now describe a grim “hyper-prioritization,” allocating what remains only to those on the immediate verge of death — “literally, it’s who dies first, and who dies next,” as the WFP’s Somalia director puts it. Somalia is the case study, but the story is global.
Laurence Norman and Michael R. Gordon, “How Iran Got to the Nuclear Threshold on the Watch of Three U.S. Presidents,” The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2026. Iran’s path to the nuclear threshold was paved by a cascade of failures across three administrations: Trump withdrew from the 2015 deal in 2018, triggering Iran’s gradual then rapid expansion of its program; Biden failed to revive the accord or apply sufficient pressure; and Trump’s return brought maximalist demands — a permanent end to all enrichment — that Iran predictably rejected. By the time U.S. and Israeli strikes hit Iran’s enrichment sites last June, Tehran had accumulated enough near-weapons-grade uranium for nearly 11 nuclear weapons, and despite the strikes it retains the material, the centrifuges, and the know-how to resume. The core dilemma now is that Iran’s new post-war leadership may be even less disposed to compromise than its predecessors — and with Trump signaling openness to a deal while few experts share his optimism, the nuclear question remains as unresolved as ever.
Andrew R.C. Marshall, Humeyra Pamuk, John Shiffman, Gram Slattery, John Irish, Tim Kelly, and Andrea Shalal, “Inside the Unraveling of U.S. Diplomacy Under Trump,” Reuters, May 21, 2026. Based on interviews with more than 50 diplomats and officials, Reuters documents a historic breakdown in American diplomacy: 109 of 195 ambassadorial posts are vacant, the NSC has been gutted to a few dozen staff, and career diplomats — who historically filled 57-74% of ambassador roles — now account for just 9% of Trump’s appointees. The practical consequences are stark: when Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization, European allies sought clarification through the State Department and were told it didn’t know what the president meant; five of the seven countries bordering Iran have no U.S. ambassador. Foreign governments have adapted by rewiring their diplomacy around informal back channels — South Korea through White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Japan through Trump’s golfing buddy Masayoshi Son — while learning to treat Trump’s most alarming statements as background noise rather than policy. The result, as one European diplomat summarizes, is a superpower whose signals have grown so erratic that allies now regard silence as the safest response.
Robert Kagan, “Trump’s Endgame Is Surrender,” The Atlantic, May 21, 2026. Kagan argues that Trump’s reported “letter of intent” with Iran — launching a 30-day negotiation period — is a tacit admission of defeat, since Iran has made no concessions despite 37 days of strikes and is now demanding war reparations, no limits on enrichment, and recognized control of the Strait of Hormuz. The cease-fire has given Iran time to “normalize” its control of the strait, with nations including South Korea, Turkey, and Iraq already negotiating transit agreements — a stampede Kagan says will only accelerate now that Trump has signaled he won’t resume full-scale war. The strategic consequences are severe: Iran emerges stronger and more influential, international sanctions collapse, Israel is left more isolated than at any point in its history, and the Abraham Accords effectively die as Gulf states make their own peace with Tehran. “That’s what happens,” Kagan concludes, “when the hegemon cedes hegemony.”
Finally, below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
I assessed the long-term impact of the Beijing Summit on US-China relations for Notus.
On America Abroad, I examined the long-term damage of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and how the likely deal to end the Iran War confirm the US Lost
This week’s World Review focused on Cuba, Taiwan, and the crisis in British politics.
Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.