A WORRISOME parallel between the 1930s and the 2020s is that in both decades the multilateral institutions of the international system resemble the walking dead.

Today that applies to defensives alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as the bodies that regulate trade (the World Trade Organization or WTO), limit nuclear proliferation (a treaty abbreviated as NPT), and prosecute war crimes (the International Criminal Court, ICC). And of course it fits the United Nations, which is meant to guarantee the sovereignty of all member states and to prevent war.

鈥淲e basically have a zombie multilateral system,鈥� Rebecca Lissner told me. She was a top national-security advisor in the administration of Joe Biden and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the 1930s, the zombie was the League of Nations. It existed both on paper and inside grand digs in Geneva palaces but lacked support from major powers such as the United States and became irrelevant amid the aggression of authoritarian Japan, Italy, and Germany. Formally, the League lingered on, with employees and delegates and meetings, until it was finally abolished. That happened only in 1946, after World War II and the Holocaust; and after a new organization, the UN, was founded to take its place, this time with America鈥檚 leadership and muscular support.

Today鈥檚 crisis, like that of the 1930s, is not in the first instance about money. The secretary general of the UN did recently warn member states that the organization was near 鈥渋mminent financial collapse,鈥� as various contributors 鈥� notably the largest, the United States 鈥� are cutting or delaying payments. But NATO, for instance, is swimming in funds, with a recently expanded membership (of 32 countries now) that just pledged to allocate more money to defense.

The problem is instead one of hollowing out, as the system鈥檚 great powers ignore the spirit that once animated its institutions. Instead they heap scorn on them to please domestic audiences, while flouting their rules and norms. The effect is slow-motion euthanasia.

The main objective of NATO is to deter aggression from Moscow. But US President Donald Trump disdains many of his allies 鈥� threatening Denmark with the annexation of Greenland, for example, or ordering the pullout of thousands of American troops from Germany to 鈥減unish鈥� it for not helping in Iran. He simultaneously appears to side more with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, than with Moscow鈥檚 pro-Western victim, Ukraine.

Above all, Trump is ambiguous about whether or not he would honor Article V, NATO鈥檚 mutual-defense clause. 鈥淲ho today thinks that Trump would fight a war with Putin over Kaliningrad or a slice of Estonia? I certainly don鈥檛,鈥� Lissner told me. deterrence. With its incessant hybrid warfare throughout Europe, Russia is already testing NATO鈥檚 vital signs.

A similar evisceration is happening at the Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which is underway at the UN in New York until May 22. The last two RevCons, in 2015 and 2022, ended without a final document being agreed among the 191 parties. NPT watchers that this one will be the third, threatening the treaty鈥檚 鈥渟urvival.鈥�

The NPT, which entered into force in 1970, is the overarching framework to guarantee three things: First, the five 鈥渓egitimate鈥� nuclear powers (the US, Russia, China, France, and Britain¹) must work 鈥渋n good faith鈥� toward 鈥済eneral and complete disarmament.鈥� Second, all parties that don鈥檛 have atomic weapons must forswear them. And third, all countries have the right to civilian nuclear technology (for power generation or medicine, say) under proper safeguards.

But disarmament is no longer on the menu, which in turn makes proliferation likely. All of the treaty鈥檚 nuclear powers (like the four atomic nations that aren鈥檛 party to the treaty) are upgrading their arsenals. The last arms-control treaty between the two giants, the US and Russia, has . The direction points away from disarmament and toward arms races.

That leaves all the other countries feeling 鈥渂etrayed,鈥� Kelsey Davenport at the Arms Control Association in Washington². Worse, America鈥檚 allies in Europe and Asia no longer trust the deterrent nuclear 鈥渦mbrella鈥� that the US has long extended over them (see Trump鈥檚 comments about allies above). Once-taboo debates are raging from Japan and South Korea to Poland and Germany about acquiring national atomic deterrents, which would mean quitting the NPT.

Tehran, which is now in an open-ended 鈥溾�� with one nuclear power in the NPT (the US) and another outside of it (Israel), is permanently on the verge of quitting the treaty. If Iran does leave (as North Korea did in 2003, while watching the US prepare to attack Iraq), its neighbors in the Middle East will recalculate their own nuclear ambitions.

Just as the hollowing out of NATO and the NPT threatens the world鈥檚 security, the slow demise of the World Trade Organization is reducing its prosperity. As one of the institutions created by an agreement signed during World War II in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, it was meant to guarantee relatively free and open trade and non-discrimination among trading partners. The idea was that countries whose exports face improper or arbitrary barriers could take their case to the WTO鈥檚 Appellate Body for adjudication.

But the great powers have started ignoring such niceties. China, which joined the WTO in 2001, never fit snugly into the regime. The bigger blow, though, was America鈥檚 turn against its own brainchild. Since the administration of Barack Obama, the US has been blocking appointments to the Appellate Body (citing such reasons as 鈥渏udicial overreach鈥�). Without a quorum of judges, the body has been unable to enforce its verdicts, leaving smaller trading nations unable to sue rapacious large countries. So much for the rules-based system.

Then Trump declared full-fledged trade war on most of the world, in effect resurrecting the 鈥渂eggar-thy-neighbor鈥� protectionism of the 1930s which the Bretton Woods system was created to prevent. Now the era of open and non-discriminatory commerce is history. Michael Froman, who was US Trade Representative in the Obama administration and now leads the Council on Foreign Relations, that 鈥渢he global trading system as we have known it is dead.鈥�

It鈥檚 a similar story with international efforts to prosecute people who commit atrocities or war crimes. This tradition, which grew out of the Nuremberg Trials, found expression in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which America helped create and which opened in 2002. But the US (like Russia, China, and Israel) never became a party to the Rome Statute and does not recognize the court. Instead, Trump has its judges, prosecutors and other staff, hamstringing the tribunal鈥檚 efforts.

The outlook is just as bad for the mother of all post-war institutions, the one that was supposed to be a better and more resilient League of Nations. The UN has long been dysfunctional. According to Republicans such as Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that鈥檚 because the UN has been 鈥渇ocusing on politicized mandates and woke ideology.鈥� That diagnosis isn鈥檛 totally wrong, but it says more about America鈥檚 culture wars than the UN system, which simply reflects a messy world.

The real reason why the UN has been feckless in keeping or restoring peace is that three of the five veto-wielding great powers in the security council 鈥� the US, Russia, and China 鈥� keep blocking resolutions that would settle the conflicts or dangers that matter most, notably those in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, or the Korean Peninsula. (The other two, France and Britain, haven鈥檛 cast their veto since 1989.) They鈥檙e also blocking of the UN system. So the UN鈥檚 dysfunction is a symptom of the international system鈥檚 maladies, .

The slide into irrelevance of all these institutions, even as they continue to buzz with bureaucratic activity, amounts to a 鈥�,鈥� thinks Oona Hathaway, the president-elect of the American Society of International Law. It is showing up in less trade and dampened prosperity, and more death and suffering. From 1989 to 2014, fewer than 15,000 people a year died in battles between countries; since then, that average has risen to 100,000 a year. UN peacekeeping missions ; global arms sales .

The international system as the world has known it for eight decades was built by people who had seen a previous order fail and turn into purgatory. Its institutions, as a says in a hallway at the United Nations, were 鈥渘ot created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.鈥� If world leaders, and above all the people running the great powers, forget what happened when the League of Nations became a zombie, that may be where we鈥檙e headed.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

¹The five countries that had tested nuclear weapons before negotiations for the NPT began in the 1960s, with Russia counting as successor to the Soviet Union.

²Over 70 of them have signed a new compact, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has technically been in force since January 2021 but, without support from the nuclear powers and their allies, has no chance of success.

ONE frustrating characteristic of the AI boom seems to be that everyone must pay for it, regardless of any interest in using it. For some, it will be through rising utility bills as data centers strain the grid. For even more of us, it will be increasing costs of just about every electronic product you can think of: laptops, smartphones, televisions 鈥� perhaps even cars.

The reason is a dire global shortage of memory chips that鈥檚 projected to intensify this year and beyond, crippling the tech supply chain for everyone except the largest and richest AI hyperscalers that can buy their way to the front of the line. The clamor for these key components has paved the way for the 鈥渓ongest and most stable upturn in history,鈥� Chae Minsook, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, wrote in a note.

The shortage is due to shifting priorities among the three largest memory makers. SK Hynix, Inc., Micron Technology, Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., which are collectively responsible for more than 90% of global production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), have diverted capacity to building the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) needed for AI chips, enjoying much higher profit margins as they go. Describing it as a 鈥渉yper-bull鈥� market, Counterpoint Research the cost of 64GB RDIMM, a type of memory used in servers, 鈥渨hich jumped from $255 in Q3 2025 to $450 in Q4 2025鈥� and is 鈥渢argeted to reach $700 by March 2026.鈥�

This month, Samsung off the back of soaring memory prices. The Korean giant is also of a huge deal to supply memory to Nvidia Corp. Demand is far outstripping supply, however: SK Hynix, the market leader, its 2026 allocation of memory already. Analysts with Capital Securities project the memory crunch will last through 2027.

The reallocation of resources means the kind of memory found in other tech products is now in extremely short supply, a fact you might come face-to-face with the next time you try to buy a piece of consumer technology. 鈥淭his is a zero-sum game,鈥� analysts at IDC. 鈥淓very wafer allocated to an HBM stack for an Nvidia GPU is a wafer denied鈥� to a smartphone or laptop.

The impacts are set to weigh heavily throughout earnings season for tech companies exposed to memory price pressures. Intel Corp., which produces CPUs for the majority of PCs sold worldwide, warned on Thursday that memory shortages 鈥渃ould limit our revenue opportunity this year.鈥� Smaller players in the market were 鈥渟crambling鈥� to find memory, Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan said, affecting their ability to finish making products that use Intel chips.

Leading device makers have made efforts to mitigate the shortage, but even the most aggressive stockpilers can only do so much. Lenovo, the world鈥檚 largest PC maker, has stashed away memory at about 50% above its usual levels, its chief financial officer , but added the company would need to work at balancing price and availability in 2026. Samsung has the benefit of being able to make chips for itself, but its president, Wonjin Lee, that 鈥渨e鈥檙e going to be at a point where we have to actually consider repricing our products.鈥�

Apple, Inc.鈥檚 premium price point and long-term supply agreements give it some insulation. But UBS analyst David Vogt warned that 鈥渞isk does increase in the June and September quarters as production of the next gen of iPhones ramp, impacting cost and margin.鈥�

Estimates from Bloomberg Intelligence suggest PC prices could rise as much as 20%. Smartphones could experience a similar increase, IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo told me, with a disproportionate impact on lower-end models that stand to get both more expensive and less powerful. Chinese smartphone makers, the backbone of the budget Android market, are 鈥渟lashing their 2026 shipment targets by tens of millions of units,鈥� the South China Morning Post. Overall, IDC projected a decline in the global market for smartphones and PCs.

In addition, analysts at UBS have warned that auto production could be disrupted in the second quarter, with the price of memory chips used in cars doubling.

The obvious way out of the memory crunch is to make more of it. Efforts are well underway, but it will be a while before the additional capacity makes a difference. Micron, for instance, has used money from President Joe Biden鈥檚 Chips Act to build , though it won鈥檛 come online until 2027. The company鈥檚 promised in the US has a timeline best laid out in decades. Micron also signed a letter of intent to buy a chip fabrication site in Taiwan for $1.8 billion, expecting 鈥渕eaningful鈥� output in the second half of next year, Bloomberg . Counterpoint Research projected DRAM production will increase 24% in 2026 compared with output last year, well short of demand.

While we wait for all that, the market for secondhand tech is already booming. New York-based Computer Overhauls, a seller of secondhand computing products, said it was seeing unprecedented increases in value for DRAM, a component that often went overlooked when stripping old PCs for parts. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 even something we paid a whole lot of attention to because the value was relatively minimal,鈥� said Adam Sanderson, the store鈥檚 founder. 鈥淲e sold a 16 gig set for $160 today; a year or so ago it certainly wouldn鈥檛 have been anywhere near that.鈥�

Big Data Supply, Inc., a California-based recycler of old data center equipment, told me revenue for January is up 300%, driven largely by secondhand memory gaining new appeal. 鈥淲ith the amount of inbound inquiries, it feels like there is no end in near sight,鈥� said Brian Musil, the company鈥檚 CEO.

No end in near sight is the most often-repeated phrase from those watching the industry closely. Consumers would be wise to get ahead on any big tech purchases now before what seems certain to be sweeping price increases across the board. For the foreseeable future, the AI boom will turn on its head our expectation that technology gets both cheaper and more powerful as time goes on. The memory crunch is just one more way in which consumers are carrying some of the burden for AI giants鈥� rush to build out their ambitions.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

WHILE the world is rightly to the implications of China鈥檚 rising technological prowess, it鈥檚 time for a reality check. Reorientation toward an innovation-driven, security-focused growth model has not yet paid off, at least not economically.

of official data by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, offers a granular look at the current growth trajectory, revealing something alarming but not entirely surprising. The so-called 鈥渘ew quality productive forces鈥� 鈥� a term popularized by President Xi Jinping to describe high-tech industries such as electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robotics 鈥� aren鈥檛 pulling their weight. Their contribution to economic activity is dwarfed by traditional engines such as property and infrastructure investment, years after they collapsed.

Delving into data released by the National Bureau of Statistics in November that show how industries interact with each other and the larger economy, the researchers found that the drop in activity from older industries has been six times larger than the gains from the new forces from 2023 to 2025.

Specifically, the combined contribution of three legacy sectors 鈥� property, infrastructure, and internal-combustion cars 鈥� as a percentage of gross domestic product fell by six percentage points over that period.

At the same time, the increase in economic activity from six newfangled growth drivers was less than one percentage point.

This is a concerning trend, given China plans to the elevation of tech-driven growth through the passage of its next in March. The new strategy was never solely about prosperity. It was always equally about security: ensuring Beijing can in rivalry with the US.

Because standing up to President Donald Trump鈥檚 bullying trade tactics was almost entirely based on Beijing鈥檚 industrial muscle and dominance in rare earths, there is widespread acceptance of this development blueprint. However, that does little to diminish the pain from job insecurity and consumption malaise 鈥� prolonged by Big Tech鈥檚 inability to replace the once-mighty property sector.

The electric vehicle industry is a prime example. Two decades after policymakers decided to overtake Western car giants by betting on electrification, China is undisputably the world leader. Of the 24 million passenger vehicles sold in the country last year, were EVs. Because of a yearslong price war, most EVs than their gasoline counterparts. This is not the norm in other countries, where they鈥檙e generally .

According to Rhodium鈥檚 calculations, even though the EV industry expanded significantly over the past two years, the total economic output from gasoline vehicles was still 232 billion yuan ($33 billion) higher because they actually cost more. The automotive sector鈥檚 hyper-competitive and saturated nature is why the government has had to bring back a 鈥渃ash-for-clunkers鈥� trade-in program for cars and other consumer goods for the third year in a row.听 听

Billed as a consumer subsidy, in reality this scheme offers support to the industrial giants so important for the country鈥檚 future. But for many, especially EV makers like BYD Co., the key to higher prices, margins, and profits lies overseas. That鈥檚 why the European Union鈥檚听 to set up a mechanism for companies to offer voluntary limits on car shipments from China is such welcome news. Though it鈥檚 still early days, any deal to swap steep tariffs with minimum pricing commitments would be a boon for automakers.

Even though the contribution of the high-tech industries appears limited for now, it may not always be the case. The auto sector, for one, must still undergo a period of consolidation. In theory, the survivors should eventually be able to command premium prices and truly move up the value chain.

But until that process is repeated across the various industries, they may struggle to meet expectations for economic output. The solution is not for the Chinese leadership to backtrack but to make a solid commitment to increase consumption. At a minimum, they should be subsidizing a broader range of goods and services to woo hesitant shoppers. It will take time for China鈥檚 industrial giants to get to the point where they can truly propel growth. Policymakers should acknowledge that and give their long-suffering citizens a break.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

PROMINENT Republicans insist on treating President Donald Trump like a child or a clueless old man, telling Americans that he does not mean what he says 鈥� despite the commander in chief making quite clear he means exactly that.

Trump鈥檚 threat to use military force to seize Greenland from Denmark, a US ally via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a recent example. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a threat,鈥� Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama told The Bulwark. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a promise that we鈥檒l offer some money for it.鈥� Senator John Kennedy offered his own, colorful reimagining of the president鈥檚 saber rattling. 鈥淓ven a modestly intelligent ninth grader knows that to invade Greenland would be weapons-grade stupid. Now, President Trump is not weapons-grade stupid,鈥� the Louisiana Republican . Trump, Kennedy added, does 鈥渘ot plan to invade Greenland. That does not mean they鈥檙e not going to seek a legal, formal partnership with Greenland.鈥�

Trump鈥檚 subsequent comments on the matter? All options are on the table, including a military invasion. 鈥淲e are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,鈥� the president during a White House news conference last week. 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 do it the easy way we鈥檙e going to do it the hard way.鈥�

The phenomenon of redefining Trump鈥檚 rhetoric was somewhat understandable during his first presidency. He was new to elected office and still learning how the federal government operated. Although still somewhat infantilizing of a man who had reached high office, Republicans uncomfortable with the president鈥檚 rhetoric could theoretically make the case that Trump didn鈥檛 understand the implications of what he was saying, or of his policy proposals.

But as we head toward Year 2 of his second presidency, those excuses have worn thin. Trump has plenty of on-the-job experience and has demonstrated an understanding of executive power, so much so that he rejects most limits on it.

What gives? In my experience, it鈥檚 about political expediency. Republicans鈥� clumsy verbal cartwheels are obvious attempts to avoid publicly disagreeing with Trump while simultaneously attempting to avoid publicly agreeing with him.

It鈥檚 been more of the same regarding what鈥檚 next for Venezuela following an American military operation that led to the capture of dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife and their arrest by federal law enforcement. During a Jan. 3 , Trump, 79, said the US is 鈥済oing to run鈥� the South American nation 鈥渦ntil such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.鈥�

The president elaborated under questioning by reporters, suggesting his declaration was hardly flippant. 鈥淚t鈥檚 largely going to be, for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind me,鈥� Trump said, when asked who inside the US government would be running Venezuela.

Flanking Trump on stage: Air Force General Dan Cain, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others.

Yet the very next day, Rubio revised his boss鈥� remarks. 鈥淲hat we are running is the direction that this is going to move, going forward. And that is, we have leverage. This leverage we are using and we intend to use,鈥� the secretary said Jan. 4 in the ABC News public affairs program This Week. To be fair, Rubio鈥檚 argument wasn鈥檛 wholly inaccurate.

But: Want to guess what Trump said later that day when asked, during a gaggle with , if Washington was running the show in Caracas? 鈥淒on鈥檛 ask me who鈥檚 in charge because I鈥檒l give you an answer and it will be very controversial,鈥� Trump said. When asked what he meant, the president was blunt: 鈥淚t means we鈥檙e in charge. We鈥檙e in charge.鈥�

Naturally, Trump鈥檚 unequivocal comments didn鈥檛 discourage Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, from claiming the president鈥檚 rhetoric was equivocal. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 a matter of interpretation,鈥� the Idaho Republican told NOTUS,听 when asked what the commander in chief meant by repeatedly saying the US is 鈥渞unning鈥� Venezuela.

Shawn J. Parry-Giles, a University of Maryland professor who studies political communication and rhetoric, explained the ongoing dilemma posed by Trump and his penchant for provocative rhetoric and proposals.

鈥淗is messaging puts members of his party in difficult positions. They manage the rhetorical and political messiness by providing different interpretations that reshape the message into one they can support that appears more reasoned and grounded in legal [and] political principles,鈥� said Parry-Giles, director of the . 鈥淭his is also happening with members of his cabinet. They are trying to reshape his messages into something that would be more acceptable politically.鈥�

They鈥檙e hoping to 鈥渟end鈥� Trump 鈥渁 subtle message of how the president would better express his views,鈥� she added, while maintaining a sense of decorum that the commander in chief does not. 鈥淗e routinely flouts such decorous practices,鈥� Parry-Giles said.

All true and all understandable.

But after all this time, it should be crystal clear to Republicans 鈥� on Capitol Hill and everywhere else 鈥� that Trump knows what he鈥檚 saying and knows what he鈥檚 doing (or what he wants to do.) When he speaks and when he acts, it鈥檚 with deliberate intent. Congressional Republicans who oppose an American invasion of Greenland might want to ponder that rather than soothe themselves with fantasies that Trump鈥檚 tough talk is about 鈥渓everage.鈥�

BLOOMBERG OPINION

WE鈥橰E ONCE AGAIN approaching the annual resetting of the . Last January, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a group of very smart people, moved the hands of their metaphorical clock to 89 seconds to midnight, where midnight represents doomsday, apocalypse, Armageddon, extinction, or whatever you want to call it.

It鈥檚 89 seconds! That鈥檚 the closest to midnight the clock has ever stood. What will the board, looking back at 2025, say on Jan. 27, 2026?

You can dismiss this timepiece trope as a gimmick, but you鈥檇 do so at your own intellectual risk. The Bulletin and its clock started with Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and the other scientists who were genius enough to invent nuclear weapons and wise enough to regret their invention. To prod citizens and leaders into changing course, they came up with this metaphor of an existential countdown. At the outset, in 1947, they set the hands at 7 minutes to midnight.

It would take decades for the board to start factoring in climate change, biotechnology and pandemics, artificial intelligence and disinformation, and all the other dangers that today, underneath and beyond the headlines, menace our species in ways that we barely understand. The new and salient worry at the time was of course the use of fission to destroy entire cities (two were already in ashes), and potentially whole civilizations.

And so the clock began filtering world events, like a scientific fan that winnows substance from trivia. In 1949, after the Soviets joined the US as a nuclear power, the hands moved to 3 minutes. In 1953 they stood at 2, after tests of the first thermonuclear bomb (in which a Hiroshima-style fission blast is 鈥渕erely鈥� the trigger for a vastly larger fusion burst, in effect a sun burning on earth).

Humanity seemed to keep hurtling toward midnight, with more countries getting nukes, and even more pursuing them. In 1962, the world came close to atomic holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That gaze into the abyss, though, had a positive effect: It stirred world leaders into action. During the 1960s, the Partial Test Ban Treaty ended most nuclear testing above ground. Almost all countries adopted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which nations without nukes pledged never to make them, and the five 鈥渓egitimate鈥� nuclear powers promised to start disarming. In the early 1970s, the US and the Soviet Union inked the first bilateral treaties to limit their two-way arms race. Between 1963 and 1972, the clock鈥檚 hands moved between 12 and 10 minutes to midnight 鈥� not great, but better.

But world affairs went in the wrong direction again. India got the bomb, and Pakistan would later follow suit. The two superpowers, far from disarming as the NPT obliged them to do, kept upgrading their arsenals, with demonic innovations such as MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles). Detente gave way to confrontation, and by 1984, the clock stood at 3 minutes.

Then the Cold War began thawing. In 1988, the clock went back to 6 minutes, after the US and the Soviet Union signed the first treaty ever to ban an entire category of nuclear weapons (those mounted on intermediate-range missiles). In 1990, it hit 10 minutes, after the Berlin Wall crumbled, and with it the Iron Curtain.

In 1991, the clock touched 17 minutes, the farthest from midnight it has ever been. Intellectuals celebrated the 鈥溾�� and the apparent dawn of pacific and liberal democracy for all humanity. At long last, the superpowers junked thousands of their nukes, as they had implicitly promised in the NPT. And they stopped all explosive testing of nukes, even underground.

The era of good feelings didn鈥檛 last long, though. By the late 1990s, both India and Pakistan tested fission bombs. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, caused anxiety that 鈥渓oose nukes鈥� might fall into the hands of non-state actors with nothing to lose. North Korea tested its first warhead, becoming the ninth nuclear power.

And climate change joined the board鈥檚, and world鈥檚, worry list. It threatens catastrophe first gradually, then suddenly: by damaging ecosystems; causing floods, storms and droughts (and thus famines); and seeding , as species come into contact with new organisms and the thawing permafrost burps out pathogens frozen for millennia. By 2007, the clock was at 5 minutes to midnight; in 2015 at 3.

In 2020, during the first administration of Donald Trump and a pandemic, the board switched to quoting the time in seconds: 100 to midnight. It identified yet another threat in the form of 鈥渃yber-enabled information warfare.鈥� Memes, disinformation and conspiracy theories now spread like viruses, confusing, distracting and polarizing societies and making them 鈥渦nable to respond鈥� to the existential challenges posed by nukes and the climate.

In 2023, the clock moved to 90 seconds to midnight, after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and broke the ultimate taboo of the nuclear age by threatening to use nukes.

And this year, it ticked forward another second. Trump was not the reason 鈥� he had been inaugurated only a week before . It was instead the urgency of all the existing threats, and the specter of hidden feedback loops and possible 鈥渃ascades鈥� associated with our emerging 鈥�.鈥�

And now, one year on? It seems to me that every threat the Bulletin described in 2025 has gotten more dire.

Nuclear risk, which was relatively easy to comprehend during the Cold War, . The last arms-control treaty between the US and Russia expires in February, and both countries are 鈥渕odernizing鈥� their arsenals, with new warheads, bombers, missiles and submarines.

China is adding to its stockpile to catch up with the big two. North Korea is arming; Pakistan and India are always close to fighting, and sometimes at it. Worse yet, artificial intelligence threatens to make many kinds of weapons 鈥渁utonomous鈥� and shrink decision times in a nuclear crisis to minutes 鈥� the insanity of the resulting psychological stresses has even .

Trump has probably made one part of the problem better, if only temporarily: He bombed Iran鈥檚 nuclear facilities, setting back its efforts to build a bomb. But he has also increased the risk of general proliferation (and of the NPT鈥檚 ), by disdaining America鈥檚 traditional allies and making them doubt the US 鈥渘uclear umbrella鈥� that allegedly protects them. From Europe to Asia and the Middle East, more countries are now considering going nuclear, just as are advising them.

Trump also appears another nuclear taboo, the moratorium on explosive testing. If the US were to detonate nukes again, China, Russia and other countries would follow suit. And all major nuclear powers are designing new, more maneuverable and faster missiles to deliver death on earth, while looking to outer space as the next domain of warfare.

Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing and the weather is getting more destructive. And yet America, the world largest emitter and the second largest (after China) , has officially lost interest.

As the new National Security Strategy , 鈥淲e reject the disastrous 鈥榗limate change鈥� and 鈥楴et Zero鈥� ideologies.鈥� The Trump administration boycotted the 30^th climate conference of the United Nations in 2025 and will formally exit the Paris Agreement, a treaty to control global warming, on Jan. 27, 2026 鈥� the very day when the Doomsday Clock will be reset.

Also in January, the US will formally quit the World Health Organization, whose role is in part to look out for, and save us from the next pandemic. At home, Trump has put antivaxxers and quacks in charge of public health. That segues to the other threat the Bulletin worried about last time: misinformation and disinformation. They are 鈥減otent threat multipliers,鈥� John Mecklin, the editor, , because they 鈥渂lur the line between truth and falsehood.鈥�

Since he said that, the blurring seems to have made us all but blind. The board will make its own decision about the clock. If you ask me, it feels like one minute to midnight 鈥� or less.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

MOST of the world knows how to respond to the US鈥� new . As my colleague Marc Champion has , Russia loves it. Liberal Europeans are dismayed, and the Gulf monarchies overjoyed.

In the rest of Asia 鈥� and what, until now, Washington has called the Indo-Pacific 鈥� the dominant emotion is uneasiness. There are words, phrases, and entire sections in the document that are exactly what we want to hear. But the underlying worldview is at odds with its rhetoric.

The strategy promises that the US will build a military capable of deterrence in the First Island Chain and the Taiwan Strait, and an insistence that the South China Sea cannot be controlled by any one actor. There is a promise to defend 鈥済lobal and regional balances of power,鈥� and to fight 鈥減redatory鈥� economic practices.

The Indo-Pacific shares all these priorities, and many are relieved that the second Trump administration has taken the trouble to restate them. And yet there鈥檚 disquiet, because some of these commitments look like they have been grafted on to a strategy that could push American policy in a fundamentally different direction.

This is a startlingly document even by the standards of today鈥檚 Washington. It extends MAGA domestic obsessions 鈥� the border, DEI, climate denialism 鈥� beyond America鈥檚 shores. US soft power is listed as one of its greatest assets, without the recognition that illiberalism and xenophobia erode its value daily.

But MAGA鈥檚 most dangerous export, as far as the security of the Indo-Pacific is concerned, is its distaste for the liberal order.

America might not always have lived up to its ideals, but since the Second World War, it has defined its role in the world around promoting them 鈥� defending the practice of liberal democracy and evangelizing the benefits of global norms. They include shared prosperity, for both Americans and the citizens of partner nations.

It is here that the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) makes its most impactful break with the past. The security and stability of the Indo-Pacific may remain a stated priority, but not because freedom and openness will enrich the region and keep it loyal to the rules-based order that benefits Americans more than anyone else. Instead, a much narrower and more fragile link is being drawn, between deterring China and Trump-era economic priorities: Big Tech profits, the securing of global resources, and a 鈥渞ebalanced鈥� global economy that forces production back onshore.

This link could snap at any time 鈥� particularly if Trump is deceived into thinking that cooperation with Xi Jinping won鈥檛 cost the US in the short run, while confronting Beijing鈥檚 designs in Asia might. He鈥檚 certainly being tempted down that path: Nvidia Corp. being granted permission to sell high-end chips to China is . Trump has said it鈥檚 鈥済ood business,鈥� as long as the federal government . A short-term revenue boost is sufficient to risk America鈥檚 tech leadership, apparently. How can we take the solemn pronouncements in the NSS seriously?

The president鈥檚 mercantilist instincts are well-known. This piece of paper reminds us that he also believes in another throwback theory, that of . The strategy states that 鈥渢he outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.鈥�

A revanchist Russia won鈥檛 be the only beneficiary of this belief. China is larger, richer, and stronger than anyone else in its region; why not permit it a sphere of influence in Asia, if it gives Trump an economic deal 鈥渂etter鈥� than his predecessors could extract? Beijing might break that promise later, but by then it will be some other administration鈥檚 problem.

Over the past few decades, a bipartisan consensus had developed in Washington that China was a systemic rival, and not just another economic challenger. But those running policy in the second Trump term are arguing from different premises. It鈥檚 centered on domestic economic considerations and not to preserve the world order. They do not fear the loss of global leadership; they might even welcome the dissolution of current economic arrangements. All they want is to contain the economic shocks accompanying China鈥檚 rise.

Written into the silences in this document is an unpalatable truth: An establishment in Washington that large companies, that conscripts tech into politics, that guards its domestic markets and weaponizes its trade will hardly see the Chinese system as an ideological threat.

This is what unnerves Asian capitals. One day soon, MAGA鈥檚 ideologues and populists may decide that granting Beijing overlordship of Asia will not affect jobs or profits in the US. From that day on, they will not lift a finger in defense of the Indo-Pacific.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

CHINA seems to find solutions to the world鈥檚 thorniest economic problems. Its exports juggernaut is despite President Donald Trump鈥檚 tariffs. The domestic AI industry is booming without Nvidia Corp.鈥檚 high-end chips.

But once in a while, a dormant zombie comes back to haunt it, serving as a reminder to global investors that the government hasn鈥檛 dealt with its most pressing economic issues even as the stock market rallies.

Shenzhen-based China Vanke Co., one of the nation鈥檚 biggest developers, is this zombie. Shenzhen Metro Group Co., a state-owned enterprise that is its largest shareholder with a 27% stake, seems to have had a change of heart lately on how much financial support it鈥檚 willing to give.

The urban rail operator, owned by the city government, is asking Vanke to worth 20.4 billion yuan ($2.9 billion). It鈥檚 also setting a cap on the loan facilities it will provide.

This came as a shock. Throughout the year, Shenzhen Metro has been seen as the entity the city government will use to rescue Vanke. As of Oct. 30, roughly , in what investors perceive as the most concrete sign of an informal bailout.

The burning question now is who will be responsible for Vanke鈥檚 bills. The company needs to repay 5.7 billion yuan of public bonds in December, and another 7.7 billion yuan in the first half of 2026. As of June, the developer鈥檚 cash pile was only able to cover 44% of its short-term debt, the lowest since data became available in 1992.

It鈥檚 understandable why Shenzhen Metro is balking. Vanke is growing into an ever-expanding black hole. Contracted sales are at risk of falling by 40% this year, creating a cash shortfall north of 100 billion yuan, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Without the Shenzhen government鈥檚 support, Vanke may not be able to survive, and its bondholders could be staring at debt restructuring 鈥� or even worse, default.

Five years into a property downturn, Beijing has been using partial, unofficial bailouts to diffuse potential financial crisis caused by developer blowups. Shenzhen Metro, for instance, is widely seen as the lender of last resort to Vanke, even though its stake could classify the SOE as a passive investor.

Until recently, this half-baked effort has worked reasonably well. The pace of corporate delinquencies has slowed. Meanwhile, the biggest developers that defaulted have largely , as creditors accept more onerous terms.

Beijing, in turn, is more than happy to declare mission accomplished. In recent policy meetings, the property recovery was put on the back burner, while technology and innovation took the center stage. Unlike last year, the government no longer pledges to 鈥�.鈥�

But this big headache won鈥檛 go away on its own. New-home sales , falling 42% from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In other words, Vanke is the norm, not an exception.

Meanwhile, the latest kerfuffle is reigniting a debate over how Beijing plans to diffuse the developer time bomb. Some believe there鈥檚 no too-big-to-fail in China, and that the likes of Vanke will eventually ask to extend their borrowings or spiral into a default. Others have more political stability in mind. In their view, the government doesn鈥檛 want to rock the boat any further and will find another SOE to come in as a liquidity provider.

Either way, Shenzhen鈥檚 reluctance to give unconditional love to Vanke shows that China鈥檚 real estate woes are deepening. Beijing can鈥檛 just turn the page yet.

BLOOMBERG OPINION听

AS THE WORLD (including the self-styled peacemaker-in-chief in the White House) holds its breath for the announcement of this year鈥檚 Nobel Peace Prize, spare a moment to ponder the growing risk of war, including world war.

Even a cursory scan of today鈥檚 major military powers suggests that both their leaders and policy elites are dangerously overconfident, and could 鈥� as in 1914, say 鈥� into disaster out of what international-relations scholars call .

If you鈥檙e not worried yet, consider a study, the largest and most international of its kind, that comes to exactly this conclusion. Jeffrey Friedman at Dartmouth College the findings of surveys he鈥檚 been giving (between roughly 2016 and 2022) to about 2,000 national-security officials from more than 40 Western countries 鈥� men and women, North Americans and Europeans, civilians and service members.

Friedman鈥檚 questions took the form of statements to which the officials had to attach probabilities. A few samples: The United States is the only country in the world that has stealth aircraft. (The correct answer is no.) There are more active-duty military personnel in the European Union than in Russia (yes). Jihadi terrorists in the preceding years killed more people in France than in the US (yes). There are more refugees from Syria than from Venezuela (at the time, yes).

Starting in 2020, Friedman told me, he started asking every question in two versions. For example, half of the participants received this variant: 鈥淲hat are the chances that Boko Haram has killed more civilians than ISIS since 2010?鈥� The other half got: 鈥淲hat are the chances that ISIS has killed more civilians than Boko Haram since 2010?鈥�

As you鈥檝e guessed, Friedman wasn鈥檛 after quizzing the officials鈥� knowledge, but after gauging what I think of as their 鈥溾�� (or its absence, hubris). And the data were clear: Participants were wildly overconfident.

When participants estimated that statements had a 90% chance of being true, those statements were true just 58% of the time 鈥� basically, a coin flip. Even when participants felt completely certain 鈥� assigning a zero or 100% chance 鈥� they were wrong more than 25% of the time. There was no difference between men and women, Americans and Europeans, brass and civilians.

Moreover, the participants weren鈥檛 just wrong randomly, but prone to false positives in particular 鈥� that was the point of flipping the questions. You鈥檇 think that if you ask a large number of rational experts to assign probabilities to either ISIS or Boko Haram being more lethal than the other, the averages should sum to 100%. But they consistently (for 244 of the 280 questions in the experiment) added up to much more.

In other contexts, such bias toward false positives that people are more likely, say, to send an innocent person to prison than to set a guilty person free.

In international relations it helps explain, for example, why advisers in the White House in 2002 felt certain that Saddam Hussein was trying to build nuclear weapons (when he wasn鈥檛) and were confident that they could not only topple his regime but also stabilize and democratize Iraq quickly (when they couldn鈥檛).

In venturing hypotheses for this perilous cognitive asymmetry, Friedman points to the work of psychologists such as the late Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the world champions of exposing cognitive biases. One is the , our human tendency to exaggerate the probability of whatever comes readily to mind, and to brush aside other possibilities.

In 2002, for example, it was much easier to imagine that Saddam was importing aluminum tubes to build centrifuges for enriching uranium than to consider that he just wanted the metal to make conventional rockets (which turned out to be the case) or something else entirely.

Another trap is the so-called , our tendency to say yes before even considering the content of a proposition. This gets worse by multiples when you add groupthink, peer pressure, or outright fear. That鈥檚 why authoritarian regimes tend to err more disastrously than open societies do. Think of Vladimir Putin鈥檚 invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which his counsellors and would take a matter of days.

The bad news that follows from Friedman鈥檚 research is twofold. First, memories of the last world war have faded, and the current generation of leaders and experts 鈥� from China and Russia to the US and elsewhere 鈥� is showing signs of waning humility and growing hubris, similar to European leaders in the summer of 1914.

Second, the mightiest military power on the planet, the United States, is moving away from a culture of open and objective analysis and toward groupthink and based on loyalty tests to the leader 鈥� what one might call .

There鈥檚 also good news, though. Friedman discovered in his surveys that you can dramatically boost humility and improve results by giving officials just two minutes of training, in effect priming them to be aware of their biases.

The stakes in international relations are often war and peace, life and death. Consider some of the questions that the White House currently has to grapple with. Did the US Iran鈥檚 nuclear program, or merely set it back for a while? Is Russia waging against European NATO countries only to harass the alliance, or to test its vulnerabilities for a full-bore attack? Does North Korea have plans to attack the South, or China to seize Taiwan? If it comes to war, who would be more likely to win?

Here are my suggested lessons from Friedman鈥檚 research to leaders of all countries: First, value expertise and recognize that its job is to tell truth to power, not to flatter you. Second, don鈥檛 allow advisers to present single scenarios, but insist on alternative hypotheses 鈥� then flip them, so that positives become negatives.

Above all, don鈥檛 reward confidence (and certainly not showmanship) among your officials, but humility. And always, always, always stay humble yourself.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

TO SOOTHE the ruffled feathers of a long-time ally, the Trump administration should waste no time working with Seoul to create a new visa category for skilled workers. That would get the $7.6-billion South Korean-owned manufacturing plant in Georgia that was up and running again, restoring a modicum of trust between the two countries.

Asian companies have committed, at least on paper, to hundreds of billions of dollars in . Despite concerns about a potential backlash, they鈥檝e so far remained calm and focused, no matter what Washington has thrown at them 鈥� even humiliating images of their countrymen paraded in chains. From Seoul to Taipei to Tokyo, pragmatism by CEOs and political leaders has been the order of the day. The US remains an irreplaceable market.

For Hyundai Motor Co. and LG Energy Solution Ltd. 鈥� 50-50 joint venture partners in the EV battery plant 鈥� expanding in the US is a no brainer. In July, Hyundai posted a of earnings, buoyed by strong sales of EVs and hybrid cars in North America. Last year, the Korean carmaker and its affiliate Kia were together the fourth-biggest-selling group in the US, with 1.7 million deliveries, according to Motor Intelligence.

In March, Hyundai announced of $21 billion in the US over the next three years to expand production capacity. The factories would help it avoid President Donald Trump鈥檚 tariffs on vehicles and steel. Indirectly, they also give Hyundai an edge over rivals like Ford Motor Co. some of their cars from Mexico.

For LG Energy, the rationale for staying is . The battery maker, which powers EVs and storage systems like Tesla鈥檚 Megapacks, is building or running seven plants in the US and one in Canada. Each costs $4 billion to $5 billion. Despite in the clean-power industry, its North America President Bob Lee says he鈥檚 still in the long run.

But it鈥檚 clear something has to change. South Korean firms have to sending skilled workers to the US on improper temporary visas to help build complex manufacturing plants. Now that the workaround is no longer tolerated, a more permanent solution in the form of short-term permits needs to be found, similar to what the US offers citizens of and .

It鈥檚 worth noting that, for both Hyundai and LG Energy, part of the reason for their success in America is the absence of meaningful competition from Chinese rivals. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., the world鈥檚 largest battery maker, dwarfs LG Energy globally, but regulatory hurdles in the US effectively preclude it doing much business there. As for Hyundai, once a contender in the world鈥檚 largest auto market, its sales languished in 33^rd place last year, a victim of intense competition. Chinese cars, too, face barriers to entry in the US.

China used to be a bread-and-butter market for Seoul鈥檚 top companies. But as its own homegrown champions, from batteries to cellphones, have risen, South Korean firms have sought refuge elsewhere. Against this background, it鈥檚 no surprise that President Lee Jae Myung鈥檚 government has been so measured.

Instead of blasting the US about the ICE raid, which caused a loss of face for the young Seoul administration, the foreign ministry called the situation 鈥渞egrettable鈥� and requested the quick return of the detainees. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday in Washington.

It鈥檚 not the first time an Asian leader has had to tap dance after a White House surprise.

In March, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te was also forced to do damage control after an unexpected announcement by the Trump administration that chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) 鈥� the world鈥檚 largest 鈥� was investing $100 billion in the US. Lai appeared next to the firm鈥檚 Chief Executive Officer C.C. Wei in Taipei trying to reassure the public.

Their concern? That TSMC鈥檚 outlay would undermine its commitment to Taiwan. Opposition politician and former President Ma Ying-jeou wasted no time calling the landmark venture a 鈥減rotection fee,鈥� an idea that seemed to be by the public.

However, Lai鈥檚 government hasn鈥檛 faced any lasting criticism. Compared to South Korea, a larger market with a more sizeable group of corporates, Taiwan confers a great deal of importance on TSMC: Its success is perceived to offer protection from a possible invasion by China.

Like Seoul, there鈥檚 a feeling in Taipei and other global capitals that there are good reasons for behaving like it鈥檚 business as usual, no matter what the Trump administration does 鈥� their version of 鈥淜eep Calm and Carry On.鈥�

BLOOMBERG OPINION

鈥溾�� finally has his trade deal, after three months of talks. It looks like it will be his final act.

After a third successive blow from the Japanese electorate, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in trade talks with the US. He spent months seeking a complete removal of the levies that President Donald Trump held over the country, including those already imposed on cars.

鈥淲e will never accept tariffs, especially on autos,鈥� Ishiba in May, declaring the issue his red line. With long the main source of Trump鈥檚 ire 鈥� perhaps understandably, given that they for more than three-quarters of the trade deficit 鈥� getting the president to back down was always going to be a tough ask, especially considering Japan鈥檚 lack of leverage.

But after Sunday鈥檚 in the upper house election, which has left the prime minister with a minority in both houses of parliament and arguably the worst electoral record of any Liberal Democratic Party leader in history, Ishiba has seemingly accepted his fate. That鈥檚 why he agreed to the deal that will include 15% tariffs across the board, including on cars.

With this last piece of business concluded, indicates that less than a year into his term, Ishiba will soon announce his resignation. (The prime minister has subsequently the reports, which were made by multiple independent outlets.)

Trade envoy and close aide Ryosei Akazawa a positive picture. It was 鈥渕ission completed鈥� in the tariff talks, he cheerfully said in a post on X, pointing to a picture hung in the White House of Ishiba and Trump speaking at the Group of Seven meeting in Canada. He also denied any link between the agreement and the election results.

Certainly markets were pleased, with automakers surging after being freed from months of uncertainty. Toyota Motor Corp. rose by the most in nearly 40 years; the Topix headed for an all-time high.

And perhaps it鈥檚 as good a deal as Japan could expect. As with all these agreements, the devil is in the details: It still puts a 15% levy across the board on imports. While that鈥檚 less than the 25% 鈥渞eciprocal鈥� tariff that was threatened, and, most importantly, less than the 25% already imposed on auto imports in May, it鈥檒l still be damaging for exporters. There鈥檚 an odd promise of $550 billion in investment in the US, and a more logical agreement for Japan to buy more US rice. The part about Japan opening 鈥渢o trade including cars and trucks鈥� is confusing, given that there are no barriers currently in place. But perhaps Ishiba has done what he should have in the beginning, and simply told Trump what he wants to hear 鈥� knowing it won鈥檛, indeed can鈥檛, be delivered.

But the agreement also removes the last piece of leverage the prime minister had left 鈥� the 鈥溾�� he said must be prioritized ahead of infighting. That鈥檚 been enough to keep the target off his back, until now. But after Sunday鈥檚 results, it鈥檚 clear he can鈥檛 be allowed to do any more harm.

In just 10 months, his weak leadership has resulted in an unstable political landscape that threatens to damage Japan for years. Conservative voters have deserted the LDP in droves 鈥� and headed to some disturbingly places. The landscape is so fractured that there also isn鈥檛 a viable opposition to take over, meaning the forecast is for parliamentary gridlock.

That鈥檚 why the LDP needs to win voters back. With the trade deal about to be done, Ishiba should leave as soon as possible. Many conservatives are eyeing the anniversary of the end of World War II next month, fearing he will further alienate right-leaning voters by the groundbreaking statement by the late Shinzo Abe on the 70^th anniversary a decade ago.*

It鈥檚 not Ishiba鈥檚 fault that relations with the US have been so tarnished. That blame lies with Trump. And by removing the uncertainty around tariffs, he will finally have done some good for the country.

But he will leave Japan in a weaker position than when he took office 鈥� and in search of direction once again.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

*Abe affirmed past apologies for the country鈥檚 wartime conduct while offering a more forward-looking vision of relations with its Asian neighbors.

I SHOULDN鈥橳 be so chagrined that Manny Pacquiao is re-entering a Las Vegas boxing ring this weekend for a professional fight at the age of 46. After all, I recently wrote . I鈥檝e admired Pacquiao for years and trailed him around New York City for . He was the most recognizable Filipino on earth at the time, a distinction that everyone from the islands 鈥� where I was born 鈥� was proud.

And there was so much to be proud of. Born into extreme poverty on the island of Mindanao, he was 鈥� at the height of his career 鈥� a whirlwind of prowess and prosperity, with the relentless voracity of the videogame that became his nickname: Pac-Man. One estimate has his net worth at more than $200 million, out of earnings from the sport and endorsements as high as half-a-billion dollars. His 2015 battle with nemesis Floyd Mayweather, Jr. still holds the record for most pay-per-view sales: 4.6 million. He is literally pound-for-pound the greatest pugilist of our time: the only boxer in history to hold championships in eight different weight classes. When I reported on him in 2009, he鈥檇 already won six and was preparing to win his seventh 鈥� in the welterweight division. That was 40 pounds (640 ounces, or 18.1 kilograms) heavier than the 107-pound flyweight class he began his career with 11 years before. He claimed the eighth 鈥� the super welterweight, which has a top limit of 154 pounds 鈥� in 2019 when he was 40 years old.

So why should I be vexed by his return to the ring at 46?

It鈥檚 not really about age. In 1994, a 45-year-old George Foreman retook the heavyweight championship 鈥� which he first won in 1973 鈥� by defeating 26-year-old Michael Moorer. Pacquiao 鈥� who had retired at the end of 2021 鈥攚ill be facing Mexican-American Mario Barrios, who is 30, for a fresh chance at the welterweight crown. If he wins, he鈥檒l be the oldest ever to hold it. And if he does, will he then aim for the overall boxing record set by Bernard Hopkins, Jr., who won a heavyweight title at the age of 49? As a sexagenarian, I鈥檓 all for aging underdogs getting the upper hand.

I鈥檓 wary because there鈥檚 more than a hint of desperation about this 鈥� the kind of emotion that shouldn鈥檛 cling to such an illustrious career. From 2010 to earlier this year, Pacquiao was also one of the most famous politicians in the Philippines, serving as congressman and then senator. He even ran for president in 2022. He鈥檇 been drawn to politics long before then: It was practically a traditional career move for the nation鈥檚 successful actors, singers, athletes, and businesspeople. He won a lot of votes, but he wasn鈥檛 particularly good at politics, swinging from one alliance to another without any real benefit, pounded by critics from all sides for his unfamiliarity with bureaucracy and backroom machinations, committing avoidable gaffe after gaffe. His celebrity and active boxing career for much of this period also made him an absentee legislator 鈥� a record that probably doomed his run for the presidency and certainly his shot for a second senate term in May of this year. A few days after that last campaign, he announced he was coming out of retirement to fight Barrios.

Since then, there鈥檚 been enough melodrama to qualify for a Rocky sequel. As he prepared for the Barrios bout, . That stunned Pacquiao, who slugged his way from destitution to riches to be able to send his kids to the best schools. He didn鈥檛 want to see them struggle the way he did. At first, Jimuel鈥檚 debut fight was going to be a warmup to his father鈥檚 match. But Pacquiao last week said he didn鈥檛 want the distraction of seeing his eldest son duke it out before he himself stepped into the ring, postponing his kid鈥檚 bout until .

Meanwhile, Freddy Roach 鈥� the trainer whose acumen helped establish Pacquiao鈥檚 long reign as a lord of the ring 鈥� has rejoined the boxer. There鈥檇 been a couple of years of estrangement after he was summarily dismissed in the wake of a 2018 defeat. The relationship is particularly poignant. In 2010, Pacquiao鈥檚 opponent Antonio Margarito mocked Roach, who has Parkinson鈥檚 disease. The punishment the Filipino meted out in revenge is legendary. Margarito lost practically every round and was hospitalized afterward for facial surgery. In 2013, Brandon Rios also made fun of Roach; Pacquiao sent him packing after a unanimous decision.

Ironically, Roach has always been cautious about Pacquiao鈥檚 fights. Even in 2009, he was saying the boxer only had two or three more fights left in him. He went on to battle 17 more times. But age was already catching up with Pacquiao. Mayweather may have won his epic match against Pacquiao by playing hard-to-get; by the time they eventually touched gloves, both men were past their primes, but Pacquiao was more past than Mayweather. He lost by unanimous decision. The Filipino seemed even less agile in 2021 when he lost to Yordenis Ugas, the defeat that prompted his retirement.

The likelihood is that Pacquiao 鈥� win or lose 鈥� will take home about $5 million from this match.* That鈥檚 chump change to the boxing legend. Pacquiao told Roach it鈥檚 about history, not money. 鈥溾�業 just have one more time in me,鈥欌�� . 鈥溾�業 just want to show the world that I was for real and I am for real.鈥欌��

Everyone knows that, Manny. I鈥檒l be rooting for you come Saturday in Vegas. But how much history can one person make before becoming history in the wrong way?

BLOOMBERG OPINION

*Barrios鈥� take home is probably much smaller 鈥� $1 million or so 鈥� because Pacquiao is the draw.

So went President Donald Trump鈥檚 sign-off in his letters issued to 14 trading partners on Monday. But in Tokyo, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will be more than disappointed. He鈥檚 entitled to be furious.

Japan was among the first countries to begin talks after April鈥檚 鈥淟iberation Day鈥� tariff announcement. It has spent months in negotiations, with Ishiba鈥檚 envoy making seven trips to the US for talks with Trump and other officials. The nation has been the largest investor in the US for the past five years and is a crucial security ally. All that only to end up with a tariff rate one percentage point higher than first three months ago.

To add insult to injury, Japan was lumped in with that are far less vital partners, including Kazakhstan and Myanmar. While the threatened rates to be enacted on Aug. 1 were different between countries, the copy-and-paste wording sent to the respective leaders was virtually identical, including telling Tokyo to open its 鈥渉eretofore closed trading markets鈥� 鈥� .

The warning signs were there after Trump erupted last week. Overnight, it seemed, Japan went from being respected, or 鈥�,鈥� in Trump parlance, to being 鈥�.鈥� And while 鈥淢r. Japan,鈥� as Trump seemingly Ishiba, may not have ended up with the 35% tariffs once threatened, months of talks have only led to further threats.

In Seoul, recently elected President Lee Jae Myung might be feeling hard done by, too. His country is moving to US concerns over non-tariff barriers, but has been hampered by the political turmoil prior to Lee鈥檚 election. Japan might have thought it was getting the first-mover Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised to countries that came to the negotiating table fast. Instead, an identical rate has been levied on both countries.

Markets in Tokyo and Seoul barely skipped a beat, buying into the as it quickly became clear that the letter was, in effect, an extension of the July 9 deadline. Trump鈥檚 further suggestions that the deadline wasn鈥檛 鈥�100% firm鈥� make this clearly the latest in his Art of the Deal brinkmanship to wring out more concessions.

And in Japan鈥檚 case, Trump鈥檚 25% 鈥� the elimination of which is Ishiba鈥檚 primary goal 鈥� are already in effect. That鈥檚 why the longest-lasting impact of Monday鈥檚 announcement will be to further chip away at trust between Washington鈥檚 most vital partner in staring down China.

The prime minister has stood surprisingly firm in the talks, while making good-faith efforts to engage with the US. But might his engagement have been too earnest?

Flattery and a bit of exaggeration may have been the better way to go, perhaps taking a page out of SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son鈥檚 in dealing with the president. This might help sidestep Tokyo鈥檚 biggest problem: The difficulty in understanding what Trump actually wants. Local media have already how officials have been baffled by the open disagreements between the US negotiators. A vague hand wave 鈥� promises to place a Ford F-150 in every Japanese garage, or whatever Trump wants to hear 鈥� might be a better way to buy time.

Trump is clearly pulling out the seat at the negotiating table. But Ishiba already has his hands full with crucial Upper House on July 20, where he can鈥檛 be seen to be giving concessions or selling rice farmers down the river. Still, the latest move could even be advantageous to him; after all, no one likes a bully. Meanwhile, any expectations that the Bank of Japan will hike rates later this month 鈥� at a meeting scheduled the day before the tariffs come into effect 鈥� should prepare for disappointment.

The longer-term consequences are harder to read. It鈥檚 possible, even likely, that Trump will have another of his trademark changes of heart, and suddenly Japan, South Korea, and the other trading partners will be US friends again. Constantly kicking the can down the road indicates he doesn鈥檛 really want to follow through with his threats.

But such incessant bluster chips away at goodwill built up between the partners over decades. And that鈥檚 something that can鈥檛 simply be copied and pasted. — Bloomberg Opinion

By Howard Chua-Eoan

I FIND MYSELF unhappily on trend. Young people everywhere are increasingly 鈥渙n the wagon鈥� 鈥� to use the from the 1920s, when the 18^th Amendment to the US Constitution banned the production and sale of alcohol. The wagon in the expression was a public-service vehicle loaded with water to tamp down dust and grime on city streets; by extension, it described the clean and sober law-abiding citizens of America. According to some estimates, 39% of Gen Z say they have foresworn alcoholic drinks; about half of them imbibe such beverages only occasionally. Many have taken to non-alcoholic alternatives.

I didn鈥檛 set out to join that youthful bandwagon. Nevertheless, I have been alcohol-free since Jan. 20, 2025. Those of you who recognize that date as US Inauguration Day must get the coincidence out of your head. It just happened to be when I felt I鈥檇 had too much wine over the previous three months. Alas, my doctors agreed with me 鈥� because of decades of loving wine and champagne, not just those recent three months. And so, I鈥檝e spent nearly 140 days looking at how to enjoy the brave new world of NA (non-alcoholic) 鈥� a market that鈥檚 gotten a huge boost in sales and creativity precisely because of Gen Z, a cohort that probably makes up 25% of the world鈥檚 population. I am a late Boomer, but now I鈥檓 medically required to be young at heart.

The NA market can be too sprawlingly defined, including everything from bottled water and high-fructose sodas to electrolyte-infused liquids to NA wines and beer. I鈥檓 going to look at beverages that someone who likes to sip good vintages would gravitate to, intriguing in their own right or complementary, even transformative, with food. I was in Copenhagen recently where I attended Noma Chef Ren茅 Redzepi鈥檚 revived MAD symposium on the future of restaurants¹. These kinds of events are usually chock-full of discriminating chefs and sommeliers intent on sampling novel or rare wines and spirits. Would I find alcohol-free stuff to quaff to help me avoid all those temptations?

I will admit to staring longingly at the wonderful vintages poured out in Copenhagen. I love wine, perhaps . But there was no shortage of NA wine. Indeed, Denmark is home to Muri, a pioneer in the blending of different fermented juices to create an alternative to wine. Other NA wine purveyors use physical means (often with low heat) to remove alcohol. That usually results in a thin impersonation of wine, with much of the mouthfeel and vibrancy extracted along with the ethanol (which is the predominant form of alcohol produced by the yeast in winemaking). Muri鈥檚 process stops short of producing alcohol and utilizes several fruits fermented separately and then blended to create distinct potables.

But as tasty as Muri can be (and its beverages are delicious), let me declare now that all the non-alcoholic wines I have sampled don鈥檛 come close to the vivacity of even middling good wine. There are excellent NA sparklings 鈥� L鈥橝ntidote and L鈥橝ntilope by Domaine de Grottes in France鈥檚 Beaujolais region 鈥� but even these are soda pop compared to champagne or even the new generation of English bubblies. Good wine is a liquid time capsule 鈥� a memento of earth, grape, water, the seasons and human touch. It moves beyond taste. I may no longer drink a good Savagnin from the Jura, but I can still appreciate its aroma.

Nevertheless, the thrill of having something that looks and 鈥� at first blush 鈥� feels like wine is enough to fool the brain into producing dopamine. A guilty elation takes over, and you think, 鈥淭hey鈥檝e made a mistake. They鈥檝e poured me real wine.鈥� Soon enough, you realize it鈥檚 an impostor in your glass. You aren鈥檛 going to be fooled by the second 鈥� if you decide to have it.

The NA beers I tasted in Copenhagen were more 鈥渉oppy鈥� or overly flavored with things like elderflower to disguise the absence of malted barley. That said, many non-alcoholic brews I鈥檝e tried here in London are more successful in impersonating their originals. Guinness 0.0% is 99.9% identical in taste to its model (it has a flatter effect as it approaches room temperature). And Estrella Damm has tweaked the vacuum distillation method 鈥� the same one many NA winemakers use to remove alcohol 鈥� to reintroduce lost flavors. Its FreeDamm is remarkably good lager. Yet, the second-glass 鈥� or in this case, second pint 鈥� syndrome persists for both the lager and the stout. The buzz you thought you had turns out to be fantasy.

Of course, the quest for buzz 鈥� that convivial lightheadedness 鈥� is the existential issue in the first place for many drinkers. The road to intoxication is broad. So how do you get the consumer to focus on flavor instead of inebriation? It may be cocktails or 鈥渕ocktails鈥� 鈥� a terribly awkward word. But restaurants can customize drinks for their characteristic cuisine. I had a miraculous NA michelada at Sanchez, chef Rosio Sanchez鈥檚 wonderful Mexican restaurant in the Vesterbro district of Copenhagen. The super piquant concoction is usually made with beer, but that鈥檚 been substituted by a NA pilsner from Rothaus, a German brewer. It went perfectly with the food, flowing and metamorphosing with the ingredients and heat.

Micheladas 鈥� hellishly spicy 鈥� aren鈥檛 for everyone and don鈥檛 go with everything. But there are other choices. I had a range of kombuchas in Copenhagen (teas fermented with a variety of ingredients, including roses, magnolias, and fig leaves) that were startlingly seductive. Those in the know will say that kombuchas contain some alcohol. That is an important concern for those with substance abuse issues. But the alcohol content is often less than a very ripe banana鈥檚 (0.2% to 0.5% alcohol-by-volume in the fruit, compared with the 12% to 15% with wine)². The probiotics of kombucha may be beneficial too.

NA alternatives are as costly as regular offerings 鈥� or more. Muri has about six different blends available on its websites, each around 拢25 ($33.75) a bottle. Guinness 0.0% is more expensive than regular Guinness. That鈥檚 because 鈥� while the market is potentially enormous 鈥� the new technologies and processes for making the beverages can鈥檛 scale up yet. The customer base has to grow to make everything more affordable. As for mocktails, restaurants have to find and pay bartenders skilled in fermentation to come up with those kombuchas, which take time to cultivate.

If such things concern you, my friend Jenny Sharaf, an artist based in Los Angeles and Copenhagen, has an alternative to consider: the Wa-tini. You can style it like a Martini 鈥� dirty with olive juice, or with a twist or an indulgent kiss of NA vermouth 鈥� all poured into the classic glass. But one ingredient is key: bitingly cold, clean water. Shaken or stirred? It鈥檚 all in your head. 鈥� Bloomberg Opinion

¹The previous MAD symposium was held in 2018. Funding and, eventually, the pandemic put a halt to what had been an annual get-together of the restaurant and food world. The name derives from a play in Danish and English. Mad means 鈥渇ood鈥� in Danish (pronounced like 鈥渕al鈥� and a close cognate of the word 鈥渕eal鈥�). The insanity stems from the free-flowing proceedings at the symposium, which are conducted under a distinctive, four-peaked magenta circus tent.

²A graver concern with NA beverages is sugar content and how it might affect diabetics or pre-diabetics who usually face much less risk with wine.

A PRESIDENT鈥橲 first 100 days are traditionally measured by how much he鈥檚 created and accomplished through legislation, leadership, and executive action. Donald Trump鈥檚 first 100 days demand to be evaluated in terms of how much he鈥檚 destroyed.

By that terrible standard of shock and awe, Trump鈥檚 destruction is historic 鈥� by far the worst first 100 days since Franklin Delano Roosevelt made it a thing in 1933. Trump has announced, reversed, and re-announced tariffs poised to tank the economy and the markets. He鈥檚 upended 80 years of US global leadership in international security and cooperation. He鈥檚 gutted agencies and departments devoted to health, education, science, the environment and other forms of lifesaving.

Yet as shocking and self-destructive as these actions are, they don鈥檛 represent the most serious danger Trump poses to the survival of the United States of America as a republic. That distinction must be reserved for Trump鈥檚 devastating, unrelenting attacks on the Constitution and the rule of law.

After 100 days of Trump鈥檚 war on the law itself, it鈥檚 time for what the military calls a battle damage assessment. We need to know how much harm has been done to understand how to defend against the onslaught and prepare for the epochal battles yet to come.

This war is definitively not over and we, the people, don鈥檛 have to lose it. But we do have to face facts analytically and calmly. We need to set aside our appropriate moral outrage to the extent possible. Only by doing so can we hope to strategize victory rather than prematurely mourn a defeat that is not inevitable.

In essence, the damage looks like this: Trump is trying to establish his authority over that of the courts and Congress. To get there, he鈥檚 using the tactic of a constant-yet-unsteady pattern of illegal actions. His main targets are a combination of vulnerable people who have a hard time fighting back and high-profile elites whom he hopes to subordinate and humiliate. When blocked by the courts, Trump repeats the same actions under supposedly different authority. He retaliates against anyone who objects. Because the courts are the main vector of resistance, Trump and Vice-President JD Vance have verbally attacked judges. Most recently, the FBI went so far as to arrest a Wisconsin judge for allegedly allowing a man sought by ICE to leave her courtroom through a side door.

Let鈥檚 start with Trump鈥檚 overall strategic objective, which is to make himself seem like he is 鈥� and thus actually become 鈥� the ultimate authority in the US, above Congress and the courts. His main tool is unilateral executive action.

The whole theory of executive orders (of which he鈥檚 signed nearly 140) is that the President is exercising either a power that the Constitution gives him or power specifically delegated to him by Congress. It was in that framework that former President Bill Clinton鈥檚 adviser Paul Begala offered his pithy near-haiku about executive orders: 鈥淪troke of the pen. Law of the land. Kind of cool.鈥�

What makes an executive order law is specifically that it is issued lawfully. If an order violates the law, it鈥檚 an arrogation of illegitimate power 鈥� a step toward autocracy in a system where Congress, not the president, possesses the power of legislation.

Trump鈥檚 executive orders have openly violated the Constitution and federal laws from the get-go. Take as exemplary the order purporting to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the plain meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The order, issued on Trump鈥檚 first day in office, claims to 鈥渋nterpret鈥� the Fourteenth Amendment as not extending 鈥渃itizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.鈥� But the Supreme Court, not the president, has the final word in interpreting the Constitution. The fact that Trump鈥檚 interpretation is obviously wrong (and intended to terrify children of immigrants) only dramatizes how bad this is.

There have been many more clearly unlawful orders, on topics from voting rights to deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to, God help us, low-flow showerheads. (The last of these included the astonishing statement that legal process was unnecessary 鈥渂ecause I am ordering鈥� the action.)

The good news in the battle damage assessment is that courts have been blocking the unlawful orders. Just Security鈥檚 Trump litigation tracker records 212 cases against the administration so far. In many of these, lower courts have paused unlawful action. Gradually, these cases are making their way to the Supreme Court.

These cases also reflect that Trump has taken a lot of unlawful actions without even bothering to issue an executive order explaining or justifying why. Firings of government employees have been one sort of unlawful action, ranging from commissioners of independent agencies who are protected by federal law from presidential removal except for cause, to rank-and-file civil service members whose protections come from different laws. Equally consequential have been unilateral cuts or freezes to government grants and contracts established by law.

In these cases, the courts have also been blocking those that are clearly unlawful. But Trump has responded with new firings and freezes, often claiming to be doing so under different legal authority than the courts have already barred.

The result is a flood-the-zone method of attack. When you鈥檙e subject to unlawful administrative action, you can be fairly sure that even when you win in court, your rights will continue to be violated.

When noncitizens are arrested and sent out of the country without an opportunity to speak to a lawyer (a practice that now appears to have extended even to some citizens), it creates terror among expansive communities of immigrants, who almost by definition are among the least powerful members of society.

When Trump is targeting powerful actors like big law firms or Ivy League universities (such as my own), the point of flooding the zone is to tell elites that he will go after anyone he doesn鈥檛 like 鈥� and that even if they win in court, he won鈥檛 stop making their lives extremely difficult in every way possible. This explains why so many rational people in powerful institutions have chosen to not take on the Trump administration directly: their victories might end up being Pyrrhic. Trump鈥檚 unrelenting approach to attacking even the powerful is therefore more than just score-settling. It is also a clever way to get past the illegality of his actions.

Going after the courts is a crucial part of this tactic. Trump鈥檚 overall goal is to warn the Supreme Court, which ultimately stands for the rule of law, that if it stands up to him, he will destroy the court itself. The justices aren鈥檛 vulnerable individually. But their institution is. That鈥檚 because, under the Constitution, the courts can only order the president to do what they say. They have no force of their own except their inherent legitimacy as exponents of the law. If the Supreme Court issues an order and Trump ignores it, all the court can do is declare him in contempt. Congress could impeach and remove the president 鈥� but after two impeachments in the first administration failed to yield a conviction, it鈥檚 uncertain at best whether that would happen.

Trump has been inching closer to directly violating a court order. Two judicial contempt investigations are currently in progress against administration officials for doing so. An overt Trump administration refusal to follow a court order could well trigger a constitutional crisis.

The Supreme Court would much prefer that the confrontation doesn鈥檛 happen, and that Trump at least give the impression that he is following the law 鈥� even if he does so imperfectly. But if the showdown must happen, the court will want it to be on the terms most favorable to the justices. They will want it to involve the undisputed rights of US citizens. They will want to be able to vote unanimously against Trump. That鈥檚 because they know that in a climactic confrontation, if Trump doesn鈥檛 back down, the rule of law itself will be broken.

The courts will need allies in such a battle. One perhaps unexpected form of alliance may come from the financial markets. Trump鈥檚 threats to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell were threats against the rule of law and the Constitution as it is presently interpreted. It鈥檚 a good sign that Trump backed down, and not just for the markets. At the same time, it would be na茂ve to imagine that the markets would fully protect against a constitutional crisis. Markets function, albeit less efficiently, in countries where the law protects private property and transactions only selectively, and where autocrats can break the rules almost at will.

Republicans in Congress might be tempted to side with a unanimous Supreme Court against Trump if it looks like doing otherwise would harm the party in the midterm elections. For Trump to ignore an order from a court in which he appointed one-third of the justices and where听 another third are also Republican appointees might be too much for some in the GOP to tolerate. Again, however, it would be a mistake to rely too confidently on that scenario.

That leaves the people. The rule of law exists in the US only because we have a Constitution that traces its legitimate authority back to popular sovereignty. We need to brace ourselves to back the Supreme Court in a potential fight with a president who thinks he can run roughshod over the law. If that day comes, there will have to be a million or more people on the streets of Washington, siding with the Constitution and with the body that has the ultimate responsibility to interpret and apply it. Trump鈥檚 100 days have dramatically raised the possibility of such a confrontation taking place. The battle lines are being drawn.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

EIGHTY YEARS AGO this August, the US Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands of people. Those acts helped to end World War II but also ushered in the nuclear age.

In 2025, a new atomic arms race is stirring, this time not provoked by Russia, China, or North Korea 鈥� who have been their arsenals 鈥� but instead by President Donald Trump鈥檚 trade war, and his threats to withdraw the US defense umbrella. The result is a world growing more dangerous, not just for Asia, but for Americans too.

The security architecture that helped prevent conflict from weapons of mass destruction is at of unravelling. For decades, Asian nations have on Washington鈥檚 commitment to deterrence. That鈥檚 no longer guaranteed.

Long-time US allies, like and , are calculating the cost 鈥� both economic and political 鈥� of developing their own arsenals. India and Pakistan both have a growing supply of warheads, potentially inflaming an already volatile conflict made worse by recent tensions in .

Trump insists that Washington has received the short end of the stick from defense deals, and that America鈥檚 protection is keeping the world safe while other economies benefit more. He has a point 鈥� but is also ignoring historical lessons.

The aftermath of Washington鈥檚 atomic bombings prompted a recognition that such a tragedy must be avoided at all costs. So deep was the soul-searching in American society that the goal of every US president since Harry Truman has been to rather than encourage the spread of these weapons. Much of this was achieved through negotiated and .

The policies have . Only nine countries now possess such arsenals, even though many more have the ability to build a bomb. But Trump is ushering in a more dangerous era. On the campaign trail in 2016, he suggested that might need to develop their own capabilities. Comments like that are influencing public opinion. A 2024 survey by the showed six in 10 South Koreans now having them.

If Seoul opts for homegrown nukes, this would lead to a domino effect, associate professors of political science at St. Francis Xavier University, Jamie Levin and Youngwon Cho. Japanese public sentiment has been deeply opposed because of the nation鈥檚 painful past, but it , allowing it in theory to fashion thousands of bombs in as little as six months, according to experts.

India and Pakistan are among the most worrying players. The risk of a conflict increased this week after a terrorist attack in Kashmir in some of the region鈥檚 worst violence in years. So far, they have stuck to diplomatic measures as retaliation, but there is always the concern of escalation.

Even in Southeast Asia, a relative safe zone, the risks have become much more pronounced. The 1995 Treaty of Bangkok a Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, banning members from development, manufacture, acquisition, or possession. But if larger nations ramp up their arsenals, the spillover effect in Southeast Asia could force others to either look into developing their own technology, or find a new defense umbrella. Washington鈥檚 unpredictability has created a leadership vacuum that Beijing will be keen to fill.

Rather than failing to offer credible security guarantees, the US should engage with governments in Asia and address their defense ambitions. Under the Biden administration, a bilateral initiative called the was launched with Seoul, which helped to quell some anxiety. Efforts like this should be expanded to other allies like Japan.

Convincing countries to stick with US deterrence strategies would be wise. Smaller nations watch what bigger countries do, not what they say. The US still has the opportunity to play global stabilizer and shouldn鈥檛 cede that role to China.

The world once looked to Washington to keep it safe. In 2025, that trust is fraying. It鈥檚 in America鈥檚 interest 鈥� not just Asia鈥檚 鈥� to rebuild it.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Barely mentioned is that for decades, American companies were buoyed by making products abroad. The practice brought benefits for the domestic economy, helped put a lid on inflation, and delivered influence for Washington. US partners prospered and, as their living standards climbed, they in turn bought goods and services from firms headquartered stateside. It would be too easy to call this arrangement a win-win; unions complained about outsourcing and wealth wasn鈥檛 always spread evenly in host nations. There was, however, a circle of self-interest. It worked for a long time, and still can, if Trump鈥檚 team recognizes the pluses that accrued and not just the drawbacks.

What is clear is that corporations pursued manufacturing in far-flung destinations as a deliberate strategy. The approach had its roots in the postwar world of US industrial dominance, but it was turbocharged in the 1990s. This often meant that to land big deals, it was best to offer the home patch something. A classic method was to make components in the jurisdiction you sought business from. This helped local employment and provided the technological sweeteners that governments were keen on. Who, if anyone, was being ripped off? If there was advantage being taken, there was a lot to go around. The US trade deficit with Southeast Asia has widened over the years, but opportunities were also plentiful.

The contours of the model were laid out for me in Malaysia, where I reported for Bloomberg News in the mid-to-late 1990s. Before a financial crisis derailed a lot of plans, Asia was seen as a gold mine for aircraft makers. Boeing Co. and Airbus SE competed vigorously. In 1996, Boeing landed a with Malaysian Airline System Bhd. for 777s and 747-400s, beating out its European rival. I recall Tajudin Ramli, the Malaysian tycoon who helmed MAS, lauding then-Boeing CEO Phil Condit as his good friend. Local content was all the rage. The Arlington, Virginia-based plane maker joined with local companies to make parts, such as wing components. It didn鈥檛 escape attention that the venture would set up a facility in the northern state of Kedah, home to both Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister at the time, and Tajudin.

The nearby Malaysian state of Penang offers an example of how a slightly earlier version of this approach took root. In the early 1970s, US computer chipmakers were looking for places to invest that were not only cheaper, but offered little prospect of labor strife. For nations like Malaysia and neighboring Singapore, wooing firms also offered the tantalizing prospect of industrial development. At a time when diplomatic experts at august think tanks bemoaned the loss of influence that accompanied withdrawal from Vietnam, semiconductors kept ties with the US pivotal. 鈥淩ather than dominoes falling to Communism, America鈥檚 allies were even more deeply integrated with the US,鈥� Chris Miller wrote in his Chip War: The Fight for the World鈥檚 Most Critical Technology.

Attracting foreign capital was a core economic objective of Singaporean officials. For Philip Yeo, the former head of the Economic Development Board, this mission meant more than just traveling a lot and working the corridors of corporate behemoths. He saw his role as akin to a concierge. Singapore would provide the infrastructure, an educated workforce 鈥� and tax incentives. The benefits to the city-state were real: Jobs, money spent in the local economy, a healthy property market, and income. Yeo pressured the principal of the Singapore American School to find a place for the child of the Western Digital Corp. executive appointed to run its local operation. The kids of Levi Strauss & Co.鈥檚 top person were distraught at the quarantine endured by the family dog, and Yeo took it upon himself to find a solution. 鈥淓ven a dog became my problem,鈥� he recounted in an interview for a , Neither Civil Nor Servant, by Peh Shing Huei. 鈥淲e needed the investment, so it鈥檚 okay. I would do anything to get the deal over the line.鈥�

Were Americans being exploited, as Trump insists? Hardly. Would it have been better if Airbus triumphed at the expense of Boeing, or would shareholders prefer less-friendly locations than Singapore, a country that enjoys close economic and strategic ties with the US. Of course, not. These are just a couple of examples of where the connective tissues of trade and capital, for all their imperfection, brought tangible advantages.

If Trump sets in train responses that diminish the effectiveness of this model, there will be . It鈥檚 doubtful anyone will truly earn the right to be called a victor.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

The timing of Hegseth鈥檚 Asian tour couldn鈥檛 be more awkward. President Donald Trump鈥檚 鈥溾�� mantra is raising eyebrows, but so is his administration鈥檚 apparent incompetence. The revelation that US plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen were accidentally via a commercial messaging app is worrying for nations that have depended on Washington鈥檚 military assistance. Compounding that sense of unreliability: More Trump tariffs are next week and allies are likely to be included.

The White House is batting criticism of the intelligence leak, but it raises serious questions. If the US can be so careless with its own military plans, how much should others rely on it? Hegseth鈥檚 itinerary includes to the Philippines and Japan. Both US treaty allies should use this opportunity to get firm answers on how much support they can count on, but also shore up their capabilities in the face of Washington鈥檚 unpredictability.

The China challenge is getting harder to manage. Manila and Tokyo both have overlapping claims with Beijing in the South and East China seas. These are becoming more difficult to fight as the People鈥檚 Liberation Army its capabilities around the world, using the full force of its and advanced cable-cutting technology to its advantage.

Also in the mix is Taiwan鈥檚 security, which is for Japan because of its geographic proximity. President Joe Biden鈥檚 administration relied on a of support among allies to keep countries safe and stand up to China. There鈥檚 no indication that will continue under Trump.

There have been some moments of clarity. The defense secretary has had conversations with some key Asian allies, including the Philippines and Thailand, iron-clad support for Manila. Joint Indo-Pacific drills Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, and the US took place earlier this month, and are set to continue despite objections from China.

But some of the other signals from Washington aren鈥檛 as encouraging. Under Biden, the US to ramp up its military presence in Japan with the creation of a joint force headquarters. Those plans may be scrapped to save costs, according to NBC and other local media . Trump has questioned why is being used to help Japan and other Asian allies defend themselves. These mixed messages are unsettling for the region.

Meanwhile, Beijing continues to get more . Activities by Chinese vessels near a set of islands in the East China Sea 鈥� called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China 鈥� are 鈥渃learly escalating,鈥� Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya on Monday. The Philippine defense chief has called in the South China Sea 鈥渢he biggest fiction and lie鈥� that no Southeast Asian country would accept, adding that President Xi Jinping鈥檚 aggressive policies have undermined international goodwill fostered by his predecessors.

Hegseth is due to meet his counterparts in Manila and Tokyo. No doubt China will be at the top of their agendas. The three defense secretaries should signal to Beijing that the US is firmly committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific region 鈥� and it鈥檚 not just rhetoric. Washington can do this by announcing expanded military exercises, like the annual US-Philippine drills. They鈥檝e been growing in size in recent years and both sides should indicate a firm desire for that to continue. The war games between Tokyo and Washington are also a good way to show Beijing that the US presence in the region is here to stay.

Both Asian allies should also tout an in their defense as evidence that they are serious about self-reliance, as Trump has insisted upon. Understanding the president鈥檚 transactional approach is key in this era, so they should also commit to buying more American weapons.

Manila has already its intention to acquire the US Typhon missile system as part of a push to secure its maritime interests. Tokyo has quietly been American weapons, too. These initiatives should continue, despite criticism by Beijing that such moves are destabilizing to Asia.

The last eight decades have seen US supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region grow from strength to strength. For the most part, that鈥檚 kept Asia safe. To mark those ties, Hegseth is to visit Iwo Jima to attend a Japan-US joint memorial ceremony marking the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II. Washington needs to decide whether it still wants to maintain its relevance in the region. American credibility and regional security hang in the balance.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Trading on the PSE, which usually starts at 9:30 a.m. Manila time, began Monday at 11:10 a.m., with the benchmark index dropping as much as 1%.

The open 鈥渨as delayed due to a system connectivity issue,鈥� PSE President and CEO Ramon Monzon said in a memorandum to trading participants.

The Philippines鈥� benchmark stock index has dropped about 5% year-to-date, versus the MSCI Asia Pacific Index鈥檚 about 3% gain, weighed down by factors including US market volatility.

鈥淲e are quite used to this鈥� and the trading delay鈥檚 impact will likely be minimal, said Raoul Santos, president of RCBC Securities Inc. in Manila. 鈥淥n the foreign side, there may be some clients holding back on their buying due to this system instability,鈥� he added.

The PSE is no stranger to trading disruptions. In January last year, the bourse said a technical issue caused a two-hour trading halt, frustrating investors.

The Philippine bourse shifted to digital trading after permanently shutting down its trading floor in 2022. Stock-trading activities have been suspended in the past due to adverse weather and closure of clearing services.

PSE officials didn鈥檛 respond to a request for further comment. — Bloomberg

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By Dave Lee, Parmy Olson and Catherine Thorbecke

EARLIER last year I came across a two-frame comic strip that I enjoyed so much I printed it out and taped it to the corner of my desk.

In the first frame, an office worker delightedly tells a colleague: 鈥淎I turns this single bullet point into a long e-mail I can pretend I wrote.鈥� In the second, the recipient of that e-mail responds: 鈥淎I makes a single bullet point out of this long e-mail I can pretend I read.鈥�

Doesn鈥檛 that speak to so much of the current moment? Whether it鈥檚 coming from Apple or OpenAI or Google or any number of companies working on AI, the message last year seems to have been that both writing and reading is nothing but a chore, an inconvenience to be solved.

This neglects hundreds of years of human progress, of course, where great writing 鈥� even when found in what seem like inconsequential memos 鈥� has the power to shape minds, build bridges, and move mountains (with all these cliches I鈥檓 starting to sound a bit like AI myself).

One critical component of great writing is a skill I have yet to see any AI demonstrate: deep thought. It鈥檚 a quality found in abundance within the books noted in the following list. It鈥檚 a carefully curated group of titles that we 鈥� Bloomberg Opinion鈥檚 three commentators on tech 鈥� feel have shaped our thinking.

The brief, like last year, was to recommend reading that provided a bed of knowledge for the key themes we think will define 2025. Ours differs from other lists you might see elsewhere at this time of year in that we focus on relevance rather than recency, though there are new books here, too.

THE EVERYTHING WAR 鈥� DANA MATTIOLI, 2024
What happens when a company does incredible things for consumers and terrible things for businesses? Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli serves up a litany of case studies showing how Amazon.com Inc. earned its ruthless reputation in this book, which is enraging at times. Tech startups eager to work with Jeff Bezos鈥� Goliath are dumbstruck when after a few meetings, Amazon launches nearly identical products. The company swallows a diaper business by threatening to slash its prices to zero if the smaller firm sells to Walmart, killing that deal. Interviews with countless burned companies show Amazon has often gone beyond hard-nosed dealmaking to something far worse: actions befitting a 鈥渕obster,鈥� according to Ms. Mattioli. What鈥檚 fascinating about The Everything War is the way Amazon鈥檚 customer obsession principle gave it cover to act so unethically, skirting sales taxes so its prices could be lower than anyone else鈥檚 and dominating markets. Perhaps that made Amazon鈥檚 customers its real product, juiced with deals so the giant could keep growing. Reading this left me with the question, 鈥淚f America鈥檚 trust busters cared more about protecting businesses than protecting consumers, would consumers be better off?鈥� Whatever the case may be, we鈥檒l likely see antitrust regulators from the US and Europe do much more to tackle tech giants like Amazon in 2025. Mattioli鈥檚 book explains exactly why they should. 鈥� Parmy Olson

POWER AND PROGRESS 鈥� DARON ACEMO臑LU AND SIMON JOHNSON, 2023
MIT professor Daron Acemo臒lu caught my attention twice this year. First, the economist was one of the key contributors to a compelling Goldman Sachs report that posed awkward questions about whether wild investments in artificial intelligence would ever see a meaningful return 鈥� a topic you鈥檒l be hearing a lot about in 2025. Then, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 鈥� alongside his co-author, Simon Johnson 鈥� for his study of 鈥渉ow institutions are formed and affect prosperity.鈥� That issue is at the very front of my mind as I think and write about AI. Power and Progress, published in 2023, is a hefty historical primer that adds urgent context as today鈥檚 AI鈥檚 luminaries wave away concerns about job displacement. Yes, tech innovations of the past have created more jobs, not fewer, and society has become prosperous as a result. But it rarely happened organically 鈥� far from it. This book is an important examination of how and when workers benefited from increased productivity from new tech and when they very much didn鈥檛. Hint: It鈥檚 not when the creators of the technology are allowed to call all the shots. 鈥� Dave Lee

GAMBLING MAN: THE WILD RIDE OF JAPAN鈥橲 MASAYOSHI SON 鈥�听 LIONEL BARBER, 2024
I鈥檇 been waiting for a chronicle of the stranger-than-fiction life of Softbank founder Masayoshi Son, better known as Masa, and Lionel Barber鈥檚 telling did not disappoint. It鈥檚 one of those real-life stories that Hollywood writers could only dream of: He was born into a pig-farming zainichi Korean family in post-imperial Japan before becoming the single largest foreign investor in both the US and China. Then there鈥檚 the high drama surrounding his investments. Barber largely avoided some of the oversimplifications and stereotypical traps that a lot of writing about Japan falls into. I was left wanting more. But Masa鈥檚 story is still being written: He reemerged over the past year to go all-in on artificial intelligence. His exuberance for AI, and his late arrival to the party, could easily become a cautionary tale. You鈥檇 think his appetite for risk would temper after becoming one of the biggest losers in the dot-com crash or staining his reputation with the recent WeWork saga. But, as Barber writes, 鈥淚f you are born in a slum with nothing, losing everything is relative. You just go back to square one. Then, like the Korean slum dwellers in [Masa鈥檚 hometown], you build back up.鈥� It鈥檚 well worth a read for anyone trying to gain a deeper understanding of what could come next for an individual who has played a pivotal role in shaping the tech sector in Asia and beyond. 鈥� Catherine Thorbecke

CODE DEPENDENT 鈥� MADHUMITA MURGIA, 2024
A number of years ago, I took an eye-opening trip to Nairobi鈥檚 Kibera slum to see firsthand the local operations of Samasource, a San Francisco-based firm that outsourced tech work to developing countries. I met some of the workers earning $1 to $2 a day to do data annotation for a variety of projects, such as self-driving cars or visual search engines. Since then, I鈥檝e always thought of these workers 鈥� who have names, lives, and dreams, you know 鈥� when tech CEOs talk of 鈥渕agical鈥� software that 鈥渏ust works.鈥� Madhumita Murgia, a Financial Times journalist (and, full disclosure, a friend and former colleague) explores this world more deeply in her book Code Dependent. Murgia examines how emerging technologies like AI are built, and the root cause of flaws within them, by getting up close and personal with those at the front line of it all. She also examines how these trained algorithms are in turn provided new avenues for exploitation of our identities, bodies, and well-being. It all amounts to what she calls 鈥渄ata colonialism鈥� 鈥� the consequences of which we鈥檙e only just beginning to comprehend. 鈥� Dave Lee

PROJECT HAIL MARY 鈥� ANDY WEIR, 2021
As a longtime tech journalist, it鈥檚 easy to slip into cynicism about the ways technology promises to make the world better but often ends up creating problems instead. Think smartphone addiction, social media鈥檚 stain on our mental health, crypto scams, and so forth. Andy Weir鈥檚 novel is a reminder of all the ways human ingenuity can solve huge problems, dare I say it even save the world. Steeped in meticulous scientific details that make the story feel not just plausible but real, Project Hail Mary follows a junior high teacher and former molecular biologist as he finds himself aboard a rocket ship, groggily waking up from a coma to realize he is on a critical mission to another solar system. He must use his expertise and careful, critical thinking to address an array of engineering problems and let鈥檚 just say extraordinary new circumstances. It is best not to read much more about the story and let the plot unfold, as I did with no regrets whatsoever. I also recommend listening to the audio book, which is not read but engagingly 鈥減erformed鈥� by the American actor Ray Porter, whose impressive grasp of international accents made it feel at times as if I was watching a film. I listened to this book while jogging and have never before or since been so motivated to lace up my running shoes. 鈥� Parmy Olson

BLOCKCHAIN CHICKEN FARM AND OTHER STORIES OF TECH IN CHINA鈥橲 COUNTRYSIDE 鈥� XIAOWEI WANG, 2020
To cover China鈥檚 tech sector is to be bombarded with statements that paint the entire nation as a 鈥渢hreat鈥�: an existential, adversarial force that the US must hold back. The human rights-flouting track record of the Chinese Communist Party doesn鈥檛 help. And US politicians need a bogeyman to blame as much as Silicon Valley needs a rival when trying to fight regulation. This book offered glimpses of a few of the real people, mostly from rural China, whose stories often get lost. When Wang visits the titular poultry farm that uses tamper-proof tech to certify the free-range status of birds for e-commerce shoppers, a villager remarks that there have been lots of news stories of the farm but very few visits. No English-language book about the country can scratch the surface of life there, and the author occasionally veered into seemingly off-course tangents. Part travelogue and part memoir, Wang鈥檚 perspective is unlike anything I鈥檝e read. Its themes resonate and take on new significance as the US-China tech war heats up. As a fresh crop of China hawks come into power, it would help for Americans to understand who they are trying to fight against. In an increasingly globalized, tech-driven world, Wang鈥檚 writing is a reminder of how interconnected and similar people from the two sides of the globe can be. 鈥� Catherine Thorbecke

ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES …
Dave made the unwise decision to read Emily St. John Mandel鈥檚 Station Eleven and Cormac McCarthy鈥檚 The Road back to back, sending him into a post-apocalyptic funk, though it did at least remind him to be far more grateful for some of the tech he relies upon to live a comfortable life. Likewise, he found Nicola Twilley鈥檚 Frostbite, about the origins and complexities of modern-day refrigeration, to be an unexpectedly funny and engaging book. Speaking of The Road, Parmy found an even bleaker book in Prophet Song, Paul Lynch鈥檚 Booker-Prize winning novel that looks at what happens when propaganda dominates our information ecosystem. She also recommends Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, an excellent explainer on generative AI by a Wharton professor who plays with it every day. Catherine reread Kazuo Ishiguro鈥檚 2021 novel Klara and the Sun this year and was shocked at how prescient the topic of a chronically ill, lonely teenager finding companionship with an 鈥渁rtificial friend鈥� was today. She was excited to hear that it is being turned into a film, expected to be released in the new year, from one of her favorite directors, Taika Waititi.

Dave Lee is Bloomberg鈥檚 US technology columnist, based in New York. Parmy Olson covers AI and the tech industry from London and is the author of Supremacy, just named the Financial Times book of the year for 2024. Catherine Thorbecke is Bloomberg鈥檚 Asia tech columnist, based in Tokyo.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

鈥淥kay,鈥� George said. 鈥淚 guess it works.鈥�

Honestly, not the moment of jubilation I鈥檇 been expecting. George had told me that he and his friends had held a farewell for the social network the night before. 鈥淚 was really sad,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e got together, made dinner, had ice cream. A little going away party for TikTok.鈥�

Maybe George鈥檚 calm reaction was because nothing about the app feels certain. Sure, it was loading now. But for how long? And under whose control? TikTokers now realize the fragility of their digital home and its status as a geopolitical football. Its existence still hangs in the balance despite the temporary reprieve put in place over the weekend.

George credited the app with aiding his burgeoning career in marketing, learning the ropes from how-to videos, trusted mentors and other content the algorithm learned he was looking for. He now works at L鈥橭real SA.

But political leaders have long feared this kind of productive use covers the app鈥檚 potential as a vector for espionage and disruption by the Chinese Communist Party. For that reason, Sunday had been set as the deadline for parent company ByteDance to divest the app or face being cut off from the American market. And so it came to pass on Saturday night, not long before 11 p.m. Eastern Time: TikTok had gone dark, yanked from mobile app stores.

The controversial but decisive action was backed last April by a bipartisan vote in Congress, signed into law soon after by President Joe Biden, and deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court last week on the grounds of national security.

And yet, in less than 24 hours, TikTok proved itself to be something extraordinary: an app too popular to ban. A disturbing precedent, even if you oppose the ban鈥檚 debatable rationale.

At the very least, TikTok鈥檚 rapid return ruined plans for the 鈥渇uneral鈥� that had been set to take place in New York鈥檚 Washington Square Park on Sunday afternoon. Nestled within the campus of New York University, the park can to be the physical center of American TikTok culture. Its towering Roman arch and fountain are now recognizable as a backdrop to some of the app鈥檚 most viral content.

Alas, in the frigid conditions, the journalists outnumbered the 鈥渞eal people,鈥� as one young attendee reasonably put it. I guess it鈥檚 hard to motivate people to attend a funeral when the subject of mourning isn鈥檛 actually dead.

TikTok does remain on life support, however. The current and incoming presidents鈥� promises of a free pass may have been enough to convince the country鈥檚 biggest technology companies to break the law and continue partnering with TikTok on its infrastructure, but they still risk gigantic fines without more concrete assurances.

An executive order is expected to be confirmed on Monday, Donald Trump鈥檚 first day back in office. It may set off another countdown, a 90-day period in which some kind of deal must be made. This would be a generous interpretation of the law, which had insisted an extension could only be granted if a serious deal was already in the process of being thrashed out. We seem far from that.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump suggested one solution: some kind of joint venture with the US government owning half. Nothing about ByteDance鈥檚 statements to date suggest it would find such an arrangement palatable (to say nothing of how users might feel about a state-owned social network). A joint venture with China retaining control of the algorithm would not allay any concerns on national security.

The chain of events should be highly concerning to all of us. The three branches of government played their roles as assigned. The app should, by all accounts, be inaccessible to Americans. The reasoning behind the action has not changed. Even if it had, the solution to bad lawmaking should be better lawmaking. If Washington considered the TikTok threat real last year, it should believe the same thing now, even in the face of being disliked. I believe it鈥檚 what they call backbone. The carrot and stick approach only works if you鈥檙e willing to actually use the stick.

Instead, we have the likes of Democrat Senator Ed Markey, who voted for the ban, jumping onto social media to tell TikTokers that he is doing everything he can to prevent the 鈥渕istake鈥� from being enforced. A White House statement said Biden had promised to not follow through on the law he personally signed, seen by some as a last-gasp attempt at restoring some of his tattered standing with young people.

The embarrassing dithering reflected a fear among Democrats that this will be seen as Trump鈥檚 triumphant win for America鈥檚 youth. Trump clearly relishes the chance to be the president who saved the day, though his primary focus remains himself. Speaking on Sunday at a pre-inauguration rally, he reiterated how his opinion has been shaped by his own success on the platform during the election campaign.

His attempts to cultivate the vibe as TikTok鈥檚 knight 鈥� despite trying to ban it himself while he was in office 鈥� are being reinforced by the company itself. 鈥淲e are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us,鈥� read a notice presented to users while the app was down. TikTok鈥檚 CEO will have a front-row seat at Monday鈥檚 inauguration, joining the cabal of tech leaders now delighted to be by Trump鈥檚 side.

Despite all this, some still maintain that the Chinese-owned app鈥檚 potential to exert political influence in America is purely . The carefully orchestrated drama of this weekend should put that claim to rest 鈥� though Trump seems ready to let it slide if he鈥檚 permitted to at least pull some of the strings.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Optimism is in order because the world, chaotic as it currently looks, might get better 鈥� and, yes, in part because a new American president, Donald Trump, could tackle problems in such mind-bogglingly unorthodox ways that breakthroughs become conceivable. The paranoia is called for because the world is complicated, with dangerous feedback loops hidden inside today鈥檚 鈥�.鈥� And a leader as proudly as Trump might inadvertently blow it all up.

We鈥檒l have to get used to this ambiguity, which evokes the famous cat in Erwin Schrodinger鈥檚 thought experiment (about quantum superposition, if that means something to you). The poor creature sits in a sealed box and is simultaneously alive and dead; but only until you open the box and look. Thereafter it鈥檚 either one or the other. Something similar will happen once Trump takes his oath of office and starts owning every mess in the world.

Here are just a few examples in international relations that illustrate how various cats could live or die. They derive from the most important bilateral relationship in the world, the one between the United States and China. If and when these two cooperate, almost any problem becomes solvable. When they don鈥檛, every pickle has the potential to escalate to Armageddon.

You may not have noticed this in your social-media stream, for instance, but since 2021 the leading killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 has been , or some other synthetic opioid based on it. (of several) is that China, sulking over US support for Taiwan and other perceived snubs, turned a blind eye to the illegal production of the requisite chemicals by Chinese triads; those molecules then made their way to Mexico, where drug cartels packaged them for sale in the US. When Sino-American relations are bad, people die.

A bit over a year ago, though, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met and agreed to pull back from the brink. China now cracks down harder on the triads (although plenty of the drugs still make it out). And lo, fentanyl deaths started declining in 2023 and are now . (Again, the reasons are complex, but this is one.) When Washington and Beijing cooperate, people live.

Now apply this to other cats trapped in boxes over which Xi and Trump will soon have joint custody. One is the prospect of nuclear war, or of an arms race that could lead to it. This year, China added another 100 atomic warheads to its arsenal, for a total of ; it plans to catch up with the US and Russia in about a decade. (Each of those has deployed about nukes for instant use, with thousands more in storage.) Will all three keep arming, in a vain effort to outdo the others? In time, this could lead to feline mass extinction.

If, however, Trump and Xi agree to put brakes on this insanity, as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev once did, there is hope. Together, they could persuade Russia鈥檚 Vladimir Putin, and possibly even North Korea鈥檚 Kim Jong Un and the mullahs in Iran, to participate in arms-control talks. Xi has the requisite sway with them; and Trump 鈥� according to, well, Trump 鈥� is a negotiating genius.

Xi鈥檚 clout in Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran is also a segue to a parallel threat to world peace, the formation of a new 鈥溾�� among these regimes (akin to that other one between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan). Step by step, these four autocracies are moving from informal cooperation in undermining the US and the 鈥渙rder鈥� for which it stands to formalized ties: Under this year鈥檚 pact between Russia and North Korea, for example, North Korean troops are now fighting and dying alongside Russian soldiers in Putin鈥檚 war against Ukraine.

This de facto axis will put the Trump administration in a bind. So far Washington, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has viewed conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea as discrete. If there鈥檚 even a hint that the four adversaries might coordinate their plans of attack 鈥� or barring that, recalculate opportunistically and strike when they believe that the US is distracted 鈥� the risk rises that the 鈥渢heaters鈥� become linked. The US military is currently set up to win one major war and one minor war simultaneously; if it had to confront the entire axis, it would have to wage four and might lose.

The proper label for that scenario is World War III. It鈥檚 a term that Trump has and that clearly haunts him. Instead of offering a strategy to prevent this nightmare, he has so far only touted his own alleged 鈥渟trength,鈥� whatever that means. To translate this bumper sticker into military might, he鈥檇 have to double or triple America鈥檚 defense budget, which would cause a fiscal and political crisis.

So his only practical option is to break up the axis before it becomes real. That again means he must talk to Beijing, which deems itself the hub of any emerging anti-Western alliance even as it looks askance at Moscow and Pyongyang getting too cuddly. If Trump and Xi talk, people will live; if not, people may die.

So it goes for almost every major problem. The United Nations, for example, has gone from merely dysfunctional to . One reason: Three of the five permanent (and veto-wielding) members of the security council keep sabotaging one another and the whole system. The US vetoes resolutions pertaining to Israel, while China and Russia protect each other, as well as North Korea and other rogues. (By contrast, the other two permanent members, Britain and France, have admirably refrained from using their vetoes for more than three decades.) If Trump and Xi wanted to resurrect the international system (which Trump admittedly claims to disdain), they could jointly declare a moratorium on vetoes.

The best example, of course, is climate change. I hesitate to bring it up because it鈥檚 hardly top of Trump鈥檚 mind, or even tucked away in any nook of it. But that could change, especially if he鈥檚 reminded that he should leave a positive legacy. , the US has been the largest emitter of carbon into the atmosphere, although China has taken the top spot since 2005. If these two countries cooperate to slow global warming, there鈥檚 hope; if they don鈥檛, there isn鈥檛.

This is where paranoia bubbles up from my amygdala. As of now, Trump shows little interest in any of these sweeping thoughts and ambitions. He instead appears focused on starting a trade war with China, and then the whole world, 鈥渢he most beautiful word in the dictionary is 鈥榯ariff鈥�.鈥� That鈥檚 a bad idea economically, and astoundingly petty. It鈥檚 also the worst possible way to start off with Xi. And remember: If they don鈥檛 get it together, cats will start dying.

Then the optimism fights back. It鈥檚 Trump鈥檚 shtick to trash-talk his interlocutors, friend or foe alike, just to see how they鈥檒l react. But he also knows 鈥� at least I hope he does 鈥� that solving problems in the real world, whether in Ukraine, at the southern border, or anywhere else, requires finesse and an open mind. And neither he nor Xi (no pun intended) wants to blow up the world. Onward then, and welcome, 2025.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

We鈥檒l start to see much more AI-enabled hardware and robotics 鈥� and it will be coming from Asia.

The experience I鈥檝e had tuning in to executive chats and tech conferences could best be summed by Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang鈥檚 proclamation in Taipei in . 鈥淭he next wave of AI is physical AI,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he era of robotics has arrived.鈥�

Historically, a lot of coverage of robot-human interactions in Asia have been filled with futuristic techno-orientalist tropes that often to reflect the reality. But there are factors that make the region uniquely primed to propel this next leap forward in integrating AI into the physical world. While the US is the leader in AI advances 鈥� and the software and internet revolution emanated from Silicon Valley 鈥� Asian tech giants have traditionally been very good at the hardware side of things.

Citigroup, Inc. projects that there would be 1.3 billion AI robots globally by 2035 and 4 billion by 2050, doing everything from household chores to delivering parcels. A lot of the progress will come from China, which accounts for 78% of all robotics patents over the last two decades, the Citi analysts said. Japan and South Korea make up 7% and 5%, respectively, while the US contributes just 3%. This dominance in Asian robotics remained just as strong when the sheer quantity of patents was weighed through a quality-assessment measure.

Moreover, robotics is an extremely expensive and difficult process. But advancing in this sector has emerged as part of China鈥檚 top-down for its tech ecosystem, meaning government subsidies in research and development, and other support give it an edge.

There are other societal factors that suggest an embrace of AI robotics makes sense. Researchers have found Japan is to be a global leader in deploying technologies that adopt automation, as it confronts an aging population and shrinking workforce. AI-driven software coupled with hardware are being developed and implemented across all types of work, including white and blue collar, agriculture and services. While many US industries have been gripped by fears of robots taking away livelihoods, in Asia, there has been a tendency to welcome automation due to a people shortage.

This is already playing out, although on a small scale, in several creative ways. A Shenzhen startup is using an AI robot to help . A tool unveiled by Japan鈥檚 Fujitsu Ltd. in October , a performance art dating back to the 14th century that is under pressure as there are fewer people who know the techniques to carry on the tradition. Not to mention the countless industrial robots.

While the region may currently be the US when it comes to AI now, Asian tech firms have shown great success in finding practical, market applications for technology developed elsewhere. , especially, have been very good at this. Sony Group Corp. perfected the consumer radio after taking transistor technology invented in the US. (Sony also unveiled the first consumer robot to the mass market in 1999: the beloved dog.)

There鈥檚 been a tendency to overhype the role and value of robots in Asian societies, especially in Western reporting, when the reality is much more nuanced. I鈥檝e yet to meet a real person in Japan who ties beliefs into the embrace of robots. And suggests that eldercare robotic experiments have not been worth the cost and end up causing more work for caregivers (and that perhaps better immigration policies to address labor crunches would be a more worthwhile solution). Several high-profile robotic ventures launched in recent years have been .

But AI could serve as a catalyst, especially as investors and company leaders increasingly search for practical and real-world applications for the technology that go beyond just engaging chatbots. Softbank Group Corp. Founder Masayoshi Son said in Tokyo last month that he is 鈥減assionate about AI robotics,鈥� stating that like his favorite cartoon, Astro Boy, 鈥測ou can鈥檛 just have the muscle, you have to have intelligence.鈥�

I remain skeptical that we will see the rise of AI robots in the new year, but I have no doubt they鈥檙e coming, and that they will likely be coming from Asia.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Americans died from COVID because the public health community took too long to issue warnings, was slow to create tests to assess the situation, and was sluggish in shifting its response to fit the data on airborne transmission. The much-criticized lockdowns could have been less disruptive and saved more lives had they been periodically adjusted as data changed on who was most at risk and which activities were riskiest.

Already, some of the same mistakes can be seen in the response to H5N1, which started in poultry before a new variant began infecting the nation鈥檚 dairy cows. The last week that it would start sampling the nation鈥檚 milk supply to test for the virus. California instituted a recall of some raw milk and raw milk products after samples tested positive. But there鈥檚 a lot more that could be done to reduce the odds of this situation leading to a pandemic.

Moreover, President-elect Donald Trump鈥檚 picks to lead the nation鈥檚 top public health agencies 鈥� the officials who would be in charge of any pandemic response 鈥� have among scientists and health experts. They include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a vaccine skeptic and , for the top job of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He also has ties to the California producer whose farm was the subject of the state鈥檚 recall after several batches of raw milk products tested positive for the virus. he鈥檚 been asked to apply for the position of 鈥渞aw milk adviser鈥� at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Trump鈥檚 pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), former Representative Dave Weldon, about childhood vaccines as a member of Congress and was a critic of the CDC and its vaccine program. And to lead the National Institutes of Health, Trump has named Jay Bhattacharya, author of the , which criticized the government鈥檚 COVID response and promoted the theory 鈥� based on bad science 鈥� that the pandemic would end quickly through herd immunity. Marty Makary, who Trump picked to head the FDA, promoted the same notion of herd immunity as he that even without vaccination, COVID would disappear in several months.

We likely won鈥檛 know how these officials might handle the next crisis until their Senate confirmation hearings early next year.

There have been periodic outbreaks of H5N1, commonly called the bird flu, in the domestic bird population since the mid-1990s. But while fewer than 1,000 people worldwide have tested positive for the virus since then, scientists are alarmed because . In 2022, the virus started showing up in mammals 鈥� foxes, bears, raccoons, sea lions, porpoises, and minks 鈥� and then, in March of this year, in US dairy cows. Millions of US chickens have been euthanized to control outbreaks in flocks of poultry, and in October, officials confirmed that the virus had been here for the first time.

In a study of supermarket milk last April, virus fragments appeared in . Scientists who conducted the study said heat from pasteurization would kill the virus. But raw milk from infected cows is swarming with live virus 鈥� enough to that have lapped up splatters.

At confirmed human cases of bird flu have been reported in the US this year, including Most have been farm workers who had contact with livestock or poultry, and their symptoms were mild. More worrisome are the few cases whose origin remains a mystery, including in British Columbia who was hospitalized with a mutated version of the virus and a who was diagnosed with moderate symptoms in November. There have been no confirmed cases of person-to-person transmission.

鈥淚n my opinion, it is a matter of time before we start to see documented human-to-human transmission of this virus鈥� because we鈥檙e continuing to let this virus infect humans and adapt to people,鈥� said Seema Lakdawala, an immunologist at Emory University School of Medicine.

To decrease that likelihood, she says efforts should focus on minimizing outbreaks among cattle. That means not just monitoring some milk samples but identifying individual infected cows and ensuring they are isolated and their milk disposed of safely so that it doesn鈥檛 make its way into irrigation water where it could infect other animals. She said that even if those cows aren鈥檛 killed, just isolating them could prevent further spread.

Each new infection allows the virus to make millions of slightly mutated copies, increasing the odds that one will acquire the ability to easily jump from person to person. A study published recently in showed that the variant currently spreading through hundreds of herds needs only a single mutation to gain the ability to attach to receptors on human cells.

Much remains unknown, including hasn鈥檛 started a pandemic. But there will be another pandemic at some point, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who has advised every president since Ronald Reagan and is now director of the University of Minnesota鈥檚 Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. 鈥淭he pandemic clock is ticking. We just don鈥檛 know what time it is,鈥� he said.

Osterholm has investigated Ebola, Zika, and other deadly viruses. Still, coronaviruses and influenza are by far the most likely to blow up into global pandemics because they are easily transmitted through the air.

That means we should plan for the possibility 鈥� before it happens. And we need something more detailed than the National Security Council drawn up during the Obama administration and by Trump. It outlined organizing an initial pandemic response, such as connecting political leaders with scientific experts. But it didn鈥檛 include details for things like shutdowns, mask mandates, or other measures taken during COVID. Osterholm said drafting a new plan should begin with a bipartisan investigation into how COVID-19 was handled 鈥� like the 9/11 commission. 鈥淣ot to point fingers,鈥� he told me, but to prepare for next time.

A new playbook should also consider long-term sustainability. Osterholm said data available in spring 2020 showed COVID was so easily transmissible that the pandemic could drag on for years. And yet, nobody wanted to hear it.

He argues that the US and China could have saved many more lives with short-term, data-driven closures of restaurants and other high-risk settings when cases were rising. That strategy could have been sustained as long as the threat persisted. In China, which lifted its strict three-year-long zero-COVID lockdown before the threat had ebbed, the CDC estimates in the first three months the restrictions were eased.

A new preparedness plan should also include more protection for essential workers and their families. During 2020, many people with known risk factors or elderly relatives at home were thrown into dangerous work situations.

The US endured waves of deaths in the winter of 2020-2021 when many Americans could no longer tolerate staying in their homes. Sustainability would matter even more if the next pandemic had a higher fatality rate.

While it鈥檚 often repeated that more than a million Americans died, we lack an analysis of how they got infected and how they were in harm鈥檚 way. It wasn鈥檛 about bad behavior but inadequate policy. Good policy is designed to work for human beings the way we are. With COVID, it was all created on the fly. It doesn鈥檛 have to be that way next time.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

We can at least be glad that COP29 鈥� this year鈥檚 conference for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Baku, Azerbaijan 鈥� didn鈥檛 end in complete disaster like 2009鈥檚 gathering in Copenhagen. After days of bare-knuckle brawling and the of negotiations, the bloodied parties with a commitment from developed nations to triple the amount of money they spend to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to global heating, to $300 billion from $100 billion per year, by 2035. They also vowed to put together a decade-long 鈥渞oadmap鈥� for hitting the $1.3 trillion in annual financing that poorer countries had demanded. And they established a global carbon-credits market and paid vague homage to a pledge made last year to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels.

This outcome is, to put it mildly, insufficient. To put it not so mildly, it鈥檚 pathetic. Even the $1.3 trillion developing nations wanted would have fallen far short of the $2.4 trillion truly needed, according to an estimate by the UN鈥檚 Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance. The clean-energy transition alone could by 2050, according to BloombergNEF.

So countries that have emitted almost none of the greenhouse gases heating up the planet but will suffer the brunt of the consequences will end up at least $2 trillion per year short and a decade away from relief. Compared to the in estimated explicit and implicit subsidies the world pays fossil-fuel producers every year, that $300 billion looks even more insulting.

鈥淭he $300 billion so-called 鈥榙eal鈥� that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous 鈥� a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown,鈥� Oxfam International鈥檚 climate change policy lead, , said in a statement. 鈥淭he destruction of our planet is avoidable, but not with this shabby and dishonorable deal.鈥�

Almost as infuriating as the deal鈥檚 inadequate sums is its composition. Too much of that $300 billion will come in the form of loans, which will further burden countries under too much debt. Together, the poorest pay about in debt servicing costs to richer countries, including the backers of multilateral development banks such as the World Bank, according to the Brookings Institution. That cancels out the bulk of the $100 billion climate-finance commitment that rich countries made in 2009 but have only belatedly begun to fulfill. Instead of piling on more debt, rich countries should be canceling it.

And much of what鈥檚 purchased with that $300 billion might be the equivalent of chicken wire and wet newspaper. The World Bank has for the real climate impact of between $24 billion and $41 billion of its financing over the past seven years, according to Oxfam. The bank registers projects at the time of approval rather than at the time of completion, meaning many works of dubious climate benefit 鈥� think 鈥� go on the books as 鈥渃limate finance.鈥�

Haggling over such relatively petty sums is short-sighted and self-defeating. It betrays upside-down priorities that often favor the fossil-fuel producers and rich petrostates that increasingly dominate COP negotiations. The president of COP29鈥檚 host country called oil and gas 鈥�,鈥� and Saudi Arabia was described as a 鈥溾�� in negotiations.

It鈥檚 enough to make you wonder why we should keep holding COPs at all. Several climate leaders, including former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, published an open letter at the start of COP29 calling to . 鈥淚t is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,鈥� they wrote. 鈥淚ts current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.鈥�

Major polluters such as the US, China, and the European Commission didn鈥檛 bother to send leaders to Baku. COP30, in Brazil, will take place during the first year of the second term of once-and-future President Donald Trump, a climate-change denier who plans to pull the US out of the Paris accords (again). At a time when the goal of holding global warming to 1.5掳 Celsius of warming above pre-industrial averages is , the political mood around the world seems to have soured on aggressive climate action.

And yet COPs, even in their present unfit state, are still essential. Requiring buy-in from everybody from the Marshall Islands to Exxon Mobil Corp. is a recipe for agonizingly slow progress, but it at least keeps the conversation going.

And as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague David Fickling has written, the commitments made in these talks still produce benchmarks that governments . Otherwise, why would there be so much ferocious haggling over them? Everybody could simply pledge to spend eleventy gazillion dollars and hit Net Zero by next Tuesday and call it a day. That they don鈥檛 is actually a cause for hope, if you look at it the right 鈥� or naive 鈥� way. But being hopeful isn鈥檛 the same as ignoring that COP29 makes clear the world is still not taking the climate threat seriously enough.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

The idea sounds reasonable in theory, though in practice it鈥檚 a big ask. The internet today isn鈥檛 the vibrant, motley network that came into being after Berners-Lee first fashioned it in 1989, but a landscape dominated by huge companies like Alphabet, Inc.鈥檚 Google and Meta Platforms, Inc.鈥檚 Facebook. In many parts of the world, Facebook is the internet and the only experience that people have of the web. Most apps function as gatekeepers of our personal data.

Berners-Lee wants to flip that dynamic. Over the last decade or so, he鈥檚 watched the web鈥檚 evolution with mounting dismay as we鈥檝e traded our data for greater conveniences, plugging into 鈥渆cosystems鈥� from Apple, Inc. and Google so that we can seamlessly move our profiles 鈥� full of identifying details and interests 鈥� between e-mail clients and online browsers. The platforms insist they鈥檙e protecting all that information and respecting our privacy, but Berners-Lee believes that鈥檚 not enough. Our data is scattered across Big Tech鈥檚 servers and those of countless other companies, out of our control.

The idea for the World Wide Web came to Berners-Lee in 1989 when he was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Initially aimed at helping scientists share data with one another, he released the source code for free to make the web an open platform for all, and it took on a life of its own. In the more than three decades since, to steer the web back to that free and democratic idea.

His answer is a digital wallet, a piece of the internet that stores everything from your medical records to your social media posts, your shopping history to your family photos. But unlike the siloed apps and services we use today, the wallets allow you to control exactly who sees what.

Berners-Lee has been working on this radical idea for five years through a startup called Inrupt. In an early trial, the Belgian region of Flanders is rolling out its system of personal data pods to 7 million citizens, using it as the foundation for delivering social services and sharing data more securely with businesses. Earlier this year, five Belgian hospitals information about patient visits in the data pods, a process which Berners-Lee says can help aid compliance with Europe鈥檚 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

But the initiative is swimming against a powerful tide as artificial intelligence assistants turn into our digital gatekeepers. Microsoft鈥檚 Copilot into Windows and Office, Google is weaving Gemini through its ecosystem, and Apple Intelligence has been baked into the iPhone鈥檚 operating system. These assistants could increasingly shape our choices about what to buy, where to eat, and how to spend our time.

You would think that a web increasingly driven by AI and AI content will be less open and free, but Berners-Lee is optimistic. 鈥淭his is completely within our control,鈥� he tells me. 鈥淚f you go home and write AI models and send out fake news and fill the world with junk, the world will become very bland. If you put out misinformation, it becomes untruthful.鈥�

Instead he鈥檇 like to see more control of our data through decentralized systems like his and more public disclosures about where content comes from. That means more provenance labels on photos and videos to show they are AI-generated.

But the economics of AI development make this effort increasingly fraught. Training advanced AI models requires massive amounts of data 鈥� the kind of personal information that tech giants have spent more than a decade accumulating and exploiting for the benefit of their shareholders, and they won鈥檛 willingly give up that advantage.

Another challenge is how habituated humans have become to trading their personal information for convenience, an exchange that seems increasingly valuable with AI assistants. Scaling a model like Inrupt鈥檚 would require unprecedented cooperation between governments, corporations, and citizens.

None of that means personal data pods are doomed. The Flanders rollout could prove that government-backed systems deliver enough concrete benefits to overcome user inertia. Success with that trial might convince other regions to follow suit, particularly in areas like health care or social services.

But for most of the rest of us on the internet that Berners-Lee started, the future is clear: Our personal information will remain scattered across countless databases, increasingly processed by AI systems that serve the interests of large technology conglomerates. It鈥檚 not that better alternatives don鈥檛 exist, but the companies fashioning our AI futures have too much to lose by giving users control over their digital lives.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

It also isn鈥檛 hard to understand the jubilation. For many Israelis, not just Ben Gvir, memories of Trump鈥檚 first term are fond ones. He collapsed the nuclear deal with Iran that many profoundly distrusted. He also recognized both Jerusalem as Israel鈥檚 capital and the occupied Golan Heights as part of its territory.

But more important to hopes in Israel鈥檚 government than even these happy recollections is the fact that every appointment the soon-to-be second-term US president has made to his foreign policy team so far is either an Iran hawk, a fierce supporter of Israel (or indeed a greater Israel), or both.

Even so, it would be foolish to say we know exactly what Trump will do over the next four years. Ultimately, he is the decider-in-chief. Events, together with his perception of interests 鈥� his own followed by those of the US 鈥� will determine his choices. And it鈥檚 unlikely those decisions will be simple.

For one thing, Trump is likely to find it much more difficult this time around to keep his friends in both Israel and the Gulf States happy. For another, his goals of ending wars and cutting deals may not always align with Israel鈥檚. That鈥檚 less a problem with Lebanon, where the question on an Israeli withdrawal was always 鈥渨hen,鈥� not 鈥渋f.鈥� Assuming Wednesday鈥檚 New York Times report is correct that Israel is already rushing through a ceasefire deal as a pre-inauguration gift to Trump, that will be soon.

Yet the world has changed substantially since 2020 鈥� before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, before Hamas鈥� Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and before the Houthis demonstrated their power to disrupt global shipping from a perch on the Yemeni coast. Iran is also no longer internationally isolated. Today it has deep military ties with Russia, which in turn works in a growing alliance with North Korea and China. Moscow has reportedly sent air defenses to the Houthis. Foreign policy was always a complicated game of chess. But with the more major parties involved, it will have to be played against more opponents, across multiple boards.

That鈥檚 especially true in the Middle East, where popular fury over the plight of Palestinians in Gaza has created genuine constraints on Arab leaders. At the same time, Israel鈥檚 military success in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran have altered threat perceptions. Iran and its so-called axis of resistance have been materially weakened; the Israel Defense Forces are rampant.

So Arab and Turkish leaders have clarified their public positions since the US election, too. On Monday, Saudi Arabia鈥檚 Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, called Israel鈥檚 military operations in Gaza 鈥渃ollective genocide,鈥� a term he previously avoided. He also warned against any further attacks on Iran.

This is the same Islamic Republic of Iran that, in 2017, MBS compared to Hitler鈥檚 Germany. At the time, Saudi Arabia was engaged in a brutal proxy war against the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen. Two years later, Iranian drones proved their ability to destroy Saudi oil assets with ease. But MBS has since wound down the kingdom鈥檚 military intervention in Yemen and restored diplomatic relations with Tehran.

On Wednesday, Turkey鈥檚 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country had cut all relations with Israel. Erdogan never misses a chance to grandstand on Muslim resentment toward the Jewish state, yet he had until now avoided breaking ties. These are all clear signals from leaders friendly to Trump that they鈥檙e unwilling to be part of maximalist Israeli policies.

Of course, what politicians say on the public stage is often a poor guide to their actual plans. Arab leaders may have condemned Israel over Gaza, for example, but they were happy to see Hamas and Hezbollah damaged and, notably, haven鈥檛 terminated the Abraham Accords normalizing relations with Israel, signed during Trump鈥檚 previous term. They even quietly helped Israel defend itself against Iranian missile attacks.

鈥淭here is a whole element of theater to this,鈥� said Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Jerusalem鈥檚 deputy mayor and a special envoy for innovation in the Israeli foreign ministry, reminding me of the origins of the accords.

It was 2019. Netanyahu had 鈥� note the current echo 鈥� announced plans to annex the Jordan Valley, an area accounting for about 22% of the West Bank. He said he had US backing for the move, but faced with an international outcry the Trump administration persuaded Israel to give up on the plan. In exchange, Netanyahu got an agreement from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to formally normalize relations with his country. The UAE was later joined by Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Saudi Arabia had been set to sign a still more consequential deal until Hamas iced that possibility with its Oct. 7 attack, and the inevitable Israeli response that followed.

Saudi Arabia will ultimately play ball with Trump on Israel, says Hassan-Nahoum, because the kingdom 鈥渋s interested in one thing: a defense pact with the US so they are protected from Iran.鈥� I鈥檓 not so sure. That was true in 2020, but I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 as binary a choice anymore. MBS鈥� guiding focus is now the stability he needs for his Vision 2030 plan to diversify the Saudi economy and create jobs. Iran, meanwhile, has become less scary to the kingdom, though that could of course change if it breaks out to build nuclear weapons.

A major attack on Iran鈥檚 oil infrastructure or nuclear program 鈥� and the retaliation against Saudi assets and tanker shipping lanes it would likely prompt 鈥� would put MBS鈥� new top priority at risk. And though he may not care much about the Palestinians, his father King Salman bin Abdulaziz does. So do most other Saudis. That could limit cooperation with Israel.

Trump may again be able to square all these circles with the kind of transactional deal-making that proved so successful in the case of the Abraham Accords. But if so, Netanyahu again won鈥檛 be able to have it all: annexation and occupation for the Palestinian territories, support for a decisive attack on Iran, and integration with the Arab world.

Sacrificing the last of these for the former would be a poor long-term choice for Israel, as well as a human tragedy for ordinary Palestinians. It鈥檚 worth remembering that Oct. 7 revealed a serious flaw in the Abraham Accords: They pretended the Palestinian question didn鈥檛 exist.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

The company is gearing up to announce the device as early as March and will position it as a command center for the home, according to people with knowledge of the effort. The product, code-named J490, also will spotlight the new Apple Intelligence AI platform, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is confidential.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is betting that the product can make Apple a force in the smart home segment, where the company has trailed behind Alphabet, Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc. in recent years. He has made the device a priority for the company鈥檚 engineering and design departments, and is pushing to get it to market after more than three years of development.

A representative for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.

The device has a roughly six-inch screen and looks like a square iPad. It鈥檚 about the size of two iPhones side by side, with a thick edge around the display. There鈥檚 also a camera at the top front, a rechargeable built-in battery and internal speakers. Apple plans to offer it in silver and black options.

The product has a touch interface that looks like a blend of the Apple Watch operating system and the iPhone鈥檚 recently launched StandBy mode. But the company expects most people to use their voice to interact with the device, relying on the Siri digital assistant and Apple Intelligence. The hardware was designed around App Intents, a system that lets AI precisely control applications and tasks, which is set to debut in the coming months.

The product will be marketed as a way to control home appliances, chat with Siri, and hold intercom sessions via Apple鈥檚 FaceTime software. It will also be loaded with Apple apps, including ones for web browsing, listening to news updates and playing music. Users will be able to access their notes and calendar information, and the device can turn into a slideshow display for their photos.

A first for Apple, the device will compete with Amazon鈥檚 Echo Show and Echo Hub smart displays, as well as Google鈥檚 Nest Hub. It鈥檚 also reminiscent of Meta Platforms, Inc.鈥檚 Portal, a failed videoconferencing device from the social media giant. Apple is already planning a more expensive follow-up version with a robotic limb that can move the screen around. Apple plans to market that technology as a home companion with an AI personality.

The higher-end product could be priced at as much as $1,000 depending on the components it uses, the people said. The display-only device will be far less than that, approaching the cost of competitors鈥� products. The Echo Show 8 is priced at $150, while the Echo Hub is $180. The Nest Hub Max costs $230.

Apple has designed different attachments for the device, including ones that affix the screens onto walls like a classic home-security panel. There will be bases with additional speakers that can be placed in the kitchen, on a nightstand or on a desk. Apple imagines the FaceTime feature being used while cooking or for videoconferencing during work meetings.

A person familiar with its development said the product is designed to bring Siri and Apple Intelligence to life in a way that hasn鈥檛 happened before. Last month, the company rolled out a limited set of Apple Intelligence features for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. More advanced capabilities 鈥� like generative AI for images and an integration with OpenAI鈥檚 ChatGPT 鈥� are coming in December.

The screen device, which runs a new operating system code-named Pebble, will include sensors to determine how close a person is. It will then automatically adjust its features depending on the distance. For example, if users are several feet away, it might show the temperature. As they approach, the interface can switch to a panel for adjusting the home thermostat.

The newly designed operating system will also include a customizable home screen where users can run widgets for checking stock tickers, the weather, and appointments. Or they can configure the screen to highlight key home controls. There will also be a dock for quickly launching favorite apps and an iPhone-like home screen grid of software icons.

During development, Apple discussed launching an app store as part of the device, but it recently decided to exclude this feature 鈥� at least in the initial version.

The product will tap into Apple鈥檚 long-standing smart home framework, HomeKit, which can control third-party thermostats, lights, locks, security cameras, sensors, sprinklers, fans, and other equipment. Apple supports hundreds of accessories with HomeKit and offers iCloud online storage plans for home security footage.

Security will be a particular focus for the new device. It will deliver security alerts and display camera footage, including video from smart doorbells. It also will serve as an intercom system between rooms in homes with multiple Apple displays.

Apple has explored building its own line of smart home accessories, including an indoor security camera that could double as a baby monitor. The idea would be to emphasize privacy controls, one of Apple鈥檚 hallmarks. If the smart home display is successful, the company could prioritize plans to bring such accessories to market.

Apple also is working on a system that will let the home device sense how many people are nearby. That approach relies in part on external sensors that could be placed in wall outlets in the vicinity of the device, but those accessories may come later or get canceled altogether.

The product will be a standalone device, meaning it can operate almost entirely on its own. But it will require an iPhone for some tasks, including parts of the initial setup. It will also work with Apple鈥檚 Handoff feature, which lets users trigger a function on one device and then continue on their iPhone after walking away.

The project is a collaboration between several Apple teams, including the home hardware engineering group led by executive Matt Costello and the software engineering ecosystems group run by Arun Mathias. Mr.听Costello and Mr.听Mathias are known as the 鈥渆xecutive sponsors鈥� responsible for development of the product. Apple鈥檚 industrial and human interface design teams also are heavily involved.

Ultimately, Apple hopes it can sell multiple units of the device to consumers, who will place them around the house and use them several times a day. 鈥� Bloomberg

Hinton鈥檚 prediction was based on Trump鈥檚 abilities as an entertainer and the way he鈥檚 inspired faith that he can lower the price of a cup of coffee and fatten Americans鈥� pocketbooks.

Some of the faith in the new president-elect and his economic promises comes from a sense that he 鈥渢ells it like it is鈥� 鈥� that he speaks with blunt honesty, even as he insists he won the 2020 election and propagates numerous other fictions. This paradox has confused pundits, pollsters, and other observers since Trump鈥檚 rise to political prominence over a decade ago. That he even got a chance to run for president a third time 鈥� despite losing in 2020 and despite many of his hand-picked candidates losing in 2022 鈥� raises questions about our vulnerability to cults of personality.

Most of what passes for 鈥渢elling it like it is鈥� comes down to Trump making completely subjective judgments with a tone of certainty 鈥� that some of his enemies are 鈥渓osers鈥� or 鈥渕orons鈥� or 鈥渓ow IQ鈥� or that one of his rivals somehow has a face that鈥檚 not fit for office. Some might call this brutal honesty, but there鈥檚 nothing honest about it. The Week Magazine calls it 鈥渕aniacal overconfidence鈥� which 鈥渟ounds to some people like forthrightness.鈥� In that sense, he is telling it like it is 鈥� in his own self-serving head.

鈥淭he issue with narcissists is the difference between truth and falsehood has no meaning,鈥� says University of Chicago behavioral scientist Dario Maestripieri. They only care about what helps them. And Trump鈥檚 narcissism makes him charismatic, he said.

The certitude can make Trump sound like he鈥檚 in the know. And some enjoy the insults hurled at other people 鈥� a part of the show that can be entertaining, and also flattering, since there鈥檚 an implication that Trump鈥檚 supporters aren鈥檛 among the morons. And focusing on categories of people such as undocumented immigrants gives some people a target on which to blame their own problems. That particular group also inspired outrage among immigrants who went through all the hurdles to enter the US legally.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein had a slightly different slant recently, focusing on what he calls Trump鈥檚 鈥� a sometimes magnetic disregard for what people might think. Consider, wrote Klein, Trump鈥檚 strange behavior during a rally in the Philadelphia suburbs, when he stopped a question session and for more than 30 minutes.

That same unusual self-assurance was on display in Trump鈥檚 appearance on Joe Rogan鈥檚 podcast. After watching the entire three-hour interview, I didn鈥檛 once witness Trump delivering the kind of refreshing honesty associated with the phrase 鈥渢ell it like it is,鈥� but he didn鈥檛 tell many clear-cut lies either. In fact, he usually didn鈥檛 finish a thought. Instead, he rambled and bloviated, and bragged.

When asked what it was like to move into the White House in 2016, he mentioned the Lincoln Bedroom 鈥� then expounded, as a tour guide might, about the items in the room and the personal lives of members of the Lincoln family. He also talked with bold confidence about climate, nuclear power and wind power, before going on a confusing diversion about how central California was once covered by giant lake.

For a three-hour interview, it was weirdly uninformative 鈥� but people I know who get their news from Rogan鈥檚 podcast say they only consume it passively while doing other things, or they see snippets later. That represents a radical change in the way people consume media. With people half tuned in, Trump鈥檚 ability to speak with confidence about so many topics might look impressive 鈥� if you鈥檙e not listening too closely, he might sound knowledgeable.

When he speaks, Trump is often cryptic, or vague, issuing his subjective views as if they were facts. When he does speak in clear, declarative sentences, he tends get ridiculed 鈥� as happened in the presidential debate against Kamala Harris when he said that immigrants were eating cats and dogs.

More often, he resorts to innuendo and hints of secret knowledge 鈥� about election fraud, foreign leaders or the origin of the COVID pandemic. For example, when Joe Rogan pressed him for a real answer on whether he really believed 2020 was stolen, he first said something unintelligible, then argued election fraud is possible in theory. Rogan later endorsed him.

Trump won with surprising decisiveness, despite his evasiveness and failure to justify his extraordinary claims. It鈥檚 tempting to conclude that we live in some kind of post-truth society. Perhaps, instead, we live in a society obsessed the truth, but we鈥檝e lost our appreciation for explanatory depth and different perspectives. At the same time, we鈥檙e just as persuaded by a speaker鈥檚 confidence as ever.

Angus Fletcher, an Ohio State University English professor with a background in neuroscience, said people hearing just one side of a story in their knowledge. Once they get another perspective, their confidence goes down. 鈥淎 lot of disagreements can be solved just by filling in the missing pieces of information.鈥�

Issues such as immigration look different from various angles 鈥� from the perspective of a refugee in need of a home, a teacher struggling to reach students who can鈥檛 speak English, and local people trying to accommodate the newcomers. 鈥淎 narrative has different sides to it,鈥� he said, 鈥渁s opposed to a math problem, which has only one answer.鈥�

Envisioning reality from various perspectives takes time 鈥� the kind of time some used to devote to reading entire newspaper stories or even a book, he said. 鈥淭hese are skills people are losing,鈥� as they get more news from social media, short videos, and long, one-sided podcasts.

Hinton, the anthropologist, predicts the MAGA movement will dissipate once Trump leaves office because nobody else matches his ability to persuade and entertain. In the meantime, regaining the ability to look at the world through different perspectives might not make America unified again, but it could at least help us break free of cults of personality and start to understand each other.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Republicans had an exceptionally good night, taking the Senate and likely holding their narrow majority in the House, but their paper-thin majority should not be mistaken for a mandate. The challenges facing the country can only be tackled effectively with bipartisan compromise.

One irony of the outcome is that, on almost every issue that voters identified as a priority, Trump鈥檚 proposals would likely make matters worse. The goal for Congress over the next four years should be persuading the president to avoid these bad ideas and offering him better alternatives. Trump himself should recognize that what plays in a campaign is often far different than what works in government.

Take inflation, a top concern for most voters. Trump鈥檚 plans for comprehensive tariffs, regressive tax cuts, a devalued dollar, and a newly politicized Federal Reserve seem tailor-made to push prices up, just when the Fed has largely succeeded in getting them under control. Enacting any element of this agenda would be irresponsible, not least because it would worsen the country鈥檚 spiraling fiscal problems, to the tune of perhaps in additional debt over a decade.

Lawmakers, including Republicans, should have every interest in averting this course. They could assert Congress鈥� rightful power to refuse his across-the-board tariffs, for instance, while offering the president more targeted ones focused on national security and market access. A prudent revision of the expiring 2017 tax cuts 鈥� one that pairs a higher corporate tax rate with more generous expensing rules, say 鈥� might also be feasible. Forming a fiscal commission would be a good way to get on with the hard choices needed to forestall a looming budget crisis.

On immigration, too, Trump鈥檚 proposals are hugely misguided. It鈥檚 true that the current administration has made a hash of things at the border. But the mass-deportation effort Trump has theorized would be (in addition to cruel) prohibitively costly, while also impeding economic growth and doing little to fix the underlying problem. Legislators should instead revive a bipartisan reform effort, focused on popular policies such as easing the path to citizenship for foreign graduates of US colleges combined with more restrictive enforcement measures. They should also push Trump to focus on the quasi-effective policies from his last term, such as the Migrant Protection Protocols, and avoid needlessly inflammatory rhetoric.

A final priority must be to thwart the corruption that marred Trump鈥檚 first term. The president is entitled to his own agenda, but not to his own rules. (The recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents sweeping immunity could be interpreted to give Trump enormous latitude, but it may be tested in the courts.) Public servants should do their duty while availing themselves of whistleblower protections if asked to engage in misconduct. Reporters and watchdog groups should be on the lookout for Trump鈥檚 reflexive financial malfeasance. Congress should pass levelheaded laws that respond to the legitimate concerns of Trump鈥檚 voters, while also opposing him as needed, as Mitch McConnell, the departing Republican Senate leader, did during Trump鈥檚 first term. Republicans must not allow the president to obliterate norms of American democracy.

Democrats, for their part, might ask themselves how exactly they lost to Trump, an ailing 78-year-old who much of the country despises. It probably wasn鈥檛 great to cover up President Joe Biden鈥檚 infirmities until they became undeniable on live TV. It wasn鈥檛 ideal that party elders replaced him with Harris, a nominee who had received no electoral votes and had failed decisively in a previous presidential run.

But for now, the country will simply need to deal with Trump, and begin to restrain his worst excesses, one more time.

Dealing with a reckless president is an exhausting job, but it can and must be done 鈥� and it鈥檚 a job for members of both parties.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

A cursory search of X (formerly Twitter) brought up several viral videos suggesting that FEMA was bulldozing bodies under the rubble, but press reports (https://tinyurl.com/25zxhkz6) in the Washington Post were unclear about exactly where and how the rumors were spreading. They were just鈥� spreading. That posed something even more troubling:

How could you hold online platforms accountable for conspiracy theories if you didn鈥檛 know where they were being shared?

The answer is 鈥淵ou can鈥檛,鈥� because the people studying the flow of disinformation are being sued by those who seem to benefit from the spread of 鈥渁lternative facts.鈥�

A raft of lawsuits and congressional investigations against several groups studying disinformation in the US, coming largely from Republican lawmakers and tech billionaire Elon Musk, have had a chilling effect on the broader effort to tackle viral falsehoods. These research groups study how lies spread online and alert the public when they find coordinated campaigns to mislead people. They analyze networks of accounts, map viral posts, and document who creates and shares misleading content.

Why the aggression? In part, because of the way that some of the disinformation campaigns tracked by these groups have also aligned with conservative positions.

Take the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of Republican leaders and influencers, including Donald Trump himself, questioned many of the social-distancing measures and mask mandates, and created the vaccine skepticism that became part of conservative messaging. When anti-disinformation groups called on social media platforms to remove posts with COVID misinformation (which they did), Republicans saw that as a partisan attack. When they did the same with posts about the 鈥渟tolen鈥� 2020 election, that was seen as yet another attack on conservatives.

The tech giants have attracted some ire for this, but it鈥檚 the small anti-disinformation groups that are most vulnerable, especially if Trump gets voted in on Nov. 5. There has already been a noticeable decline in their research output the past year 鈥� hence the lack of information about how the FEMA rumors were spreading. They鈥檙e too busy defending against lawsuits.

A standout example was the unwinding in June of the Stanford Internet Observatory, which was founded in 2019 by Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer of Facebook, after his frustration that the social network wasn鈥檛 more transparent about Russian influence operations on its platform during the 2016 US presidential election. His new group went on to uncover large networks of fake Facebook accounts being used to warp political discourse. But that work came with a price.

The Observatory found itself having to pay in lawyers鈥� fees to defend itself against several lawsuits; one 2023 suit from Trump adviser Stephen Miller claimed that the Observatory and other research groups 鈥渃onspired with the federal government to conduct a mass surveillance and censorship operation targeting the political speech of millions of Americans.鈥� (Stanford University in June that the group had been dismantled but admitted its founding grants would 鈥渟oon be exhausted.鈥� It didn鈥檛 respond to a request for comment.)

Lawsuits, congressional subpoenas and probes have hit similar organizations. They have names like Graphika, the University of Washington Disinformation Lab, Atlantic Council鈥檚 Digital Forensic Research Lab, Global Disinformation Index, NewsGuard, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The latter is fighting a lawsuit from Musk over a it published in September 2023, which claimed Musk鈥檚 X was profiting from neo-Nazi accounts.* Musk has also , a liberal media watchdog group, for reporting in November 2023 that ads from major brands on X appeared next to Nazi-related posts, a case that is still ongoing.

Even some government initiatives have been targeted, including the State Department鈥檚 Global Engagement Center, which tackled foreign information but now .

Shining a spotlight on how disinformation spreads isn鈥檛 illegal, yet these groups鈥� critics have dubbed them a 鈥渃ensorship industrial complex,鈥� a sentiment that plays dangerously into Trump鈥檚 about Americans having an 鈥渆nemy within.鈥�

Trump has to 鈥渟hatter the left-wing censorship regime鈥� if reelected, while the proposes ending all government funding for disinformation research. Doing so would leave America more vulnerable to manipulation and confusion, particularly at a time when social media firms have, partly in response to the growing , on their trust and safety teams and access to researchers, most notably with Facebook鈥檚 in August of its trend-monitoring tool CrowdTangle.

In early October, the head of the US intelligence community of a serious threat from foreign actors including Russia, Iran, and China, aimed at 鈥渦ndermining trust鈥� in polls and the US democratic process, ostensibly through social media.

The coming election is set to be one of the closest for decades, threatening a raft of new conspiracy theories about a rigged vote. Calling disinformation research 鈥渃ensorship鈥� erodes the already-scant checks and balances we have on large technology platforms. It leaves Americans more exposed to the next storm.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

*The court dismissed Musk鈥檚 case in March 2024, ruling the billionaire had tried to 鈥減unish鈥� critics. Musk has appealed.