K is the shape of oligarchy open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

Master and Commander! A reactionary-coded period piece that suited the Global War on Terror moment of its making...but it was a fun dudes-rock movie all the same! www.bangbangpod.com/p/master-and...

“Something like fascism allows the billionaires to keep hoarding wealth even as growth slows and the working classes get squeezed. And the result of that is what economists call a k-shaped economy.” open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“we’ve become a surplus army in the eyes of oligarchs and the rentier class, who are the main beneficiaries of public policy.” open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“The imperatives of capital accumulation—that is, sustaining a system of transnational oligarchy in an era of low growth—requires systems of repression that turn state power against us.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/imperial-e...

“The imperatives of capital accumulation—that is, sustaining a system of transnational oligarchy in an era of low growth—requires systems of repression that turn state power against us.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/imperial-e...

In “Imperial End Times,” I present my theory of (nearly) everything, explaining how global war-making, far-right politics, the dehumanization of our neighbors, and domes inequality knit together into a single story open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

The spread of imperialist statecraft. The rise of repressive capital. And the consolidation of oligarchy as the corollary of permanent war. All that and more in my public lecture tonight, available as a livestream open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

The spread of imperialist statecraft. The rise of repressive capital. And the consolidation of oligarchy as the corollary of permanent war. All that and more in my public lecture tonight, available as a livestream open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“The form of capitalism that dominates today--speculative, asset-inflating, rentier-based--doesn’t need a mass workforce...But surplus labor exists to be controlled through surveillance, repression, incarceration, and erasure.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/industrial...

Data centers are peripheralizing the core

“The form of capitalism that dominates today--speculative, asset-inflating, rentier-based--doesn’t need a mass workforce...But surplus labor exists to be controlled through surveillance, repression, incarceration, and erasure.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/industrial...

"AI expands the surplus labor population at the same time that it makes the policing and repression of surplus populations more efficient."

Imperialist geopolitics. Giving a public lecture on this in a few days open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“What this means is that China cannot be hegemon and likely never will be—that’s just an anachronistic way of thinking about the world.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/chinese-he...

A hegemon is supposed to provide public goods that the US no longer even pretends to deliver. China doesn’t want hegemony as we traditionally understand it, but it might also be redefining the kind of public goods that underpin global order www.un-diplomatic.com/p/chinese-he...

Not sure I like the phrasing “cold peace,” but I love that smart analysts are coming closer and closer to my analysis and prescriptions in The Rivalry Peril www.ft.com/content/63aa...

From China summit realism to counter-terrorism sexual anxieties to Graham Platner’s explanation of the working class, the episode’s got it all! www.un-diplomatic.com/p/china-summ...

Great intervention from Quinn Slobodian on the pros/cons of “imperialism" to describe the digital terrain. My only dissent is that the tech fraction of capital is part of the crisis of accumulation feeling the actually-imperialist statecraft proliferating www.theideasletter.org/essay/digita...

Giving a public lecture next week that’s only supposed to be 30-40 minutes but is currently sitting at around 4 hours…time to kill some darlings open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“The techniques perfected during the War on Terror were limited by scope and capacity—fascist targeting of certain types of brown-and-bearded people, but not everyone. Targeting everyone wasn’t even possible. Gorka + AI have solved that problem” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/no-youre-t...

“The techniques perfected during the War on Terror were limited by scope and capacity—fascist targeting of certain types of brown-and-bearded people, but not everyone. Targeting everyone wasn’t even possible. Gorka + AI have solved that problem” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/no-youre-t...

I’ll be giving a public lecture next week about the geopolitics of class war at the NZ Fabian Society. If you’re in Wellington, come in person! If you’re elsewhere, it'll be live-streamed on YouTube www.fabians.org.nz/index.php?op...

Awesome finally getting to chat with Nils Gilman about the new Non-Aligned Movement and a global order after American hegemony www.un-diplomatic.com/p/a-non-alig...

Good little intervention: “the utopian impulse to abstraction can never be fully exorcised from radical politics...to gesture towards the alternative worlds and ways of being beyond the ambit of immediate need.” newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Awesome finally getting to chat with Nils Gilman about the new Non-Aligned Movement and a global order after American hegemony www.un-diplomatic.com/p/a-non-alig...

“Insofar as distant regions appear stable...US strategy credits itself... But such a claim is one of faith, not necessarily proof, and its promise of security gives way time and again to a widening scarcity of security, even for the dominant power.” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a creative genius with good intentions. But there is no limit to the contempt I feel for an artist who takes Biggie’s “Ten Crack Commandments” and repackages it to celebrate a warmonger for president. www.un-diplomatic.com/p/earnest-li...

I loved Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton when it came out, but it’s way more cringe and politically problematic than I remember! Hilarious convo w/ comedian @hiremeimfunny.bsky.social on the latest episode www.bangbangpod.com/p/hamilton-a...

“K” is both the shape of immiseration and the permanent war economy. open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“K” is both the shape of immiseration and the permanent war economy. open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

My latest. America is giving dying mall vibes. open.substack.com/pub/karenatt...

Officially part of the flannel revolution. Half Cholo, half Graham Platner

“In the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself.” Denzel Washington dropping the knowledge we need in Crimson Tide (1995). Awesome to chop it up again with @andrewfacini.com! www.bangbangpod.com/p/crimson-ti...

“In the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself.” Denzel Washington dropping the knowledge we need in Crimson Tide (1995). Awesome to chop it up again with @andrewfacini.com! www.bangbangpod.com/p/crimson-ti...

“Maritime Freedom Construct” is the fourth Trump initiative that turns multilateralism into a form of imperialist ordering. “Pax Silica” same shit. “Board of Peace” same shit. These are predatory arrangements that try to coordinate inter-elite power for primitive accumulation

NZ is governed like that stupid company-state planet that Andor is from

“good liberals who refuse class consciousness will fracture in one of two directions: Become the thing they claim to hate, or else crash out as they reckon with the discovery that reality is far from what they’d always believed.” open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

“The crisis of American agriculture is a policy choice. The farm sector of the economy is a victim of the imperial presidency and the national security state. The permanent war economy crowds out the agricultural economy.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/national-s...

“The crisis of American agriculture is a policy choice. The farm sector of the economy is a victim of the imperial presidency and the national security state. The permanent war economy crowds out the agricultural economy.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/national-s...

On Iran’s appropriation of Nipsey Hussle and the anti-imperialism of fools www.un-diplomatic.com/p/a-realism-...

In the US, oligarchy requires the permanent war economy (PWE), but the PWE requires capital surplus inflows from rest-of-world. Oligarchs abroad also require the US PWE, but their capital surpluses are also the source of asset inflation in rich countries, making housing inequality worse

“I want to be delicate because I understand the impulse from which the campist view arises and I agree with a chunk of its analysis. But it’s too simplifying, too narcissistic. An anti-imperialism of fools” open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...

For years, the Navy has planned to replace 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (20 operational missile tubes each) with 12 new Columbia-class SSBNs (16 tubes each). Now, with no discussion, it’s trying to sneak in two more, at a cost of $11 billion-plus apiece (excluding SLBMs and warheads).

It’s getting easier and easier to blunt power projection these days

"Any organization or ideology that supports perpetuating a regional power’s military primacy—especially when that power is liable for crimes against humanity—is on the wrong side and needs to get right.” www.un-diplomatic.com/p/does-j-str...

“Multipolarity isn’t a hypothesis.” Spain’s prime minister gave a world-reordering speech in Beijing and mainstream media is just out to lunch www.un-diplomatic.com/p/multipolar...

Read the shit out of this one

OUT: Carney's speech. IN: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speech in Beijing "navigate this post-Rupture world in which Washington’s reliability can no longer be assumed, and in which Beijing’s partnership, however complicated, cannot be refused" www.sinicapodcast.com/p/pm-pedro-s...

This is just flagrant incorrect, and a sign that OP has not read any of the relevant literature he claims is non-existent. The most generous thing I can say is that it’s an ungenerous category error to treat cutting defense--a prescription--as your opp’s diagnosis of world politics