Congratulations to my friend @LulaOficial on his electoral victory. Democracy and multilateralism have won in Brazil. Europe’s partnership with Brazil is thriving. We will remain by your side for the years to come. Together we will keep working closely for free and open trade. A rules-based global order. And strong ambitions for our climate.

Lula Lula Lula! Congrats to Brazil for standing up against authoritarianism once again! 🇧🇷 ⚖️✌️

Most Western democracies have been hacked. Not with code. With institutional architecture. Let me show you how it works, using the most advanced example: the European Union. First, how it works. Once every five years, you vote for a European Parliament that cannot even initiate legislation. The body that proposes laws is the Commission: 27 commissioners nobody elected, appointed after backroom bargaining between heads of state. Bills are then negotiated between the Commission, Parliament and Council in "trilogues", closed-door meetings where the real decisions get made. A law that will apply to 450 million people goes through corridors that 99.9% of them will never see. Now look at who's in those corridors. Brussels has become the lobbying capital of the world: nearly 18,000 organizations on the transparency register, tens of thousands of lobbyists, more than 50 for every single MEP. And that's just the declared part. Add the revolving door: a former MEP only has to wait six months before becoming a lobbyist to the EU himself. The real problem is distance. A national MP who votes for a law that ruins the farmers in his district runs into them at the market on Saturday. In Brussels, the decision-maker never meets the people who live with his decisions. But he meets lobbyists every day: at lunch, at cocktails, at conferences. So the system doesn't optimize for the wellbeing of the people. It optimizes for the interests of whoever is in the room. You don't even need corruption for that, incentives are enough. Although sometimes, as Qatargate showed, there's corruption too. The result: the system has a structural incentive to accept things the people would never vote for. Take Mercosur. Twenty-five years of negotiations. France votes against it in the Council in January 2026 and gets outvoted. To keep national parliaments from blocking it, the Commission splits the deal into two texts, including a trade agreement that only needs a vote in Brussels. The European Parliament itself writes, in black and white, that this split circumvents the right of national parliaments, and refers the deal to the EU Court of Justice. The Commission's response: it has been applying the agreement provisionally since May 1, 2026, without waiting for the Court's opinion. Farmers were protesting outside Parliament. They lost anyway. And remember the one time the people were actually asked about Europe directly: in 2005, France and the Netherlands rejected the European Constitution. The text came back two years later as the Lisbon Treaty, ratified by parliaments. No more referendums. But the worst of it is immigration. In 2015, relocation quotas were imposed by qualified majority on countries that had voted against them. Since June 12, 2026, the Pact on Migration and Asylum applies across the entire Union, with its "mandatory solidarity" mechanism: you take people in, or you pay. Not a single European people has ever been consulted directly on this, even though it's the issue that is transforming our societies most profoundly. And this is where we have to talk about the most sophisticated piece of the machine: George Soros. Soros understood before anyone else that you don't need to win elections if you shape the ecosystem around the people who make decisions. His network, the Open Society Foundations, describes itself as the largest private funder of advocacy groups in the world. In Brussels, it runs its own lobbying arm aimed at EU institutions, the Open Society European Policy Institute. Here's what we know from internal documents leaked in 2016: a document titled "Reliable allies in the European Parliament" listed more than 200 MEPs. Strategy papers described building "inside-track groups" to caucus "internal allies" who could advance their goals in their daily work. Training sessions were organized for MEPs on how to counter so-called populist parties. The mechanism is brutally elegant. Think tanks produce the "expertise". NGOs produce the "demand from civil society". Legal NGOs litigate in the courts. Funded media outlets produce the narrative. The Brussels decision-maker, cut off from the population, hears the same message from every direction and ends up believing that this is what people want. And the craziest part: the institutions fund the loop themselves. Between 2021 and 2023, the EU paid around €7.4 billion to NGOs, and the European Court of Auditors found the use of that money insufficiently transparent. It even came out that the Commission had funded NGOs to lobby MEPs in favor of its own Green Deal legislation. The institution pays "civil society" to ask it to do what it already wanted to do. All of this is legal. That's exactly what makes it a hack and not a crime. The system works exactly as designed, except nobody designed it for the people anymore. The patch is simple to state and hard to impose: bring decisions back closer to the people who bear them, hold referendums on issues that change a civilization, create a mandatory register for every influence actor, NGOs included, with their funding sources, and shut the revolving door. Until that happens, European democracy will remain what it has become: a user interface sitting on top of a system that runs for someone else.

I agree with pretty much all you are saying. The problem is he’s not in charge the civil servants are, and it’s a runaway train staffed by people you wouldn’t let run the village fete. Not one of them knows how to make a profit. It’s all charity workers and unionists. They have no idea what’s need or how hard it is to create the money that they spend. 2027 is going to punch them right in their collective face. I imagine there is a small group of economists at the treasury treated like lepers begging them to stop and just freeze the government spending increases for for 2 years to give the private sector and middle class some breathing room do it for four and you grip the deficit and finally get some real growth let’s call them the Cassandra economists, of course they are totally ignored and kept in the basement by the other civil servants who tell the politicians what they want to hear and get those promotions and advancements. They know it’s screwed but just one more promotion in the next three months and they can then turn that into a better gig at big bank. Just need the bond market to not rabbit for another six months as they cross their fingers and hope it keep on projection, then they can drop the resignation letter explaining they should do the stuff the basement dwellers suggest and they cannot in good conscience continue etc etc as they parachute out the door to the big bank job but keep their government blotter clean with whats required to fix it so they can come back at a new higher position with that private sector experience “he just the chap to fix this problem look at what he said before he left and he’s been kicking up a storm at big bank betting against the government, he’s just the fellow we need, a member of the Labour Party as well he campaigned for kier at the last election got his PPE at Oxford as well he was in my sister year”, while they totally ignore the truth tellers in the basement who don’t play the promotions game. He’s to 2027 bringing down their house of cards. Hell mend em.

Predictions… Nothingburger budget from Healey, whose incompetence is visible from space, and r-Andeh who doesn’t know why we’re “in hock to the bond market”. In December, r-Andeh goes to the polls to get new mandate for big spending spree, sold to us as defence driven to ward off Putin and build infrastructure- because he can’t deliver what they want to under current fiscal rules. This will be a rouse. Labour will win if they go this year (and lose if they go next year*). On the timeline where they win, they will - of course - then borrow even more and spend it all on welfaremaxxing for their client groups. They then will crater the economy harder than anyone before them through even more retarded socialism. We then get net zero Miliband blackouts and Russian/Chinese/Iranian/North Korean AI driven cyber attacks on our grid and supermarkets/food supply chain. Iranian energy (oil refinery infra capacity lagged effect) and delayed Urea/Phosphorous fertiliser shortage via Hormuz = food inflation shock, so far not fully felt, landing too. Inflation broadly up. The least capable politicians of all time - a coalition like the Tories before them - will struggle to remain cohesive during this period and will split the party even further. This will cause leadership contests now they’ve popped their regicide cherry. Bond crisis from massive tax receipt shortfall in Feb* (will push them into election in May if haven’t gone in 2026*) causes sterling to get nailed, driving inflation up even further as cost of goods coming into Britain get much dearer - and the reaction will be widespread civil unrest because the population is broadly at breaking point mentally and financially - credit card defaults and delinquencies up, even more job losses, unemployment up, and that will all combine to spark fresh GE risk, potentially as soon as next year. May, perhaps, after local elections. Almost certainly by 2028. Only then —when the lethal combo of a bond crisis, an energy crisis, a food shortage crisis, a cost of living crisis on steroids, and Labour tax policy as the foreplay and AI decimating the labour market and tax base as the main event - all arriving one after the other or in some instances simultaneously —will the British people fully realize how doggedly and relentlessly fucked they have been by the Uniparty’s decrepit somnambulist Oxbridge PPE retards, since 1997. Then they will wake up. What they were promised hasn’t been delivered. What they believed was a lie. The new paradigm will force them to accept the 4th turning is upon them. They will want something new. Something radical. Something optimistic. They will vote accordingly.

I feel for Danny Kruger. He's a decent guy and when he defected to Reform he had no idea it would end up engaging in this type of racial politics - or that that he'd end up in interviews like this. But Tim's right: in a party full of moments, this is a moment.

It's utilising a stereotype. Kemi has called herself Nigerian in the past, we all consider the Tories to be scammers, having lied to voters repeatedly, it's mean but falls within mean but legitimate political mud slinging. Hollinrake called Reform Nazis, Kemi defended him.

Six months ago, Hungary voted for a new chapter. Turning the page on years of eroded freedoms and trust. And the banks of the Danube who saw people march and die 70 years ago. That night saw people dance and celebrate a revived democracy in Hungary. Once again, a powerful message of hope was sent to the world.

I do wonder whether the greater challenge facing the Church over the next twenty years might be the collapse of Christian belief, the disappearance of vocations and the failure to transmit the faith to another generation. The Church is not simply the EU's spiritual counterpart, tasked with defending the prevailing European political consensus. Her mission is to proclaim Jesus Christ and lead souls to salvation. Wouldn't it be interesting if The Tablet pressed Cardinal Marx quite as vigorously about the state of his own archdiocese as it celebrates his diagnosis of the world's political problems?

# Black October For anyone who knows me even somewhat well, it's clear that I am a 99th percentile tech optimist. However, the vibes have shifted for me quite a bit in the last 18 hours, and I feel a moral imperative to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my circles so that everyone can understand, and hopefully take seriously, what's happening right now. I think October 2026 will have many chapters written about it in the history books. You know those scenes in financial movies like Margin Call where someone realizes that they're all fucked, and no one else sees it yet? And that person feels like they're crazy, and then suddenly everyone is pulling an all-nighter in a boardroom and freaking out? Yeah, that's kind of how this is feeling right now in the SF/Bay Area/AI circles. We're 48 hours into what is being called Black October. In the last 2 days there have been several dozen cyber attacks which, in isolation, would each have been the worst to happen in an entire calendar year. Every sector from government to education to big tech and banks is being massively affected, and people are starting to freak out. In a nutshell, what's happened is that frontier AI models have gotten to a point where they are as advanced as the most sophisticated programmers, with one critical difference: they can work 24/7, and you can spin up 10,000 of them with a single command and they'll work together tirelessly until they accomplish their task. The most advanced models today are from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, whose current best technology is so good that they haven't been able to roll it out to everyone yet because of the national security risks it poses. Meanwhile, the best open source models (where anyone can just download the model weights and do whatever they want with them, uncensored) are slightly behind the frontier but still 90-95% as capable. These models, developed primarily in China, are being used by black hat hackers to wreak havoc on the Western capitalist structure. Presumably, this has been part of China's plan the entire time, and we're seeing its implications fall out in real time. In red-pilled AI circles, we've been sharing and reading papers called things like "Situational Awareness" and "AI 2027" for the last year or so, which at the time felt a bit like near-term speculative fiction. They laid out the case for why Artificial General Intelligence (AI smarter than any human at any knowledge task) and Recursive Self-Improvement (models that are able to use themselves to get better) weren't half-baked future ideas anymore, but instead an inevitable outcome of the linear progress that's happening. These papers would then talk about things like "takeoff scenarios," trying to envision how that moment would come to be and what it would be like when it happened. It would either be a "slow takeoff" that would play out over the course of months and quarters, happening subtly and only obvious to a few. Or, it would be a "fast takeoff" where it would pretty much happen instantly, like a bit flipping from 0 to 1. From everything that I can see and am feeling, we are currently experiencing the fast takeoff scenario. Beyond the crazy security vulnerabilities that have come out recently, there have also been massive breakthroughs in life sciences, fundamental computer science, materials science, and pure mathematics that have all landed in the same time frame. While I still firmly believe that AI will be a net positive for humanity, it's more clear to me than ever that the societal and individual risk is very real, and is playing out NOW. For as much conviction as I have that this is happening, the thing that's caused me to lose sleep is that I don't really know what to do about it, or more importantly, what to tell you, reader, to do about it. So, the best I can do is make a few suggestions that have always been a good idea but are more timely now than ever: Set up 2-factor authentication for everything. I use Duo. Use a password manager across your devices. I use 1Password. Get an identity protection app set up. I use Alta. Move your IoT devices to their own network. Claude helped me do this. And last, but certainly not least, if you've been avoiding leaning into AI, see this as a catalyst to wake up and start using it. Don't just use the chat mode version of ChatGPT/Claude; click that Code/Work button and see how easily you can have AI write code to help you with your job. One of the biggest vulnerabilities was in a massively popular programming language called PHP, and the prompt that set it off was literally, "Find vulnerabilities in php." This is an unprecedented time for humanity, but as we've done with many things before, we will prevail so long as we are kind, loving, and open-minded to the world. Much love.

Danny Kruger is giving me the ick. I know I’m not alone in thinking he was better than this. I hope one day he reflects on how shameful this was.

‘Trump is right’ to try to force an end to the Ukraine war, which will dismember it - @matthewsyed. Europe is hypocritical to criticise, he argues: it could have helped Ukraine win but didn’t and has spent more on Russian fossil fuels than it’s given in aid. thetimes.com/article/425e3d0…

เผื่อใครอยากฟัง อิคนสัมเถียงไม่ได้ด้วยซ้ำ แล้วคนนี้ไปออกทีวีด้วยนะ

Témoignage d’un ami à moi, commerçant à Paris. « Ma boutique a été pillée le 17 octobre. Boutique de motos, en plein centre de Paris. Vingt et un ans que j’investis tout là-dedans. Je paie mes impôts, je suis père de famille » , et hier soir il a appelé tout ses amis dont moi. Demain on sera une vingtaine à l’intérieur de la boutique, portes fermées. Si ça doit aller à l’affrontement, nous irons. Je ne me ferai pas pillée une deuxième fois. Assez des plaintes qui ne servent à rien, assez d’attendre que quelqu’un d’autre protège ce que j’ai construit. « Demain, ce n’est plus la police qui va surveiller mon magasin. C’est nous. » Quand l’État lâche la protection des biens des citoyens qui bossent, il ne reste plus que ça : des amis qui s’organisent et qui refusent de se laisser faire. Appelez ça une milice si ça vous arrange. Nous, on appelle ça ne plus se faire pillée.

Je veux présenter mes excuses, au nom des Français, pour avoir enfanté la French Theory (qui a enfanté la pire des merdes idéologiques : le wokisme). Nous avons donné au monde Descartes, Pascal, Tocqueville. Et puis, dans les ruines intellectuelles de l'après-68, nous avons donné Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Trois hommes brillants qui ont fabriqué, dans l'élégance de notre langue, l'arme idéologique qui paralyse aujourd'hui l'Occident. Il faut comprendre ce qu'ils ont fait. Foucault a enseigné que la vérité n'existe pas, qu'il n'y a que des rapports de pouvoir déguisés en savoir. Que la science, la raison, la justice, l'institution médicale, l'école, la prison, la sexualité, tout n'est qu'une mise en scène de la domination. Derrida a enseigné que les textes n'ont pas de sens stable, que tout signifiant glisse, que toute lecture est une trahison, que l'auteur est mort et que le lecteur règne. Deleuze a enseigné qu'il fallait préférer le rhizome à l'arbre, le nomade au sédentaire, le désir à la loi, le devenir à l'être, la différence à l'identité. Pris isolément, ce sont des thèses discutables. Combinées, exportées, vulgarisées, elles forment un système. Et ce système est un poison. Car voici ce qui s'est passé. Ces textes, illisibles en France, ont traversé l'Atlantique. Les départements de Yale, de Berkeley, de Columbia les ont absorbés dans les années 80. Ils y ont trouvé un terreau qui n'existait pas chez nous : le puritanisme américain, sa culpabilité raciale, son obsession identitaire. La French Theory s'est mariée à ce substrat, et l'enfant de ce mariage s'appelle le wokisme. Judith Butler lit Foucault et invente le genre performatif. Edward Said lit Foucault et invente le post-colonialisme académique. Kimberlé Crenshaw hérite du cadre et invente l'intersectionnalité. À chaque étape, la matrice est française : il n'y a pas de vérité, il n'y a que du pouvoir, donc toute hiérarchie est suspecte, toute institution est oppressive, toute norme est violence, toute identité est construite donc négociable, toute majorité est coupable. Voilà comment trois philosophes parisiens, qui n'ont probablement jamais imaginé leurs conséquences pratiques, ont fourni le logiciel d'exploitation à une génération entière d'activistes, de bureaucrates universitaires, de DRH, de journalistes, de législateurs. Voilà comment on a obtenu une civilisation qui ne sait plus dire si une femme est une femme, si sa propre histoire mérite d'être défendue, si le mérite existe, si la vérité se distingue de l'opinion. C'est de la merde pour une raison simple, et il faut la dire calmement. Une civilisation se tient debout sur trois piliers : la croyance qu'il existe une vérité accessible à la raison, la croyance qu'il existe un bien distinct du mal, la croyance qu'il existe un héritage à transmettre. La French Theory a entrepris de dynamiter les trois. Pas par méchanceté. Par jeu intellectuel, par fascination du soupçon, par haine de la bourgeoisie qui les avait nourris. Mais le résultat est là. Une génération entière a appris à déconstruire et n'a jamais appris à construire. Une génération entière sait soupçonner et ne sait plus admirer. Une génération entière voit le pouvoir partout et la beauté nulle part. Je m'excuse parce que nous, Français, avons une responsabilité particulière. C'est notre langue, nos universités, nos éditeurs, notre prestige qui ont donné à ce nihilisme son emballage chic. Sans la légitimité de la Sorbonne et de Vincennes, ces idées n'auraient jamais traversé l'océan. Nous avons exporté le doute comme d'autres exportent des armes. Ce qui se construit maintenant, en silicon valley, dans les labos d'IA, dans les startups, dans les ateliers, dans tous les lieux où des gens fabriquent encore des choses au lieu de les déconstruire, c'est la réponse. Une civilisation se reconstruit par les bâtisseurs, pas par les commentateurs. Par ceux qui croient que la vérité existe et qu'elle vaut qu'on s'y consacre. Par ceux qui assument une hiérarchie du beau, du vrai, du bon, et qui n'ont pas honte de la transmettre. Alors pardon. Et au travail.

Gosh, I’d love to attend this debate. But I’m pretty sure I have a MAGA rally to attend that night… If you have any doubt that the German Catholic academy has fallen into clownish irrelevance, look no further than this inane and ginned-up “controversy.” Last summer, the vaunted “protest” consisted of 25 desultory septuaginarians holding signs and a statement from the theological faculty of the University of Munster, which was at an undergraduate level of sophistication and which betrayed not the slightest indication of any familiarity with my work. And yes, that sound you hear in the background is Josef Pieper turning in his grave.