Pillar
Sovereignty
A nation is sovereign when it can still choose: what it produces, what it depends on, who enters and on what terms, and who holds the switch. Productive sovereignty is measured in mines, grids, chips, satellites and budgets, not in speeches.
Reference essay, read it first: Sovereignty Is a Supply Chain. A nation is not sovereign because its leaders say so. It is sovereign when it can still choose what it depends on, and survive the day someone else flips the switch.
Themes in this pillar: Nations & Sovereignty · About the author
19 essays
Sovereignty Is a Supply Chain
A nation is not sovereign because its leaders say so. It is sovereign when it can still choose what it depends on, and survive the day someone else flips the switch.
France just signed a lithium mine into law. Now comes the hard part
A decree in this morning's Journal officiel grants Imerys the Beauvoir concession until 2075. It is good news. It is also the easiest of the permits this mine will need.
A sanctions law, signed in September and waived in October
The president's order implementing the Graham Act imposes 500 percent duties on Russian goods in one section and waives them in another. Read line by line, it shows what Congress wrote, what survived, and why diesel prices won.
China grew 4.5 percent while its builders stopped building
Beijing's third-quarter numbers show an economy running on exports and factories while property investment falls by a fifth and households barely spend. The statistics bureau itself names the problem.
France's dry pumps have a brand name
On October 18, 595 French filling stations had no road fuel at all and diesel averaged €2.364 a liter. Most of the stations running short belonged to the one network selling below the market. That is not a coincidence economists would find surprising.
Europe's decline is not a plot. It is a habit
It is tempting to believe Brussels wants Europe weaker so it can rule more. The record shows something less sinister and harder to fix: every crisis enlarges the center's toolbox, while the reform that would actually restore growth keeps waiting.
El Salvador now reports France's murder rate. It is not counting the same dead
Eighty-two homicides in a country of six million, against 975 in a country of sixty-nine million: on paper, the same rate. The transformation in El Salvador is real. The comparison is not, and the reason says something about sovereignty.
Beijing wants to register its AI know-how at the border, but not its open-source models
China proposes adding 23 AI technologies to its export-control catalog, and the same week Taiwan says it will criminalize unlicensed AI chip shipments to China. The interesting detail is what Beijing chose to leave out.
Signed, then waived in 28 days: Congress wrote a Russia sanctions law and handed the off switch to the White House
The Graham Act became law on September 18. On October 16, the president used the law's own waiver clause to suspend nearly all of it, a week after Treasury had already licensed Russian diesel. The scandal, if there is one, was written into the bill.
"Nvidia's week in Europe: London gets a gift, Berlin writes a check"
In one week, Nvidia pledged $250 million in compute to British AI safety research, and Germany prepared a nine-figure public outlay for an industrial AI pact built on Nvidia's chips. Both are sold as sovereignty. Only one asks taxpayers to pay for it.
Canadians are grading Carney on Trump, not on their grocery bill
Two October polls put Mark Carney's Liberals far ahead. The same week, Canada lost jobs for a second straight month. Read closely, the numbers describe a country that rewards its leader for standing firm abroad while giving him poor marks at home.
Mike Rogers found free trade again. Michigan found it first
Michigan's Republican Senate nominee now says "Canada is not our enemy" and wants the tariff war over. He is right. The interesting question is why a candidate needed voters to remind him, and why a 1930 statute let the fight go this far.
Dear French friends, the denial is about the bill, not the waiting room
France is right that America's health system can ruin a family. America is right that France pays almost the highest taxes in the developed world for an economy that keeps falling behind. Each country sees the other's weakness clearly. Only one of them has stopped looking at its own.
China says it is leaving the dollar. Its dollars may just have moved to Canada
Official data show Beijing's Treasury holdings at an 18-year low. Canada's custodians, meanwhile, hold nearly $600 billion in U.S. debt. The likeliest story is not de-dollarization but disguise, and it says something about who really holds the leverage.
Duralex is saved. The 10,523 people who tried to save it first are not
A French court handed the famous glassworks to a new owner, with public money attached. The small savers who lent it €7 million out of patriotism will lose everything. They were warned. That is not the end of the lesson.
Lagarde may leave the ECB for Davos before France votes. The timing is the message
Reuters reports the World Economic Forum could name Christine Lagarde its chair as soon as November, opening the way to choose her successor while Emmanuel Macron is still at the table. It is legal, it is tidy, and it quietly takes a decision away from the next French president.
Trump's $5,000 Tariff Check Meets the CBO's Numbers
The promise costs about $1 trillion a year by the president's own estimate. Tariffs brought in $172 billion last year, after $130 billion in court ordered refunds.
France's €30.9 billion vote was theater. The real budget is being written elsewhere
The National Assembly approved France's 2027 payment to the EU by 111 votes to 93, with barely a third of deputies present. Its own budget rapporteur admitted the vote changes nothing about the obligation. The decision that matters, the EU's 2028–2034 budget, is being negotiated by governments right now.
A speed limit in orbit, and the question of who owns the switch
For roughly a day in October, Ukrainian drones flying faster than 100 mph lost their Starlink link. Kyiv saw politics, Musk pointed at the Pentagon, and nobody has proved either. The lesson does not depend on who flipped it.
The Sunday letter
One email on Sunday: the essay of the week and the question worth carrying into the next one, from both sides of the Atlantic. The letter is paused for now: no signups and no sends while the site is rebuilt.
Signups are paused while the site is rebuilt. No letter is being sent.