INTRIGUE’S LATEST
The global affairs briefing you’ll actually look forward to reading.
How the Pope found himself in Trump’s crosshairs
WASHINGTON — You may have noticed Pope Leo is having his moment in the sun this week — both literally in the Algeria-Cameroon-and-Angola sense, but also figuratively in the Trump Tirade™ sense. Since Italian journalists are on strike, we’re in the pulpit to fill you in. First, the cast of characters: While the Vatican is […]
Three economy stories you can’t miss
While everyone was watching the war, three economic plot twists just dropped, starting with… Xi Jinping has channelled his inner Dua Lipa to announce some pretty stringent ‘new rules’ — but rather than warn about toxic exes, Xi’s big new supply chain regime seemingly makes it illegal to break up with China. Officially published last […]
Is the petrodollar dead?
More than 20 lands have named their currency some kind of ‘dollar’: the Jamaican dollar, the Hong Kong dollar, the Disney Cruise dollar, Australia’s dollarydoo. But it’s time to chat about the petrodollar and whether the Iran War has wobbled it. The petrodollar isn’t an actual dollar, but rather the term for a story starting […]
Latest Articles
Three high stakes elections in Hungary, Peru and Djibouti
It’s April, which means about three years have passed since January 1st 2026. And because we may or may not be binge-rewatching F.R.I.E.N.D.S eps to cope, we’ve used the F.R.I.E.N.D.S episodic style to label April’s three big elections, starting with… Hungary (pop. 10 million) might not ordinarily dominate your front pages, but this election is […]
Are we ceasing or firing? The Lebanese front shows no signs of peace
Nobody likes a told-you-so, but barely minutes after yesterday’s briefing flagged real doubts about this ceasefire, the ol’ foes had already started trading breach accusations. The first? Israel vs Hezbollah (in Lebanon). Despite the deal’s Pakistani mediators tweeting that this truce is “everywhere”, Israel (with US backing) insisted Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon are still […]
Who won the US-Iran war?
Just 90 minutes before President Trump’s 8pm Tuesday deadline expired, news broke of an immediate two-week ceasefire partly based on Iran’s 10-point plan, which Trump argues is a “workable basis on which to negotiate” via talks that’ll now continue in Pakistan. There’s plenty of mutual yelling around the details, but the only four explicitly-and-mutually confirmed […]
Is private credit about to blow?
“When you see one cockroach, there’s probably more.” Remember who said that? Long-time Intriguers will recall it was JP Morgan’s billionaire boss, Jamie Dimon, referring to some of the jitters around private credit late last year. And… maybe it’s just the cat, but we’re hearing some scratching and scurrying sounds under the couch again. What’s […]
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Geopolitics
How the Pope found himself in Trump’s crosshairs
WASHINGTON — You may have noticed Pope Leo is having his moment in the sun this week — both literally in the Algeria-Cameroon-and-Angola sense, but also figuratively in the Trump Tirade™ sense. Since Italian journalists are on strike, we’re in the pulpit to fill you in. First, the cast of characters: While the Vatican is […]
More Articles
Three high stakes elections in Hungary, Peru and Djibouti
It’s April, which means about three years have passed since January 1st 2026. And because we may or may not be binge-rewatching F.R.I.E.N.D.S eps to cope, we’ve used the F.R.I.E.N.D.S episodic style to label April’s three big elections, starting with… Hungary (pop. 10 million) might not ordinarily dominate your front pages, but this election is […]
Why the US is going back to the Moon
If everything goes to plan (pretty big ‘if’ these days), NASA’s Artemis II mission will take off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre aboard a 98m (322ft) rocket during a two-hour window later today (Wednesday), from 18:24 ET. Destination? The Moon. It’s a fly-by rather than landing, but still significant for a couple of reasons: But […]
Spy chiefs take the hot seat
DC’s intelligence chiefs have stepped out of the shadows and into the congressional spotlight for their annual grilling this week. Sure, it’s all tied to the unclassified Annual Threat Assessment, and spooks love to defer spicy answers to the off-camera closed-door briefings, but it’s still pretty revealing. So here are the week’s top five spymaster […]
Why world leaders think the world is “under destruction”
Gone are the days when big thinktank events like the Munich Security Conference (MSC) were the exclusive preserve of tweed-clad IR nerds arguing about great power theory. This is 2026, darn it: the MSC’s Wolfgang Ischinger kicked things off Friday rocking Macron’s trademark aviators, before unleashing a weekend of panels and speeches he branded “Under […]
ECONOMICS
Why the IMF might be done and dusted… or not
It was a week ago that International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Kristalina Georgieva kicked off the Fund’s DC ‘spring meetings’ with an ominous note — “trade policy uncertainty is off the charts”. You could feel it in the DC air, with Intrigue sources confirming delegations from every corner of the globe were scrambling for meetings with […]
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The central bank war for independence
US stocks and the US dollar plunged again on Monday after the president colourfully called on Jerome Powell, the Fed Chair, to cut rates. Anyway, while this monetary soap opera plays out on the world stage, it’s reignited a debate that everyone thought was resolved decades ago: the notion that central banks must be independent from politics. Why? The […]
A moron premium in the US?
We’ve been writing about bonds before they were the flavour of the week. And events now dictate that we revisit bonds again. Who are we to argue with events, dear Intriguer? Typically if US stocks tank, spooked investors will shift their cash over into bonds — the ultimate safe-haven. Why? When you buy bonds (loan the US government money), […]
Did Trump just blink?
Just after our last edition hit your inbox, Donald Trump decided to: Of course, markets breathed a semi-sigh of relief. But… did Trump blink? Here are the three main arguments you need to know: Treasury Secretary Bessent argues this was all part of Trump’s successful strategy, with 75 countries now reportedly lining up to negotiate […]
Trump and Xi play chicken
We’ve already explored Trump’s tariffs, but it’s worth a quick recap of his rationale before we tour today’s wild ripple effects: And while he’s now slapped tariffs on everyone (otherwise he says China just reroutes via third countries), the big kahuna tariffs are now really on China. Building on earlier tariff rounds during Trump 1.0 and Biden… The […]
Technology
Big Tech is in Big Trouble
Think you had a rough week? Imagine being a top lawyer at Meta or Google, who got their meditation session in the team offsite mindfulness pod interrupted by news that US juries just handed down two landmark rulings with global implications. First, a New Mexico jury just ordered Meta (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp) to pay $375M […]
More Articles
Spy chiefs take the hot seat
DC’s intelligence chiefs have stepped out of the shadows and into the congressional spotlight for their annual grilling this week. Sure, it’s all tied to the unclassified Annual Threat Assessment, and spooks love to defer spicy answers to the off-camera closed-door briefings, but it’s still pretty revealing. So here are the week’s top five spymaster […]
The fight tearing AI and defense apart
News recently broke that the Pentagon had used Anthropic’s Claude AI tool to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Cue the memes about Secretary Hegseth prompting AI with something like “hey Claude, go seize Maduro without US casualties, make no mistakes”. But this was all apparently news to Anthropic itself, which reportedly sought clarification. The AI firm […]
The massive supply chain shortage you didn’t know about
You’d think 2026 already had enough on, but no — someone has gone out and helpfully coined an entirely new genre of Armageddon: not nuclear, not biblical, but supply chain: So what’s driving this impending RAMageddon? Intrigue’s hard-core nerds will forgive us when we casually split chips into three families: First there are the compute […]
Should all countries launch their own LLMs?
While you might know beautiful Chile for its copper, its wines, its pisco-fight with Peru, or its ridiculously long and skinny profile like it’s spooning Argentina (nena, wake up), there’s now a new reason: Chile just launched Latin America’s own large language model. Creatively named LatAm-GPT, the idea is to “develop capabilities in the region […]