Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York joined by Democracy Now! cohost Juan González in Chicago. Hi, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us by the end of the decade.” That was the warning last week from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon that set off an escalating debate over how to regulate increasingly powerful AI systems.

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Coxon spoke to the BBC:

COXON: So it’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who were involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction.

And many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than 10pc chance or even greater – some smaller, but they all have different numbers – for a probability that humans might die.

And they all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei also called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down. In an essay, he wrote that within six to 12 months a swarm of AI agents could be capable of taking over the entire internet and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

He wrote, “The scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.” But President Trump has rejected growing calls for placing regulatory guardrails on the AI industry and has called concerns over AI a “hoax”.

On Monday, Trump called Jensen Huang, the CEO of the computer chip maker Nvidia, while Huang was speaking at an AI summit in Los Angeles. Huang put the president on speakerphone.

PRES. TRUMP: The data centers are great and they make people wealthy and they make states wealthy and it’s the oil of the next 20, 25 years. It’s bigger than the Internet.

And the AI, you know, much more so. And they are just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen.

And that could be political people; it could also be China. And we’re not going to let that happen. It’s a hoax. And [crosstalk]—

JENSEN HUANG [laughs] You’re right. We’re not going to let that happen, sir.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

PRES. TRUMP: No, we’re not going to let it happen. The robots are not going to be taking over the world.

AMY GOODMAN: As the debate over AI intensifies, the award-winning journalists and writers Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have a new book out today that is connected to all of this. It is titled End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.

It examines how wealthy elites, including tech CEOs, are preparing for the end of the world even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability, wars and the climate crisis. They will join us in a minute but first, here is a short excerpt from a video that was released with the book.

ASTRA TAYLOR: End-times fascism is not a monolith. It’s a dangerous and fractious alliance of three main groups.

NARRATOR: Religious end-timers.

ROBERT JEFFRESS: From the very beginning it has been clear that god has a special plan and purpose for the nation of Israel.

NARRATOR: Tech end-timers.

SAM ALTMAN: You know, I think AI will probably like most likely sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime there will be great companies created.

NARRATOR: Ethnonationalist end-timers.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: America is fighting with Israel for a common goal – to protect our future, to protect civilisation against these barbarians.

PERSON: That was a good take right there.

PERSON: Seig fucking Heil, let’s fucking go!

PERSON: You would prefer the human race to endure, right?

PERSON: Uh—

PERSON: You’re hesitant.

PERSON: Yeah, well, I—

PERSON: End-times fascists haven’t just given up on liberal democracy. They’ve given up on the possibility of a shared future for all of us.

PERSON: The most powerful people in the world –

PERSON: – are preparing for the end of the world –

PERSON:  – an end they themselves are both accelerating –

PERSON: – and profiting from.

ELON MUSK: [laughs]

PERSON: We have imagined Armageddon so many times it can almost feel inevitable. Except it’s not. So, which side are you on?

PERSON: The side of bunkering down, abandoning Earth and profiting from apocalypse? Or staying loyal to this planet and its people—

PERSON: Who are you aligned with? Who are you protecting?

PERSON: – and making life here better?

‘End Times Fascism’      Video: Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: A short video released in conjunction with the new book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World written by our guests in studio for the hour.

Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, best-selling author of a number of books including Doppelganger and No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein is also an associate professor and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist and documentary filmmaker, the co-founder of the Debt Collective and author of several books including The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart and The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age.

Thanks so much for spending the hour with us. Naomi, start off with a title, start off with End Times Fascism, why you chose this.

NAOMI KLEIN: First of all, thank you for having us here, Amy. It’s great to be launching the book on Democracy Now! It just came out this morning, as you said. And I think we have a long tradition of launching books together. We decided to call it End Times Fascism because we are trying to understand what is the same and what is different about our moment of far-right extremism.

We know that far-right parties with lineages to the fascists of the 20th century are rising to power around the world. We just saw a fateful election in a German state, the first time the far right has won an election since the Second World War. We’re seeing very disturbing polls in France, for instance.

And we’re seeing more and more open fascist expressions in the United States from very powerful people in government and in tech.

But we don’t believe that this is simply a rerun. We don’t believe that history repeats on a loop. We believe that we’re in something more like a sequel where the logics of fascism, which are the logics of dehumanisation, of othering, of racial supremacy and hierarchy, are now being applied in a time of global existential crisis. This is not news to Democracy Now! listeners and viewers that we live in a time of a climate breakdown and collapse.

We have tools like nuclear weapons, that were not known to Hitler and Mussolini, that have the ability to inflict apocalyptic levels of violence that were beyond their reach.

Fascism always emerges during times of systemic crises, and it actually emerges as a way to protect capitalism from systemic change. So if we think about 20th century fascism in Europe after the First World War, there was a rising socialist response to the wreckage of the First World War and then to the Great Depression.

And fascism rises up — we call it “capitalism threat response” or “capitalism with bared teeth” — to make sure all of that popular public anger is pivoted toward the scapegoat. In our time, as we see these global crises — that could lead to systemic change or there can be this what we are calling “end times fascist” response that says, “let it burn,” and now it’s a fight for who’s going to survive the future.

Now it’s about building — as you saw in that film that we were fortunate to work with a great team of filmmakers on — it’s about building the bunkers and the rocket ships and the escape hatches. For religious end-timers, it’s literally about the bunker in the sky; it’s about the idea of the rapture.

But that is almost like a template for these more secular stories that are also a kind of a rapture, but we call it in the book a “wealth rapture”. If you’ve got resources, you can rapture yourself away from the impacts of those threats that we are all in. So that’s why we call it End Times Fascism. It hasn’t won yet.

The reason we wrote the book is because people are fighting back. And we think if we are able to look at this very frightening reality with clear eyes, the more it is exposed to the light, the less popular it is because in fact those people cherish our one and only home and want to stay and want to make it better.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Naomi, how is this different, for example, if in the 1950s and 1960s when at the height of the Cold War there were Americans, especially upper-class Americans, building bomb shelters, convinced that there was going to be a nuclear war, and the rest of the population eventually began to organise in an anti-nuclear movement that peaked in the 1980s and that led really to capitalism being forced to restrain itself to some degree in terms of arms control treaties?

Why is this different than back then?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, Juan, I guess it’s different because the people we’re calling end-times fascists are systematically dismantling that precise international infrastructure. One of the things that all those three factions all agree on — whether it’s the religious fundamentalists, the tech extremists that we heard from in that video, or the ethnonationalists — they don’t agree on everything but they all agree they want to get rid of the United Nations.

They all believe that that is the sort of antichrist of their story. Sometimes they literally call it the antichrist. And that chapter that you are describing, which we write about in the book, Juan — and I would actually love to bring Astra into the conversation because she went pretty deep into this research on the history of bunkering in the United States and how people shifted the tide, because we actually think that’s a really inspiring story that we need to know better.

Can I bring in Astra, my incredible co-author?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sure.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Thank you so much. Again, thanks for having us. Yeah, it is — very quickly, in the 1950s, the government policy was to encourage people to build their own bomb shelters in their backyard, and that was the response to the nuclear threat. Only around 1 percent, 2 percent of households did that, in part because people revolted at the idea of protecting themselves and letting their neighbors perish.

And there was a massive debate in magazines like TIME magazine, LIFE magazine that was around the idea of “gunning thy neighbor”. People said, “We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to be hiding in a hole in the ground with guns pointing outwards and turning the people we care about away.”

That is part of the genesis of the movement for nuclear disarmament. It was ordinary people who put the right solution on the table, which is let’s get rid of nuclear bombs; let’s not turn on each other and bunker down. There’s a lesson in that for today.

NAOMI KLEIN: It’s so interesting because what they understood at the time is like either you bunker — either you just protect you and yours — or you get at the root cause of the crisis and you say, “Actually, we can’t live with these weapons.” Right? It’s just—”It’s too dangerous.”

As you both know, the nuclear disarmament movement had tremendous successes. In many ways, we argue in the book that it was a victim of its own success because many people in the disarmament movement believed that they had won so many victories that now the people in charge were just going to finish the job, because so many thousands of nuclear warheads were successfully disarmed that it seemed like there was a new era.

The majority of the stockpiles were disarmed but not enough, and now there is a rearming and AI is being embedded in the nuclear arsenal. Which is why at the end of the book we call for a triple disarmament movement.

In fact, Juan, we have something that you might be interested in — a new coinage in the book — which is “the Stephen Miller test”. Basically the argument that we’re making is that eventually, the most powerful tools, the most powerful weapons, will meet the worst people in the world, and if you don’t want those tools to find themselves in the hands of Stephen Miller, then the tools should not exist.

That applies to nuclear weapons. It applies to AI. It applies to the wealth concentration itself, which we believe should be now understood as a WMD. That this level of wealth that has accumulated at the top of our economy has itself become a weapon of mass destruction.

And so we need to be disarming the wealth bombs, the tech bombs, and of course, the bomb-bombs. Because we are now seeing that these very dangerous, completely immoral people who seem to have such a casual attitude — and we see this from Donald Trump’s most recent post, just a kind of shrug in the face of apocalypse — they will find — they exert a magnetic pull towards one another.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to follow-up and ask either one of you if you want to answer this, because I did read the book in the last couple of days and really found it to be tremendously well written. At the same time, though, there were some concerns I had. For instance, there is very little mention of the rise of a multipolar world, of how the rise of East Asia, especially, the shift of the world’s industrial working class to China, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, along with Brazil and Mexico — in the view of many, that is the single biggest impediment to US economic dominance, of the capitalist markets’ expansion.

And that’s also the biggest threat that many of these end-timers, as you label them, are concerned about. They are concerned about China, yet China and its impact on US hegemony and capitalism is not mentioned at all in the book.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I think that the threat of China is really, really central to the unimpeded AI rollout. It’s really the only argument they have. We do write about that in the book, but you’re right, it’s not the central focus of the book. We are more focused on the United States and the way in particular this is being pushed through Latin America, because we think there — and Europe.

But the threat of the multipolar world I do think is central, because the only argument that Donald Trump really has in the face of the threats that are now being articulated from inside the house, from inside the companies, is “But China, but China; if we don’t build it, they will.”

It’s completely untrue that deregulated AI has to be built the way it’s being built or else China will build it. China is much more open to regulating these technologies, to rules within the multilateral system. It’s the US that has been blowing up these agreements.

And when the Doomsday Clock was reset this year, it was a really — I mean, it’s always pretty harrowing, but this year it was particularly so; they moved it forward four seconds — and described not just the threats, whether it was biological weapons, nuclear weapons, AI, but the way the US government under Donald Trump was going after all of the international agreements that governments like China had been a party to, and just saying, “We don’t need them.”

So I think it’s the tools and the dismantling of any attempt to constrain those tools.

ASTRA TAYLOR: It’s also about the narrative that the people in power are telling themselves. We’re tracking how there’s a certain embrace of apocalyptic narrative, of Armageddon, of the end times, that doesn’t — every government in the world doesn’t have that narrative, right? It’s something that’s very powerful in certain branches of the United States political class, in Israel, in parts of Latin America.

We’re not saying that it applies to every country around the entire world, and so that’s one reason that that isn’t — there are some very powerful international players that aren’t central to the thesis.

AMY GOODMAN: Astra and Naomi, you write about Peter Thiel, saying, “Today a staggering number of his former colleagues and acolytes occupy powerful positions in every part of the Trump Administration. The most consequential of them is JD Vance.” If you can explain, who is Peter Thiel? What does it mean to have his inner circle populating the inner circle of the United States?

And talk about all of these figures that are so much in the news now, that were standing behind President Trump during his inauguration, people who were opposed to him before, who took him off their platforms. We are talking about people like Jeff Bezos, people like Mark Zuckerberg and others.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes. Peter Thiel is a powerful billionaire and venture capitalist who has been in Silicon Valley for a long time. He is part of the PayPal mafia so he founded PayPal with David Sacks, who was Trump’s former AI and crypto czar. And also Elon Musk, of course, who is now the president of SpaceX; everybody will know him.

Peter Thiel is quite interesting because he has been on the far right very proudly for a long time since he was an undergraduate at Stanford when he and David Sacks actually wrote a book against political correctness. And he has been on the vanguard of being very much against democracy, very — quasi-libertarian but now just explicitly authoritarian — and has written things like “Democracy and freedom are incompatible.”

He was one of the first figures in Silicon Valley to come out for Trump in 2015.

And as we write in the book and, as you said, many of his protégés are now in positions of power and the most influential one is JD Vance. JD Vance has written about how his life changed when he saw Peter Thiel give a lecture. This lecture inspired Vance to go to Silicon Valley to become a venture capitalist — not a very illustrious one — and that’s where he met critical figures who would fund his political rise, including Thiel who gave what was a record-breaking donation of $15 million and kind of launched and made possible Vance’s bid to become a senator of Ohio.

And it was Peter Thiel who also brokered the meeting at Mar-a-Lago where Vance was able to apologise for calling Donald Trump “Hitler”. So Vance is of course one of those figures who used to be opposed —

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that? That Vance said —

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, Vance was once — he was once for green energy. He was against Donald Trump who he said misleads people and offers empty promises like building a wall which won’t actually improve people’s lives. But he’s also quite an opportunist, and Peter Thiel brokered peace among those two, and now we know Vance as the VP.

J.D. Vance is also critical in our book because he is who helped bring together the AI industry and Donald Trump. We remember from Donald Trump’s first term that he was against Big Tech. He was railing against Big Tech all the time. Thanks to JD Vance who hosted a dinner at David Sacks’ house, Trump got on the AI train. It was a fundraiser but it was also a pitch session.

Vance’s Silicon Valley brethren told Donald Trump that AI would be good for the economy but it would be very good for the fossil fuel sector. And now we see that the Trump administration is all in on AI and not much else.

So when we look at the famous image of the second Trump inauguration and we see all those tech execs given their front seats and they’re lined up, our position is that it was the promise of generative AI eating the economy that actually turned them fascist and caused this incredible alliance with the Trump regime that we’re seeing.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, that alliance has served them incredibly well. It has produced the first trillionaire. It has produced companies that are claiming valuations roughly equivalent to the entire US economy. And what they wanted from Donald Trump was exactly what they got: a frontier.

You hear this phrase used all the time now — ”frontier AI” — but if you think about what a frontier is, a frontier is a Wild West. It has no rules. And what they were upset about under the last administration was that there were some, you know, not radical, very simple rules like you have to label deepfakes, guardrails against precisely the scenarios that they are now talking about in terms of integration with weapons systems, and the prospect of a rogue AI.

So all of this was on the table years ago. There were discussions at the United Nations.

It’s interesting that they’re always using China as the bogeyman of why they have to roll out AI without rules. China has many more rules regulating AI than the United States has,
including rules around not allowing children to have these like personal relationships with AI where there’s confusion about whether or not you are talking to a friend or a robot or a therapist or whatever it is.

First of all, that’s a lie, and that’s just the fact that people are not educated about what China is doing that is allowing people to fall for this line of, like, “Oh, no, if we don’t do it, China will.” They just simply don’t know how China is regulating this.

But one of the things I’ve been thinking about is — and we have to be aware of how active this push was for the frontier, because now of course these CEOs are all coming forward and saying “Please regulate us, we’ll regulate ourselves, we know we need to be regulated,” as if they weren’t the ones who not only demanded this Wild West frontier but bankrolled it and created the strategic alliance with Donald Trump so that he would deliver it to them.

And now they’re realising, “OK, maybe we’ve gone too far and have to look more credible.” And Donald Trump is going, “No way.”

Why is he saying, “No way”? Because he has tanked the entire US economy and the only thing he has going for him is the AI stock bubble, and he’s terrified of this bubble bursting all over him before the midterm elections or before the next presidential.

He also is very invested in it personally. He’s richer than he has ever been because of the rampant corruption of this administration, the money he has made from crypto but also many different ways that he and his family are invested in AI.

So that’s why he’s doing these frantic things like calling Jensen Huang on stage to say, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything.”

But if you’ll allow me, I was really struck because there’s this myth that — these sort of parables of the technology slipping out of the hands of the men who built it, right? The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Frankenstein. Creating a monster right?

That’s the myth that they’re all telling. “Oh no, we’ve created this powerful monster. It’s out of our hands and now it’s going to destroy us.” I would argue that that myth really is coming true but the monster is not AI; it’s Donald Trump.

They created Donald Trump, he is their monster, he’s out of control and he just won’t stop. And they’re like, “Wait a minute, maybe it is going too fast.”

[MUSIC BREAK]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan González. We are spending the hour with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors of the new book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. I want to go back to the video that was released in conjunction with the book.

NAOMI KLEIN: On a mountaintop in the dead of winter, a group of faithful men gathered an audience to share their vision. They had seen a gleaming city bathed in golden light.

The city would be filled with buildings so beautiful they would seem to float above the earth as if descended from heaven. Their vision already had a name.

PERSON: New Gaza.

JARED KUSHNER: So, we’ll see if these things work. They never usually work.

NAOMI KLEIN: The mountaintop in question was the resort town of Davos. The faithful men presenting their vision were US real estate moguls Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, this is a very exciting day. See, I’m a real estate person at heart and it’s all about location. Look at this beautiful piece of property.

PERSON: Let’s just plan for catastrophic success.

NAOMI KLEIN: Out of the horrors of a live-streamed genocide, an exclusive paradise was about to emerge fully formed.

PERSON: We’ve already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition.

AMY GOODMAN: Part of the video that was released with the book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. It is by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. I want to talk about Gaza right now. We are coming off — in Venice right now you have two Israeli filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, who just came out with a film called NAZA and now members of the Israeli government are threatening to take away their citizenship, and it was based on the commentary of high-level Israeli officials, unnamed, talking about the killing in Gaza deliberately. Naomi Klein?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, and the use of AI to do so. I actually haven’t seen the film. I’m definitely looking to see it. But it underlines what we already know thanks to Palestinian journalists at huge personal cost in the documenting of a livestream genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Over 250 of them killed in this last two years.

NAOMI KLEIN: And as we say in the film, this is the story that the Trump administration is telling, is that out of apocalypse there will be this paradise. There will be what they are calling “New Gaza”. We begin the book with it because it is such an extreme distillation of the story.

And I believe it’s the most dangerous story ever told. It’s a biblical story. It’s deeply encoded in our culture whether we’re religious or not. And the story is first comes the flood, first comes the apocalypse, first comes the mass death — and out of the mass death, the great cleansing, the fury of god, comes the golden city, the paradise, for the chosen few.

That story, which — it’s the story of the flood and the ark; it’s told in its most violent form in the book of Revelation — for people who believe in it literally, it has confused the difference between bad and good. It has kind of flipped the switch, where when we see the things in our world that should be warning us, telling us we need to act, we are in a time of crisis, it is an emergency — whether it’s climate disasters, whether it’s covid, that things are breaking down — that what is seen instead are signs.

“Oh, no, what it means is that we’re entering the end times.” And while that may be bad for many people, it’s actually very good for the chosen few.

That’s why we started with this myth of New Gza . . . there is no paradise that is coming out of the apocalypse in Gaza but that is the story that the Trump administration is telling. It’s a privatized paradise that they’re proposing to build. They are using this kind of biblical narrative but of course it’s all for profit because it’s the Trump administration. They want to build luxury condominiums over a mass grave. And you saw there that it’s a literal story.

We do think that the Board of Peace is significant in the sort of evolution of the privatisation of the state, the fact that the Trump Administration is not just attacking the United Nations and defunding the United Nations but trying to replace the United Nations with something called the Board of Peace, which Trump would be head of for life, that they would control — they would give themselves immunity.

This is part of what we mean by bunkering, by escaping. It’s like they see the state as a mine site. They see the United States as a place that they can extract from. Not just extract wealth and resources — and we’re watching them do that — but also extract other things that matter to them, like legal immunity. Right? I mean, the Board of Peace gives them that.

So that’s why we start with that. And it brings together these different parts of the coalition. Because there are religious extremists, both Christian Zionists and messianic Jews, who really do believe that Gaza, Iran — mean that the Messiah is coming. Like the more violent, the better.

And you’ve covered on the show officers in the US military lodging complaints that their officers are telling them that they should welcome apocalyptic levels of violence in Iran because it means that Jesus is returning.

But it’s not just the religious extremists. It’s also the secular versions of the story. We don’t think Trump believes in the biblical version of this story, but we do believe he believes in a kind of a wealth rapture. And when you see those AI-generated images of new Gaza and Trump sharing them, you can see how these stories have distorted his brain.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the little time we have left, I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about the resistance movements, the people’s movements against this growing fascism, and also perhaps deal with some of the critiques of let’s say of Marxists like John Bellamy Foster, who basically insists that the fascist movement in the United States, the mass base of it is really the middle class, those people driven out by the Walmarts and the Targets from small businesses, and franchisees and others who have been driven down by the growth of these top-end monopoly capitalists and who have now turned to a fascist movement for their salvation.

ASTRA TAYLOR: To answer the second part first, fascism is always a movement of the injured powerful. It is a movement that creates vertical solidarity between political and corporate elites and people who are not the worst off but feel that they’ve lost status and directs their sense of insecurity downwards further towards vulnerable scapegoats — towards immigrants, towards trans kids, towards feminists — instead of upwards at the oligarchs and the politicians.

So that’s how we understand Elon Musk buying X or what was Twitter, right, is that it was a way for him to control a media ecosystem and help direct that rage downwards at the left and at the vulnerable instead of letting it be harnessed towards people like him.

So I think that that’s right, if fascism creates what we call a vertical solidarity to protect capitalism, to protect the status quo. That’s certainly true of fascism in the past and it’s certainly true today.

What we have to do to build the resistance is create that horizontal solidarity, to not scapegoat the vulnerable, to build our own coalition and find our own unusual bedfellows. I think you see that in the resistance to fascism that’s growing in the United States and around the world.

One thing — Naomi said this — the people we’re tracking — end-times fascism is not a coherent ideology necessarily. It’s not a monolith. It’s a fractious alliance of these three groups: the religious end timers, the tech accelerationists, the ethnonationalists.

But what they have in common is this sense that things are going to be increasingly unstable. We say that they’re both building their arks and they’re causing the floods. They’re accelerating collapse. They’ve decided to just bring it on and abandon this shared world in their various fantasies about bunker nation or ascending to heaven or the digital class.

So the resistance fundamentally needs to be grounded in a desire to stay here on Earth, to commit to this place. We describe them at one point in the book as traitors to creation. And we don’t use that word “traitors” lightly. We are saying they’re not traitors to the flag or the nation but actually to life on Earth, to our shared humanity, our shared planet.

And I think we see that commitment to what we call “hereness” in the book in the movement against data centers that is sweeping the nation, in the resistance to ICE where people are saying, “No, I’m going to defend my community, defend my neighbors” and people standing up and fighting for labour rights, which fascists are always attacking.

Fighting for the environment, fighting against detention centers.

And so we see the resistance growing all over the world, but I think that the data center revolt is the main one for us because it really draws new lines and shows people — is bringing people together who a year ago or a couple of years ago might have been fighting over culture war issues.

Now they’re saying, “Well, actually, we have a lot in common because there’s a class of people who actually want to replace us with robots. Maybe we should be on the side of humanity against the machines.”

NAOMI KLEIN: Including those small business people, Juan, who you were referring to. This is why it really is an opportunity to form those new alliances. Because Donald Trump has betrayed many of the people who did vote for him the first time. The trouble, of course, is that many powerful Democrats are also taking money from the large tech companies and so are not willing to harvest what has been called by a comedian in I believe it was Madison — ”the most bipartisan issue since beer” is the opposition to these tech companies.

But in order to gain political advantage from that huge bipartisan issue, you have to be willing to go against your donors or not take their money in the first place.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Naomi, the business model of these AI fascists, if they were to be able to prevail, throw millions of people out of work, how will they make their money? Because obviously Henry Ford, back in the days of the early monopoly capitalism, believed you had to give workers a living wage so they could consume the products that you produced.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I’m not sure it’s all that thought through. I think that they think they’re mainly going to be selling products to other businesses in the short term. But this is why, Juan, it is a bubble, and it is a process of extraction, and the bubble is rigged to explode all over working people and their pensions right now.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, I think they also think that they’ll make a lot of money hooking up with the government and the military. There is a quote from Alex Karp — who is a colleague of Peter Thiel, CEO of Palantir — and he said — we quote him in the book saying, “If these tech companies think they’re going to take everybody’s jobs and then not work with the military, they are” — I’m going to change what he said and say — ”they are foolish.”

What he’s saying is essentially if you’re planning to build a technology that causes a job apocalypse, you are also going to have to align with the state and help build the mechanisms to police and control and contain the masses of dispossessed human beings.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end with the end of your book: “We didn’t choose to be born into a fight quite so fateful but we have reached a choice point. We can either follow end-times fascists into oblivion or we can commit to building the unruly, boundary-crossing movement they so deeply fear, one that wrests away their weapons, holds them accountable for their crimes, and defends the paradise of here.”

Those are the words of Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors of the new book out this week, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.

The original content of this programme and article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/18/end-times-fascism-naomi-klein-astra-taylor-on-billionaires-bunkers-ai-gaza-and-the-far-right/

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the tasks people do at work and the skills they need. As work changes, being able to move between jobs, and sometimes industries, may become increasingly important.

For women, the pressure to adapt may be particularly significant. Jobs and Skills Australia has found women have greater exposure than men to automation and AI changes, largely because of the industries and occupations in which they work.

And while it doesn’t mean that jobs will just disappear, it does mean AI is likely to change how the jobs are conducted. Many workers will need to learn new skills and adapt; others may need to move into different jobs or industries altogether.

Much of this discussion about transition currently focuses on workers – they need to reskill, retrain and become more adaptable.

But there’s another side to this story. Employers across industries may also need to become more flexible in how they decide what experience really matters.

Changing industries doesn’t mean starting again

Our research with women who successfully moved into construction from other unrelated industries suggests employers will also need to adapt, particularly in how they recognise experience gained in other sectors and industries. Changing industries does not mean starting from zero.

We studied 655 women working in Australian construction companies. Some had started their careers in construction, while others had moved there from health care, education, transport, finance, hospitality or manufacturing.

Those career changers brought many skills developed over the years, including management, communication, collaboration, coordination and experience. One woman who previously worked as a commercial pilot and later in engineering consulting told us:

I do have a lot of experience, and I do have lot of relevant skills that I think I bring to the table too.

But having these skills from diverse professional backgrounds and getting the employer to recognise them are two different things.

Australian construction industry is already struggling to find enough workers. Around 20,000 construction jobs remain unfilled, while women make up just 13% of the industry’s 1.37 million workers.

Attracting more women could help. BuildSkills Australia estimates that increasing women’s participation in residential construction could add 51,000 workers by 2029, reducing its projected workforce gap by 44%.

Getting through the door

In fact, most of the career changers in the study entered construction through informal channels, often using personal networks rather than conventional recruitment.

One woman explained how important these connections had been for her:

If I […] didn’t have access to this network, I’m not sure how I’d even go about starting. I’d find it intimidating, and would presume my qualifications wouldn’t marry with the expectations.

Networks might help with people getting a foot in the door, but they also reveal a bigger problem. What if people moving between industries don’t have the industry contacts, and they don’t know where opportunities are? They may assume that their skills and experience are not what the employers want.

Our research showed this may also happen via formal recruitment. Hiring managers recognised that the problem was not simply with the candidates, but with how the industry viewed career changers. One told us:

I don’t believe the obstacle is with the candidate; I think it’s us not being creative enough to create roles or positions that would suit the skill set of those candidates or provide them with a platform where they can transition into the industry.

This creates a paradox – we are asking workers to become more mobile and more adaptive, while employers may still struggle to recognise experience gained in another industry.

Who really needs industry experience?

This does not mean employers should ignore industry experience, of course. It takes time to learn those critical skills.

The hiring managers we interviewed said specialist roles require specialist training in construction or engineering. But they also saw much more scope for people to move across industries into roles such as administration, finance, safety and environmental work. In these jobs, skills developed elsewhere could be very useful, while industry experience could sometimes be learned.

That suggests a different way of thinking about career changers.

Instead of asking only whether this candidate has worked in our industry before, employers could ask:

• what existing skills could the person bring to the role?
• what can they learn?
• and what genuinely requires specialist training or experience?

Adaptation may need to work both ways. Employers will have to get better at recognising transferable skills.

Focus on the skills

This matters beyond construction. As AI changes the jobs and the skills needed, workers will increasingly be told they need to adapt.

But career mobility and adaptation depend on more than workers being willing to change. If we expect workers to become more adaptable as AI changes the work we do, employers may need to become more adaptable too.

They can do that by getting better at recognising what skills people already bring, what they can learn, and what really requires previous industry experience.

Read more:
These 3 charts show female-dominated jobs are actually the most exposed to AI

Marzena Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/18/as-ai-reshapes-jobs-and-workers-change-industries-employers-need-to-be-more-flexible-too/

Electoral reform is a perennial debate in UK politics. But it never comes to fruition – arguably because it’s never in the interests of the governing party to change the voting rules that got it into power. Now though, there are reasons to believe things could be about to change.

Labour won the 2024 general election by a landslide in the most disproportionate election ever, securing nearly two thirds of seats with only a third of the vote. Yet support for the party now sits at just 24%, placing it almost level with Reform UK in vote intention polls.

That makes another majority markedly more difficult to achieve, even under the UK’s winner-takes-all voting system of first past the post.

There are now at least five competitive parties UK-wide, in a Westminster system that produces only one winner per seat. This can have important representational consequences. In the constituency of South West Norfolk, for example, the Labour MP Terry Jermy won in 2024 with 26.7% of the vote. This means that constituents are represented by a politician on the left, even though Conservative and Reform voting made up 48% of the vote there.

Across the country, Labour doubled its seat share in 2024 based on just a 1.6-point increase in its vote share. This, among other criticisms, has sparked renewed questions about the fairness of the electoral rules.

And public support for electoral reform has now hit record highs. Some 60% of respondents in the 2024 British Social Attitudes survey favoured changing the system for Westminster elections.

In 2011, the UK held a referendum on moving to the “alternative vote” system. The result was 68% against the change, 32% for – though turnout was low, with just 42% of eligible voters casting ballots. Back then, public attitudes polling found support for any kind of electoral reform stood at just 27%.

Backed by Burnham

Prime Minister Andy Burnham is a strong supporter of electoral reform. The former mayor of Greater Manchester stood for that office under its supplementary voting (SV) system, where voters can express a first and second preference. Under this system, if no candidate wins more than 50% then the second-preference votes come into play. Burnham has said it made him favour a more collaborative style of politics, where candidates must build broad coalitions of support.

And in his first speech as prime minister, he outlined his commitment to delivering a “new political model” for the UK. He said this would be more about “problem-solving than point-scoring” – implementing a more proportional voting system could be part of this.

Burnham also faces increasing political pressure – from both within and beyond his party. In 2022, Labour conference delegates overwhelmingly backed a motion calling for the party leadership to implement proportional representation (PR) at Westminster elections.

Since then, almost 100 Labour MPs have backed a national commission on electoral reform. And more broadly, in their 2024 manifestos, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru all included commitments to moving away from first past the post. Even Reform called for a referendum on implementing PR (though its support for electoral reform has waned as its performance in the polls has improved).

Read more:
Why the probe into Nigel Farage’s finances didn’t hurt him at the ballot box

Despite clear public and cross-party support for something new, there is little consensus about how a replacement system might look. Could the UK adopt the additional member system (AMS) used in Scottish Parliament and London Assembly elections? This would involve voters having two ballots, one for a local MP chosen in the traditional way, and one for a party. “Additional members” are taken from pre-published party lists to ensure the composition of parliament matches how the country voted on the second ballot.

Or perhaps there could be a simpler system like the SV rules. Or a party-list proportional representation system, like that used in elections to the Senedd in Wales since May this year. Here, constituencies represent bigger areas and each elects multiple candidates, with each party winning seats roughly in proportion to its share of the vote.

The decision is not trivial. Voters and parties behave differently under different electoral rules because their incentives and punishments function differently.

The choice may depend on the goal. If the aim is just to reduce disproportionality and wasted votes, the SV system – more a preferential system than a form of PR – means candidates typically need a higher vote share to win. They can still govern with a minority, but the preference function not only means that more people will vote for the winner but that sincere preferences can be expressed alongside tactical ones.

If eliminating disproportionality and enhancing representation is the goal, PR systems like the additional member system and “list-based” methods can allow smaller parties to enter parliament and prevent situations where a majority is governed by a single party it did not vote for. They almost always result in parties governing in coalition.

But proportional systems are not a silver bullet. While they counter first past the post’s proportionality problem, and solve some of its issues with representation, they can also create challenges. Larger constituencies with multiple members can mean the valuable local connection is lost.

Multi-party governance makes it harder for voters to know who to blame or reward and can keep less popular parties in power through coalitions. They can also cause deadlock when parties don’t agree or won’t share power, and can mean that manifesto commitments are dropped or watered down. Elections see parties competing one day then bargaining the next. Forming a government can take weeks or months.

Some would argue that in recent decades first past the post hasn’t been delivering the stability it is supposed to offer. But changing the electoral system could mean a radical culture change. Citizens will need a degree of voter education and parties will have to learn how to engage in a less combative politics.

Burnham and his party say they need to present voters with proposals for reform in Labour’s next general election manifesto. However, they face pressure to make changes within Burnham’s first 100 days, and certainly ahead of a general election. First past the post could easily push Labour out of office. So if it isn’t going to change the rules under these circumstances, perhaps no government ever will.

Hannah Bunting receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Lizzie Simon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/electoral-reform-is-back-on-the-agenda-heres-why-things-could-genuinely-be-different-this-time/

Imagine it’s the dead of night. Your phone pings with a text – it’s a government emergency alert: “Leave your home immediately! Only take with you enough supplies for the next three days.” What would you want in your go-bag?

Our new survey of UK adults (results not yet published) has found a surprising number of people prioritised sentimental belongings such as a childhood teddy bear.

In the face of climate change and growing geopolitical instability, governments have started to advise citizens to prepare now for disaster. In 2024, the UK government launched its Prepare initiative. This was followed by preparEU, a flagship EU project which argued: “Today’s threats are fast, complex and interconnected; our response must be more proactive.”

These initiatives typically recommend that people should have enough food, water and medicine to last 72 hours. In addition, they need ready access to documents, cash, batteries or power banks and a wind-up radio, plus a working knowledge of emergency support in their local area.

But when that message pings in the night, will you already be packed, with documents, food and medicine in a go-bag? Or will you be scrambling to find things, hoping you have enough essentials to keep you going?

In April 2026, as part of the After the End project – a Wellcome Trust-funded research project exploring how people experience and recover from crises – we surveyed 1,000 UK adults to understand how prepared they were for a sudden crisis or disaster.

We found that most people have less than half of what is recommended by the UK government and the US Federal Emergency Management Agency. Only four out of 1,000 people reported being fully prepared.

Our findings echo the 2025 UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness, which found that of 10,536 adults, only 13% felt largely or totally prepared.

Withstanding the emotional toll of crisis

However, the focus on practical items and supplies may not capture what people need to withstand the emotional toll of crisis and disaster.

When asked what other items they would take with them during a crisis, many participants felt that personal items would be critical to their post-disaster wellbeing. They expressed a strong desire to keep sentimental items such as jewellery, family photographs and objects from their childhood close to them during crisis.

As one participant wrote: “My childhood teddy bear. He is going to the grave with me. Apart from that, nothing matters much.”

Pets also featured heavily in people’s responses. Animals such as cats and dogs were often described as members of the family. Some participants even found comfort in the idea of taking the ashes of deceased pets with them if they needed to flee in an emergency.

A concept in psychology called extended self theory explains why these types of items hold such importance during everyday life – and also during crisis. It suggests that our sense of self is fragile, and continually built and maintained through our connections with the world around us.

In this way, the things we surround ourselves with do more than serve practical functions. They help us construct, stabilise and make sense of our identity. Consciously or subconsciously, our possessions become part of who we are.

A childhood teddy bear, therefore, becomes a possession imbued with memories and emotions which tell a tale of who we are, where we have come from, and who we care about. Objects can reinforce continuity of identity over time and space.

A strong sense of self

Having a strong sense of self can be beneficial during times of crisis. If we enter such a period with a sense of identity that is stable and coherent, it can act as a psychological anchor. A strong identity helps us cope in a challenging situation, and reduces the likelihood of ruminating about negative experiences.

Research also suggests that our ability to connect with items from pre-disaster periods influences our ability to cope and recover psychologically following an emergency. So, salvaging photographs and other items of sentimental value during disaster could help to preserve and rebuild our memory and identity.

If everything around us falls apart, a treasured item can help us maintain some sense of normality. This is perhaps why survivors of the 2011 Japan tsunami frequently described the loss of family photos as one of their greatest emotional losses.

Sentimental items can maintain or even improve our belief that we are capable of achieving our goals. Psychologists refer to this as self-efficacy. And research suggests higher levels of self-efficacy are associated with greater preparedness for, and better coping after, a disaster – particularly in vulnerable groups such as those with disability.

Our analysis found that people who reported greater self-efficacy also said they had more of the items and knowledge recommended by the UK’s Prepare initiative.

Sentimental items can also help to rebuild communities. Heirlooms and meaningful everyday items from before a crisis become points of storytelling afterwards. So, remember to save a little space in your backpack for something that means something to you.

Whether it is a childhood teddy bear, your late mother’s engagement ring or a beer coaster from a first date, these items are more than just “things”. When so much else is uncertain, the small objects that remind us who we are may be among the most valuable items we can take with us.

Ruth Ogden receives funding from British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council, CHANSE and Horizon 2020.

Anna Powell receives funding from the Wellcome Trust through the After the End Discovery Award, and from The Pandemic Institute through a partnership with CSL Seqirus UK.

Patricia Kingori receives funding from the Wellcome Trust through the After the End Discovery Award and the Antitheses Research platform.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/when-prepping-for-disaster-dont-forget-to-pack-your-teddy-bear/

Asia Pacific Report

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand (PFNZ) has appealed to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi (NZCTU) to follow the lead of the UK trade union movement and take meaningful action in support of Palestinian rights.

The call follows a key decision by the UK’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), representing more than 5.3 million workers, which has unanimously backed a motion supporting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The motion calls for action to oppose what it describes as the “catastrophic destruction” of Gaza and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

• READ MORE: UK trade unions back motion to boycott and sanction Israel
• Other BDS sanctions reports
• The BDS movement

It includes calls for an end to military cooperation and arms deals with Israel, wide-ranging sanctions, divestment from companies complicit in violations of international law, and support for trade union-led workplace action.

The Palestine Forum said in a statement it was time for the New Zealand trade union movement to now have the same conversation.

“New Zealand workers and trade unions have a long history of standing up for justice, human rights and workers’ rights internationally,” said Maher Nazzal, founder and spokesperson of the forum.

“The UK trade union movement has taken a clear position that solidarity with Palestinian workers cannot stop at statements. It is calling for collective action against complicity.

Consider ‘meaningful action’
“We are asking NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi to consider what meaningful action New Zealand’s trade union movement can take.

“This is not about asking one organisation to speak for everyone. It is about opening a serious conversation within the New Zealand labour movement about what solidarity with Palestinian workers and the Palestinian people should look like in practice.”

The PFNZ is calling on NZCTU to:

• publicly consider and support Palestinian-led BDS initiatives;
• review trade union investments, procurement and relationships to identify links with companies involved in or benefiting from violations of Palestinian rights;
• support measures to end military and economic complicity with violations of international law;
• strengthen solidarity with Palestinian trade unions and workers;
• support workplace and union-led initiatives for Palestinian rights; and
• raise these issues with the New Zealand government, including the need for stronger action concerning the occupation, settlements and settler violence.

International partners
New Zealand has already joined international partners in sanctions targeting individuals and entities involved in financing and enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestine Forum said in the statement that the question was now whether New Zealand’s civil society and trade union movements were prepared to build on that position.

“Workers’ solidarity has always crossed borders,” Nazzal said.

“Palestinian workers and trade unionists are part of the global labour movement. When workers elsewhere face injustice, trade unions have historically understood that solidarity means more than words.

“We encourage NZCTU to engage with its affiliated unions, Palestinian representatives and civil society organisations and consider following the example now being set by the UK trade union movement.

“The UK has shown that trade unions can act collectively. We are asking New Zealand’s trade union movement to consider doing the same.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/palestine-forum-calls-on-nz-unions-to-follow-tuc-sanctions-lead-in-britain/

President Donald Trump won 43% of the Hispanic vote in 2024, up from 35% in 2020 – a big gain for Republicans. Now, as the midterms approach, Hispanic Americans across party lines are losing faith in the American Dream, and his administration’s immigration crackdown appears to be part of the reason.

Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of people with no criminal record are surging. Federal immigration agents have shot at nearly two dozen people – most of them Latino – since last year, according to The New York Times. Those include the fatal shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.

This climate of aggressive immigration enforcement may be affecting Hispanic Americans’ sense of belonging and their belief that they can pursue a better life in the United States. The Public Religion Research Institute 2026 survey on American identity asked more than 5,000 adults about their thoughts on the American Dream: the idea that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. Just 40% of Hispanic Americans say that dream holds true today, down from 52% just two years ago.

I’m the director of research at PRRI, and I study public opinion and immigration. I recently analyzed nearly 700 survey responses from Hispanic Americans to understand which factors are associated with the belief that the American Dream no longer holds true. I found that national pride, concerns about democratic rights and freedoms, attachment to living in the U.S., and Trump’s handling of immigration are significantly associated with this belief.

Surprisingly, however, party affiliation is not.

Hispanic Americans – Republican, Democrat and independent – are experiencing a growing sense of isolation, feeling less safe, less welcome and more like strangers in their own country.

Shifting views

The share of Hispanic Americans who identify as Republican has more than doubled, from 10% in 2013 to 21% in 2025. Over the past year, however, Hispanic Americans’ favorable views of Trump’s handling of immigration have dropped – from 31% in 2025 to 19% in 2026.

Whether Republicans keep their recent gains among Hispanic voters in the November 2026 midterms may depend on whether those voters feel the administration has made their families less safe and their finances less secure. Most Hispanic Americans – 68% – believe the surge of ICE officers is making communities less safe.

Pride has also slipped. Just 42% of Hispanic Americans say they are extremely or very proud to be American, compared with 51% of Americans overall. To be sure, national pride has fallen sharply across the country, from 82% in 2013 to 51% today. But among Hispanic Americans, the drop has been even steeper: from 77% to 42%. A majority of Hispanic Americans – 56% – now say they feel like strangers in their own country.

Concerns about the state of democracy may also be contributing to Hispanic Americans’ shifting views. When eligible voters fear they could be disenfranchised based on unfounded claims about noncitizen voting, it weakens their sense of belonging and their confidence in democratic institutions.

Research shows that Latino citizens already face disproportionately negative effects from strict ID policies, which researchers suggest may be partly due to being less likely to have an ID and feeling intimidated by an increasingly hostile immigration environment that could put undocumented family members at risk. The proposed SAVE America Act, which would require additional documentation to vote, would make voting even more difficult for them.

Declining faith

To understand how Hispanic Americans view the American Dream, I analyzed PRRI’s survey, accounting for differences in race, age, gender, education, religion, employment, income, region, parenthood, survey language and party identification. Even with those controls, unfavorable views of Trump’s handling of immigration remained significant. Weaker levels of national pride, weaker attachment to the U.S. and concerns about democratic rights were significantly associated with the belief that the American Dream no longer holds true.

One additional factor was statistically significant: survey language.

Unexpectedly, Hispanics who completed the survey in Spanish were more likely to believe that the American Dream holds true than those who completed the survey in English. This could be because some Spanish-language respondents evaluate economic opportunities in the U.S. relative to those in their countries of origin.

One factor that was not statistically significant was party identification.

After accounting for other characteristics, Hispanic Democrats, Republicans and independents do not significantly differ in whether they believe the American Dream holds true. This suggests that declining faith goes beyond partisanship and reflects a more fundamental question about this group’s sense of belonging.

In America, 1 in 5 people identify as Hispanic. When a growing segment of American society begins to doubt that hard work leads to opportunity, that citizenship provides security, or that participation brings acceptance, the consequences go beyond which party they will support in November. The deeper question is whether people are beginning to lose faith in the country itself, including its democratic promises and its future.

Diana Orcés is the director of research at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). She is also an adjunct professor at American University, where she teaches political analysis.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/why-hispanic-americans-are-losing-faith-in-the-american-dream/

President Donald Trump has generally tried to justify his tariffs by asserting that they can help narrow the trade deficits the U.S. runs with most of the world. That argument is based on the fact that nearly all countries sell Americans more than they buy from the United States.

But the case of Brazil is different.

The U.S. announced a 25% tariff on Brazilian goods on July 15, 2026. A second measure, introduced eight days later, added another 12.5 percentage points on much of that trade. Both took effect on July 24, bringing the total to 37.5% where they overlap.

Here the imbalance goes the other way. U.S. exports to South America’s biggest economy have exceeded its imports for years. In 2025, American companies exported about US$54 billion in goods to Brazil, mainly refined fuel, aircraft parts, industrial machinery, fertilizer and electronics. They imported about $40 billion in Brazilian goods, mostly crude oil, semi-finished steel, coffee, orange juice, wood pulp, beef and passenger jets built by Embraer, the world’s third-largest aircraft maker.

In total, the U.S. ran a $14 billion trade surplus with Brazil.

Trump is discouraging Brazilian imports anyway. And this is his second attempt to do so. He announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods in July 2025, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in February 2026, along with most of his other tariffs.

As scholars of international political economy who study U.S. trade policy and Brazil’s trade negotiations, we are researching why the U.S. imposed tariffs on Brazil despite Brazil’s trade deficit with the U.S., and how Brazil is responding.

In our view, this dispute was never really about trade. It began with Trump’s objections to a criminal case against former President Jair Bolsonaro – his political ally in Brazil. Today, with Brazil on the verge of a presidential election, standing up to Washington could prove a winning argument for the incumbent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Making many exceptions

The administration spared 471 Brazilian products from the tariffs, among them coffee, wood and wood products, crude oil, natural gas, fertilizer, orange juice and pig iron. Most of the exempted goods are commodities and industrial inputs that American buyers would have trouble replacing quickly.

What stayed on the list is mostly manufactured: shoes, clothing, furniture, machinery and ethanol, the sugarcane-based motor fuel. Brazilian footwear and apparel, which compete on price in American stores, received no exemption at all.

While talks have deadlocked, in-person meetings are scheduled for Sept. 30 on the sidelines of a Group of 20 trade meeting in Wisconsin that will take place shortly before Brazilians go to the polls.

Landing on American companies

Goods worth a total of $94 billion moved between the two countries in 2025, far below the volume of U.S. trade with Canada, Mexico, China or the European Union. But Brazil ranks among the 17 biggest trading partners of the United States in terms of the flow of goods, ahead of Spain, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

The goods still facing tariffs are largely industrial inputs rather than shelf-ready products. So the cost of Trump’s tariffs is mainly landing on U.S. companies, which are the ones that pay when the goods arrive at the border.

Trump’s ability to use tariffs to push Brazil to change policies his administration objects to is limited because Washington’s trade-related leverage over Brazil has been shrinking for years. China surpassed the U.S. as Brazil’s largest trading partner in 2009 and has widened its lead since then. In 2025, China bought roughly 29% of Brazil’s exports and the United States only 11%.

The erosion of Brazil’s reliance on the U.S. market limits what Trump’s tariffs can accomplish. It helps explain why, when Washington slapped tariffs on imports from the whole world in 2025, Brazilian exporters could largely sell their wares elsewhere.

The pressure may be self-defeating. In August 2026, White House adviser Peter Navarro and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent published a report accusing about 40 economies, including Brazil, of helping China route goods around U.S. tariffs. Yet the more Washington restricts Brazilian access to the American market, the more attractive China becomes as a buyer of what Brazil’s selling.

Why Trump is targeting Brazil

Trump didn’t emphasize trade-related concerns when he announced the 50% tariff in July 2025. Instead, he criticized the criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, which Trump has called a “witch hunt.” The U.S. government also accused Brazil’s Supreme Court of censoring American social media platforms within the South American country’s borders.

Bolsonaro, who once aligned Brasília with Washington, cannot run again because he is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup. But his son, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, is on the ballot.

Flávio Bolsonaro says he urged Trump not to impose tariffs. But his brother Eduardo, a Brazilian congressman, spent months in Washington lobbying the Trump administration to punish Brazilian officials over their father’s prosecution and welcomed the tariffs.

Even so, poll results point to a statistical dead heat between Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula. Another 13 minor candidates are also seeking the presidency.

Answering Trump’s tariffs

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s first round of tariffs, it tried using a different legal tool: Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. That law lets a president retaliate against foreign practices it deems unfair.

In the second trade investigation, the U.S. placed additional tariffs on Brazil and 59 other countries, which the Trump administration said had to do with the alleged use of forced labor in their supply chains.

Brazil initially lacked the means to respond to either round of U.S. tariffs.

But in 2025, Brazil’s Congress passed a new “economic reciprocity” law that borrows Section 301’s logic. It allows the executive branch to determine whether a measure taken by a foreign country harms Brazilian competitiveness. If it does, the government may impose tariffs as countermeasures or suspend intellectual property obligations.

Brazil opened its first case under that law on Aug. 13, 2026. It’s against the United States.

To be sure, launching a case does not guarantee that Brazil will retaliate. The procedure runs through seven administrative stages that together can take more than six months.

Brazil is also working on a slower, multilateral strategy. It has taken the dispute to the World Trade Organization, the Geneva-based body that writes and enforces global trade rules. The first stage of any WTO case is a round of formal talks called consultations, which the two governments are required to attempt before the dispute can go further.

Because the consultations with Washington ended in August without agreement, Brazil says it will request a formal WTO dispute panel, which would rule on whether the U.S. tariffs break the organization’s rules.

China has also joined that complaint, with India, Indonesia, South Africa, Colombia and Egypt signing on as interested parties.

Why Brazil may not hit back

We consider any official acts of retaliation against the U.S. by Brazil to be unlikely, due to the inherent power imbalance.

The U.S. consumer market is much larger than Brazil’s, and there are other asymmetries. The dollar-based financial system and Washington’s control over critical technologies give the United States ways to escalate trade battles that Brazil can’t counter. A trade fight could migrate to areas where Brazil has no way to respond in kind.

Canada’s situation shows what the alternative looks like. After its trade talks with Washington collapsed, Ottawa answered U.S. tariffs in August 2026 with tariffs of up to 50% on hundreds of U.S. goods, deepening a trade war between two countries that had been among the world’s closest trading partners. Canada sends roughly three-quarters of its exports to the United States, which gives its retaliation real bite – even if those tariffs may jeopardize its own economy. Brazil lacks that leverage.

Even if Brazil never retaliates, the steps it’s taking in that direction let the government show voters that it is doing something.

Lula’s approval ratings, which had been falling, recovered after he made national sovereignty the heart of his response to Washington. His officials say they don’t expect a deal with Washington to lift the tariffs before the Oct. 4 elections.

And whether Brazil ever activates its version of Section 301 to address what it sees as unfair trade practices may depend on who wins Brazil’s presidential election.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/the-us-sells-more-to-brazil-than-it-buys-but-trump-is-slapping-steep-tariffs-on-its-exports-anyway/

Over the past few weeks, a striking theme has emerged in discussions surrounding Nato. Senior political figures and former Nato officials have raised the possibility of invoking article 5 in response to severe cyber-attacks.

Military leaders have warned that Russia may seek opportunities to test the alliance’s resolve. These developments have prompted an obvious question: is Nato worried about being drawn into a wider European conflict?

The short answer is no. Nato isn’t panicking. But it is certainly having to confront a set of challenges more complicated than the prospect of a conventional war alone.

The real concern inside the alliance is not simply what Russia might do. It is whether Nato can maintain the unity and credibility needed to deter Russia while dealing with the growing political and strategic uncertainty among its members.

Much of the current discussion actually revolves around what are called “hybrid” activities. These tend to involve things such as cyber-attacks, sabotage, disinformation campaigns, airspace violations, GPS disruption and drone incursions. On September 15, jets deployed to the Nato air defence mission shot down what is alleged to have been a Russian drone violating Lithuanian airspace. Meanwhile, Denmark accused the Russian navy of firing flares at one of its helicopters operating in the Baltic Sea.

Such actions fall into the grey area between peace and war. They create uncertainty, impose costs and test political resolve, but without triggering an immediate military response. This presents Nato with a dilemma. The alliance was designed to deter major military aggression. It is less clear how it should respond to actions that are provocative but ambiguous.

Some western officials argue that Russia’s objective may not be to start a war with Nato at all. It may instead be to probe for weaknesses and identify areas where allies disagree over what constitutes an appropriate response, allowing for Moscow to play a longer game than some in eastern Europe would suspect.

In that sense, deterrence is no longer merely about tanks and missiles. It is about maintaining political unity in the face of continuous low-level pressure.

The article 5 problem

At the heart of Nato’s mission lies article 5, the commitment that an attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all. The difficulty is that article 5 derives its power not from legal wording but from credibility. Adversaries must believe that alliance members would actually follow through on their commitments if tested.

Analysts examining Nato’s eastern flank increasingly emphasise that deterrence rests on perceptions of allied willingness and political resolve as much as military capability.

If a hostile state caused widespread disruption to electrical grids, banking systems or communications infrastructure, would that justify collective military action? The answer is not always clear. For Nato planners, uncertainty itself can become a vulnerability.

Much of today’s anxiety is linked to the US. For 75 years, the alliance’s credibility has rested heavily on the assumption that Washington would lead any major response to aggression in Europe. That assumption has not disappeared. But it has become less straightforward than many European leaders would like.

Recent policy debates have increasingly focused on shifting responsibility for conventional defence towards European allies. Discussions about reducing US military commitments in Europe, reviewing troop deployments and encouraging greater European self-reliance have become central features of transatlantic security debates.

This does not mean the US is abandoning Nato. But it does mean alliance planners must consider scenarios in which American resources are stretched across multiple theatres and political attention is divided among competing priorities.

The challenge for Europe is therefore not replacing the US, but adapting to a future in which Washington expects allies to carry a greater share of the burden. The latest Nato concept to help achieve this is termed “multi-domain operations”, whereby Nato aspires to orchestrate military activities across all operating domains and environments and to be synchronised with non-military activities and organisations.

Politics matter as much as military power

A second challenge lies within Nato itself. The alliance often appears unified when confronted by major crises. Yet beneath that unity remain substantial differences in strategic outlook. Poland and the Baltic states naturally view Russia as the central threat. Southern European members frequently devote more attention to instability in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Larger powers bring global interests that smaller allies do not necessarily share.

At the same time, political shifts across Europe are creating additional complexity. The rise of nationalist and populist parties in Europe, such as the recent election of the AfD in regional elections in Germany, does not automatically weaken Nato. In some countries, these movements support higher defence spending and tougher policies towards Russia. In others, they are more sceptical of international commitments and multilateral institutions.

The consequence is not necessarily division, but increased diversity in how security threats are perceived and prioritised. Research on alliance cohesion consistently identifies differing threat perceptions and domestic political interests as potential sources of tension within Nato decision-making.

Concern, not panic

The temptation is to interpret recent statements and proposals as evidence that Nato fears war. A better interpretation is that Nato fears uncertainty.

The alliance faces an adversary willing to employ hybrid tactics below the threshold of open conflict and must adapt to a transatlantic relationship in which European allies are expected to take greater responsibility for their own defence. And it must preserve political cohesion among 32 states with increasingly diverse domestic politics and strategic priorities.

That is a serious challenge. But it is not panic.

Simon J Smith receives funding from UKRI and British Academy/Leverhulme

David J. Galbreath has received funding from the UKRI.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/nato-is-concerned-about-the-threat-from-russia-but-it-isnt-panicking-yet/

Tony Burke was late to the National Press Club to announce the government’s migration policy on Thursday. Six weeks late, to be precise.

After the embarrassment of having to abort his earlier press club appearance, followed by a degree of faffing around by senior ministers over the detail, and unsuccessful negotiations between government and opposition, Burke produced a package that, on his own admission, did not contain all he’d wished.

It attacks some problems. But the government will be wedged between those who think the changes don’t go far enough and critics who believe they’re draconian.

The government will stop the entry of the families of most overseas students, which will make life harder for some and have the effect, presumably, of discouraging others from coming at all. Universities will be concerned.

Working holiday makers wanting to stay two or three years will face the luck of the draw, under a new ballot system. Only 5,000 will get a third year, compared to 31,000 last year. Some farmers and businesses in regional areas looking for labour will be worried.

A proposed “No Further Stay” condition for visitor visas is a blunt instrument, but is aimed at dealing with a large loophole that’s being exploited.

Burke candidly anticipated he’ll come under attack for toughening compliance measures, with greater use of detention as the government tries to deport overstayers. But again, there is a substantial challenge in a system where enforcement has become too loose.

The measures won’t satisfy those who desire a much smaller migration program. They are about achieving the budget target of 225,000 Net Overseas Migration (NOM) by 2027–28, not going lower. Voters wanting a substantially bigger squeeze on the total intake will still be looking to One Nation, or waiting for the Coalition, which is still wrestling with its own alternative.

In terms of numbers, it’s a delicate balance. As Burke told parliament: “If you make cuts too deep, too hard in the immigration system, you trash the Australian economy”.

There will be a good reception for the government’s changes to give priority to skilled workers in vital areas such as health care and construction. This should have been done years ago.

Equally, the crack down on “rogue” migration agents is long overdue.

Burke would have liked to act against those he called “disingenuous protection claims” – people who, coming to the end of their visa hopping, launch a protection claim that might give them “up to nine years working in Australia” while their appeals drag on.

“To give a sense of the gravity of this, if we took the people who apply from countries where more than 85% of the applications fail, that constitutes 80% of our case load. This is an issue I’d like to be able to deal with.”

But that needs legislation and no agreement was able to be reached in two recent meetings between Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor. With One Nation effectively “owning” the immigration issue on the right these days, the opposition would like to move on from it, but eventually felt it could not afford to give too much ground to Labor.

One wonders, however, if the government should not have just included the measure to deal with bogus claims, to see whether the opposition might give in under parliamentary pressure.

Burke’s belated appearance came days after One Nation did its preemption act, with its own policy launched on Monday – albeit a plan that has been blasted by opponents, stakeholders and many experts.

Inside and outside Labor, Burke’s untidy handling of what is a central issue has had some people scratching their heads.

When he was installed in the home affairs portfolio, replacing Clare O’Neil who’d struggled in the job, Burke was widely seen as both competent and the classic “safe pair of hands”. After all, he’s one of the elite group competing to eventually lead Labor.

Burke’s mistake was getting ahead of his colleagues by lining up the press club before the policy process had been finalised. When the draft went to senior ministers, they had issues. Burke was reluctant to cancel his speech, which made the last minute pull-out look worse.

Reports of a big split between Burke and Treasurer Jim Chalmers over the policy were overblown; indeed, Chalmers tried to facilitate Burke’s attempt to meet his initial timetable. But it is notable that Chalmers’ general stance on immigration is very forward leaning, putting him close to that of South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, who recently warned about “the prospect of mainstream politics entering a political race to the bottom for who can cut migration numbers the most”.

The migration policy changes proposed by the various parties will have big fallouts for stakeholders and the economy. But many discontented voters may just make their judgements on the bottom line numbers.

It doesn’t take the ubiquitous opinion polls to tell us the electorate is in a very bad mood, with angst about immigration just one strand in this.

Within Labor they talk about the mid-term blues. They’ve been in this territory before of course – remember, quite close to the last election, the government’s very future appeared at possible risk. Now it has a huge majority to protect it.

On the other hand, in previous difficult times, One Nation hadn’t become the mini-monster now confronting both conservative and Labor parties.

On Monday the government will release the latest Intergenerational Report, which charts the economic and budgetary challenges for the coming four decades. These are formidable, especially for a country that has fundamental problems, notably a seeming inability to get productivity moving and the pressures of an ageing population.

The challenges of the future 40 years will seem theoretical to many people, given how quickly things change. Forty years ago, the power of social media and AI, obsessing us now, were way over the horizon. What won’t pass people by is another rise in interest rates, at present considered a high prospect when the Reserve Bank meets at the end of this month.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/grattan-on-friday-burke-delivers-overdue-migration-baby-but-is-it-sturdy-enough-to-withstand-the-critics/

Australia’s farm sector currently faces a double whammy from weather and non-weather related factors: a confirmed El Niño effect and surging inflationary pressures.

The Bureau of Meteorology says a strong El Niño is underway in late spring and into summer in Australia. This week it said:

Models indicate the current event is likely to become the strongest El Niño event on record, with reliable records dating back to 1950.

The research division of the Department of Agriculture, known as ABARES, says the current El Niño could lead to lower spring rainfall in parts of Australia, but the impacts are uncertain.

These events have coincided with non-weather factors such as rising fuel and fertiliser prices caused by conflict in the Middle East, and ongoing inflationary pressure in the economy.

So, how will these various pressures affect prices of food in coming months?

Fewer leafy greens?

Fruits and vegetables that are part of the regular diet of many households are likely to be affected, but to varying degrees. Consumers could see lower availability and higher prices for some vegetables, such as leafy greens, peas, broccoli and cauliflower later in the year.

On the other hand, due to drier growing conditions, greater supply of citrus, apples and stone fruits is likely. Consumers may find greater availability of peaches, nectarines and plums in markets.

The appearance of vegetables and fruits can be affected by extreme heat and sun exposure, potentially reducing their visual appeal. But product quality is not affected, a point the industry has been keen to promote with sales of “imperfect” fruit and vegetables.

In eastern and southern parts of Australia, winter and spring rainfall is likely to be lower due to El Niño, leading to a fall in the production of pasture.

For cattle and sheep producers, lower pasture availability can force them to use feed supplements or to reduce stock numbers. If many producers attempt to sell livestock at the same time, livestock prices can come under pressure. A dry spring therefore can lead to repercussions beyond the season itself.

ABARES forecasts for winter crop production (mainly wheat, barley and canola) in 2026–27 provide a mixed picture. Output is forecast to fall by between 16% and 44% in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia due to below average rainfall.

On the other hand, winter crop output in Victoria and South Australia is forecast to rise, reflecting excellent growing conditions.

Consumers are likely to face rising food prices

It’s not easy to predict by how much the prices of specific food items will increase. Many supply and demand side factors are at play.

Some business forecasts indicate that wheat, sugar and beef prices will be relatively higher for the rest of 2026, and prices are expected to remain above their longer-term averages. The higher prices are likely to flow through to consumers.

Higher prices for fertiliser and diesel are ramping up pressure on farm input costs, with diesel prices above A$2.60 a litre. The impact of fuel price hikes also tend to move beyond the farm gate, increasing the cost of transport, freight and logistics along the supply chain.

Overall, these price hikes will result in higher costs for farmers, and in turn for consumers through higher food prices.

Rainfall has been declining for decades

El Niño effects have coincided with the occurrence of severe droughts over the past several decades (for example, in 1994, 2002, 2006 and 2015) in Australia. The entire farm sector was affected, through lower availability of pasture, reduced crop yields and reduced profits.

Yet El Niño is not the only phenomenon impacting Australian farming conditions. The CSIRO has pointed to a decline in rainfall in southern Australia since 1970 in the main growing season from April to October, citing both natural variability and climate change.

Inflationary pressure to continue

Inflation data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed food and non-alcoholic beverage prices were the second-largest contributor to inflation in the year to July, rising 3.2%. Only housing costs rose by more.

Financial market economists have said rising food prices could be an “unwelcome shock” that prevents an improvement in inflation.

With inflation top of the list of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s concerns, higher food prices look set to keep inflation above the bank’s 2–3% target for some time.

Don Gunasekera is a former chief economist at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/17/will-el-nino-send-food-prices-soaring-this-summer/

In 2021, a three-year-old female African wild dog spent a year travelling more than 2,300 kilometres across southern Africa. She climbed in and out of the Rift Valley in Zambia, swimming rivers, crossing major highways, and slipping past towns before crossing the Zambian border into Mozambique, then on to the border of Zimbabwe. It was one of the longest journeys recorded for the species.

Known as EWD-1355, she began her journey from her pack’s home range in eastern Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, becoming one of thousands of wild dogs we’ve studied and tracked in Zambia over a period of nearly 20 years.

Since EWD-1355’s journey, we have recorded other extraordinary journeys. One group of three male wild dogs covered even further – they walked 4,126km to connect with female dogs, a record for any African mammal.

I’m a conservation scientist, and have studied African carnivores for 36 years. Together with Matt Becker and the Zambian Carnivore Programme, I’ve spent more than 16 years studying over 500 African wild dogs from over 50 packs every year, fitting them with GPS tracking collars.

Read more:
Migrating animals face collapsing numbers – major new UN report

African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) are one of the world’s most endangered large carnivores. Only around 6,000 remain. Despite the name, they are not closely related to domestic dogs, having split off from the rest of the 34 species of canids more than 3 million years ago.

Small, isolated groups of any endangered species are highly vulnerable to local extinction because there are fewer individuals to withstand inevitable changes and threats to a population. In the case of wild dogs, most do not breed – only an alpha male and alpha female typically breed in each pack.

Over recent decades, we have seen several small wild dog populations in the Serengeti, the Lower Zambezi, and most recently, western Zambia’s Liuwa Plain blink out.

In a recent paper we set out our findings based on tracking individual dogs across their entire lives, recording their position by satellite every few hours to build up a picture of where packs live, when young dogs leave home, where they go, where they thrive, and where they die.

These journeys are vital because wild dogs need large, connected areas to find mates and breed with dogs from other populations. When their habitat is broken up, conservationists may have to capture and move them between reserves to prevent isolated populations from dying out.

Read more:
African wild dogs will soon have their own sperm bank – how artificial breeding will help them survive

To find out whether these were the longest journeys any African mammal had made, our study documented dispersal (one-way movements to find mates). Most record long-distance movements are migrations (seasonal return journeys). For example, the UN Convention on Migratory Species identifies Africa’s longest round-trip migrations as blue wildebeest (650km), Burchell’s zebra (588km) and white-eared kob (400km).

Our study recorded a 4,126km travel distance, far longer than documented African migrations, but representing a different behaviour.

Read more:
African wild dogs: DNA tests of their faeces reveal surprises about what they eat

Our finding that African wild dogs are still travelling vast distances to find mates means there is still hope of maintaining natural processes. The dogs’ natural movement keeps populations going that might otherwise have gone extinct.

However, we also found that the journeys of African wild dogs are fraught with danger. One of the biggest dangers is wire snares set for bushmeat. The dogs are also at risk because they are young, inexperienced, and travelling through areas full of threats such as lions, other packs, and river crossings full of crocodiles. We found that more than half we tracked did not survive.

What the journeys revealed

Our data shows that wild dogs move very differently depending on where they are. Inside protected areas, they move, hunt and rest at moderate speeds. But when they disperse out of protected areas, they shift into a faster and straighter “travel mode” that lets them cover ground quickly, and rest in thickets or rocky areas where they are less likely to be disturbed.

The same instincts that let wild dogs slip past a pride of lions also let them slip past a village or a highway and move on quickly to safer ground.

Read more:
TikTok’s online wild meat sellers – study finds endangered species on offer in west Africa

In 2025 and 2026 our research found that seven young dogs – four females and three males – left the Mayukuyuku Pack in Kafue National Park within two weeks of each other. They were all related so weren’t likely to mate with each other, and each group set off on their own dispersal path.

Both groups eventually approached three of Zambia’s largest cities, amazingly skirting the Copperbelt industrial areas of Zambia, before turning back the way they’d come.

Remarkably, our tracking shows that the two groups met up again after several weeks. By this time, each group had moved more than 1,000km in an unprotected area about 75km from Kitwe and Ndola, both major cities.

Read more:
Fences are an increasing threat to Africa’s migratory wildlife

One of the female dogs was wearing a radio collar and we were able to find out that she later died in a snare. We then lost track of her sisters as they weren’t collared.

The collared Mayukuyuku brothers group kept travelling (by themselves) and made it to eastern Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, a record journey of 4,126km.

They’ve been there ever since and seem to have met up with females, as they are no longer dispersing (moving around).

Information like this is one of the strengths of intensive field studies – we begin to understand where animals are likely to die, and why.

Overall, the movements we observed show that dispersing wild dogs have connected every major population in Zambia. Wild dogs from Zambia have also walked into Mozambique and Malawi and to within a few kilometres of Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. They also continue to move long distances in Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Our genetic studies had already suggested that populations across the region were linked; our GPS data now show, in real time, exactly how that linking happens.

Read more:
Should wildlife parks be fenced? We studied 60 African examples for an answer

However, moving isn’t the same as connecting. Wild dogs usually fight, sometimes fatally, when they meet unfamiliar dogs. Migrating to a new group remains difficult, and often fails.

For example, EWD-1355’s story ended badly. Although she found another pack in the Lower Zambezi National Park, she failed to entice a mate to leave. Because she could not join the group, she kept moving. In June 2022 she died in a wire snare. Wild dogs cannot recognise or avoid snares. As they travel in packs and are reluctant to leave an injured packmate behind, this often means several animals are injured or killed in a single event.

An opportunity and a challenge

About 40% of Zambia has some form of legal protection for wildlife, and corridors such as the Luangwa Valley remain highly effective. Identifying ways to allow wildlife to continue to disperse through other areas that are also important to humans is a priority.

Ending wire-snare poaching for bushmeat needs sustained, well-resourced anti-snaring patrols in national parks and buffer zones, and support for communities living alongside wildlife so bushmeat hunting becomes less necessary.

Read more:
Snare and shotgun injuries reveal more about threats to lions and leopards in Zambia

Fortunately, the Zambia Department of National Parks and Wildlife is working with partners like African Parks, The Nature Conservancy, Musekese Conservation, Conservation South Luangwa, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and the Zambian Carnivore Programme to address snaring and the needs of people who live adjacent to parks.

As protected wildlife populations recover, more young animals will undoubtedly disperse in search of new territory. This is good news for the species, but only if the routes they travel are safer than the one that EWD-1355 took.

This project was supported by partners at the Zambia Department of National Parks and Wildlife and NGOs including The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, National Geographic, the National Science Foundation, Dazzle Africa, Painted Dog Conservation Inc., and Tusk.

Scott Creel receives funding from the US National Science Foundation.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/16/3-african-wild-dogs-travelled-over-4000km-to-find-mates-why-thats-good-news-for-the-endangered-species/

From mortgages to auto loans to credit cards, borrowing is set to get even pricier.

But the Federal Reserve’s decision on Sept. 16, 2026, to hike its baseline interest rate also highlighted an increasingly confounding dilemma: It can raise the price of money across the economy, but it can’t determine which sectors are most affected.

That means the rate increase may further slow the weaker parts of the economy, such as housing, while barely affecting the strongest, namely the relentless investment in artificial intelligence.

In its statement summarizing its unanimous vote, the Fed’s policymaking committee said it was raising its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point so that it now stands at a new target range of 3.75% to 4%. It described inflation as still “elevated” and noted that other economic indicators remain strong, from productivity to investment, to domestic spending.

As a scholar of public finance, I believe the Fed probably had little choice but to raise rates given its commitment to maintain inflation-fighting credibility. Markets had already expected the hike, and if the Fed had failed to deliver, it might have pushed longer-term interest rates even higher amid concerns it was becoming less wedded to that target.

But the Fed’s action also underscores that the U.S. increasingly looks like an economy moving at two very different speeds. Investment in AI – whether through data centers, computing capacity or related infrastructure – has been booming, while it’s crowding out other kinds of investment.

Meanwhile, the housing market is getting crushed by high mortgage rates and diminishing affordability, while consumers are carrying ever more expensive credit card and auto debt.

Many small and traditional businesses are also in a bind as they face substantially higher financing costs than they did several years ago. Those costs reflect the rising yields on longer-term U.S. government debt, which have been going up for months on a mix of factors: Longer-term inflation concerns due to soaring U.S. government debt, geopolitical risks driving up energy costs, and ongoing financing demand for AI.

On Sept. 14, the yield on the 10-year Treasury crossed 5% for the first time since 2023.

An elusive inflation target

When the Fed hikes short-term interest rates, it slows down economic activity by making borrowing more expensive and saving more attractive.

That mechanism works particularly well when consumers are deciding whether to finance a house, purchase a car or take on additional debt. It also discourages businesses from making investments when the expected return is only modestly above their financing costs. As demand slows, businesses have less room to raise prices, easing inflationary pressures.

In this case, the Fed justified its move by citing “elevated” inflation and noting that it “will support a timelier return” to its goal of an annual inflation target of 2%. It also suggested the economy would be able to absorb the tightening and described economic activity as “expanding at a solid pace.”

The decision aligns with Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s recent comments that restoring price stability is central to the Fed’s credibility. In a key speech in August, he underscored his commitment to bringing annualized inflation back down to 2%, an objective he called a “firm, fixed target” – a turnaround from his more ambiguous comments in July.

But in recent months, the economic data has shown that the 2% annual target remains elusive. Consumer prices rose 0.4% in August and 3.4% over the past year. Meanwhile, the war with Iran has pushed oil prices back above US$100 a barrel, adding a new source of inflation pressure through gasoline, diesel, transportation and production costs.

At the same time, the labor market isn’t faltering. The economy added 162,000 jobs in August, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.1%. The one notable concern is the persistence of long-term joblessness despite the strong headline numbers. More than one-quarter of unemployed Americans have now been out of work for at least six months.

Taken together, those numbers suggested there was room for the Fed to hike rates, given that the economy isn’t sliding into recession. So investors overwhelmingly expected the Fed’s rate increase.

An uneven economic hit

However, tighter monetary policy carries a risk: It falls disproportionately on sectors that are already struggling and highly sensitive to interest rates, while having less effect on one of the economy’s strongest sources of demand – the booming AI investment cycle.

Housing provides the clearest example. Persistently high mortgage rates are reinforcing the “lock-in” effect for current homeowners. Millions of homeowners financed their houses when mortgage rates were 3% or 4%, so they’re staying put, with little incentive to sell their home and purchase another at much higher rates.

Mortgage rates are mostly influenced by longer-term factors, including Treasury yields, inflation expectations and market expectations about the future path of interest rates. But the Fed’s decision still matters. Markets increasingly expect today’s hike to be followed by additional increases, signaling that it views inflation as a more persistent risk and putting upward pressure on longer-term interest rates.

That expectation will keep mortgage rates high – probably resulting in fewer home sales, less mobility and continued headwinds for prospective buyers. It’s also likely to make renting relatively more attractive for potential homebuyers who are priced out of buying.

Higher-for-longer rates also change how consumers save.

When interest rates were near zero, they earned almost nothing on safe assets. Today, Treasury securities, money market funds and other relatively safe assets offer meaningful returns. Higher rates therefore tend to shift incentives throughout the economy away from borrowing and spending and toward saving.

With consumers stretched by inflation and increasingly dipping into their savings, however, this effect may be less pronounced.

The AI sugar high

When it comes to the AI investment boom, it’s a different picture. Warsh noted in August that more than half of recent capital-spending growth could be attributed to the AI buildout.

The companies that are spending billions of dollars on computing infrastructure are doing so because they expect potentially enormous returns from AI. If those expected returns on investment are exceptionally high, a modest increase in borrowing costs may do little to alter their investment decisions. That stands in sharp contrast to a prospective homebuyer getting sticker shock from mortgage rates nearing 7%.

The federal government, for its part, faces a slower adjustment. A Fed rate hike doesn’t immediately increase the interest rate on all outstanding federal debt. Most Treasury notes and bonds carry fixed rates until they mature. But as the Treasury issues new debt and refinances maturing securities, today’s higher rates gradually become tomorrow’s higher federal interest expense. That rise in interest costs is a main reason some economists are sounding alarms about the national debt, which recently topped $40 trillion.

In effect, the U.S. economy is facing a reality in which both short- and long-term rates stay higher for longer. The federal government, households and businesses are all adjusting to a borrowing environment that looks substantially different from the one that prevailed for much of the previous decade.

John W. Diamond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/16/us-consumers-and-businesses-are-now-facing-a-future-of-more-expensive-borrowing/

Canada’s shifting study permit caps, post-graduation work permit rules and closure of graduate-focused immigration streams are reshaping pathways to permanent residence for international graduates. Policy reform can address these dynamics and provide clearer, more stable pathways that retain their talent and support their sense of belonging.

Canada advertises itself as a place where international students can build a life, not just buy a university degree. It’s a promise with real stakes: when it frays, the consequences don’t stop at the students themselves. They ripple outward, impacting universities, hospitals, local labour markets and public trust in immigration policy.

For nearly two decades, Canada told international master’s and PhD students a simple story: study here, gain Canadian work experience and you can build a permanent life in this country. That “study-work-stay” model — sometimes called “edugration” — turned graduate students into a dependable source of talent, tuition revenue and future immigrants.

In recent years, Ottawa leaned into it with federal initiatives that have explicitly targeted graduate students as especially desirable immigrants, with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada highlighting faster processing for some doctoral applicants and rolling out new incentives for international master’s and PhD recruitment.

Today, that promise is quietly shifting. Ottawa’s cap on study permits, tighter post-graduation work permit rules and shrinking graduate-focused immigration streams are converging on the same result: the transition from graduation to permanent residence has become less predictable for some international graduates, particularly those who had expected to qualify through recently closed provincial streams.

Shrinking pathways

In 2024, the federal government introduced a national cap on study permits, expected to cut approvals by about 35 per cent compared with 2023. And it has since signalled that the cap is “here to stay” as part of a broader push to shrink the share of temporary residents in Canada.

The changes go beyond the border. New language test and field-of-study requirements have made the post-graduation work permit less automatic, especially for programs below the bachelor level.

These changes are framed as a necessary way to make immigration “sustainable” and to relieve pressure on housing and public services. But even granting those constraints, the way the changes are being implemented is reshaping the education-migration pathway that Canada itself built and promoted for years.

Read more:
Demonizing foreign students sidesteps solutions to Canada’s problems

Different provinces are also moving the goalposts. Québec, for example, has overhauled its once graduate-friendly Québec Experience Program, swapping out a straightforward graduate stream for a more restrictive points-based system. Ontario has gone even further. The province used to run master’s and PhD graduate streams under the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP).

Until that change, the OINP master’s and PhD graduate stream gave international graduates at Ontario universities a direct route to provincial nomination, provided they could demonstrate ties to the province and meet a settlement fund requirement benchmarked against federal tables. Because eligibility depended on factors such as the date of degree completion, Ontario residence and available settlement funds, prospective applicants had to co-ordinate their graduation timelines and finances with the streams’ requirements.

Then, in April 2026, OINP held a large draw for master’s and PhD graduates, inviting 918 candidates. Five weeks later, as part of a system redesign, it revoked all existing streams.

Graduates who became eligible only weeks after the draw found that the program they had been told to rely on simply no longer existed. What’s left for them now is to hope they fit into one of Ontario’s new pathways, to try for permanent residence through the Express Entry’s Canadian Experience Class or to look beyond Canada altogether.

Building predictability

Fixing this does not require returning to unlimited growth or reopening every stream that’s been closed. What it requires is treating stability as a core principle of graduate-focused immigration policy — especially for cohorts who have already made life-shaping decisions based on the rules as they stood.

That starts with transition periods: major rule changes should include protections for current cohorts and clearly defined, time-limited windows after graduation during which core eligibility criteria will not tighten further.

When governments close or narrow a pathway, students who already enrolled or graduated under the old rules deserve a defined transition period — not an abrupt cutoff or a scramble to defend a thesis ahead of a surprise deadline.

Financial requirements need to be realistic. International PhD and master’s students have often lived, worked and paid rent in Canada for years by the time they apply for permanent residence. Settlement fund rules should reflect that and place more weight on ongoing income and work history, not less on whether someone can park a large cash balance in a bank account.

Transparency matters just as much. Immigration authorities should publish clearer processing standards for study permits, post-graduation work permits and permanent residence. Although IRCC’s online tools provide general processing-time estimates and some queue information, applicants may still see that eligibility or background checks are “in progress” without being told why a file is delayed, when the next stage will begin or when they can reasonably expect a decision.

Nobody should have to plan their work, housing and family life around such limited information, opaque queues and fragmented systems.

And finally, Ottawa and the provinces need to work more closely with those on the front lines — university immigration advisers, regulated Canadian immigration consultants and graduate student associations — who see the day-to-day impacts of policy changes long before they show up in a statistic.

Canada’s promise

Some policymakers may argue that the system is doing what it is supposed to do: admitting only a select group of graduates and expecting the rest to take their skills elsewhere.

But a system that relies on abrupt rule changes and unstable pathways isn’t really identifying “the best.” What it’s actually rewarding is whoever can most easily absorb uncertainty, financial risk and administrative complexity, rather than those who are most rooted in Canadian communities or best positioned to contribute over the long term.

For students who have already invested years of work, savings and emotional energy into building a life here, that distinction matters. A fair system should offer more.

If Canada wants to remain credible as a destination for talented international graduates, it needs to back that reputation with something concrete: clear and stable pathways to permanent residence for the people it has already encouraged to stay.

Negar Valizadeh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/16/how-canadas-immigration-caps-are-trapping-its-own-graduate-students/

News stories about campaign finance are frequent in any election season, and this year is no exception.

In Ohio, for instance, NBC reported in August 2026 that there had been over US$130 million in outside spending in the state’s U.S. Senate race. The story also summarized how much money the two candidates had raised from different categories of supporters, such as the proprietors of nursing homes, labor unions and small donors.

It can be hard for the average person to think about these things. It’s hard to know what a normal amount of money is, what it means for a candidate to receive money from particular kinds of donors, or what the impact of this money has on elections.

Money is an essential part of elections, yet many Americans view campaign finance as a sign of corruption. They may have a point – but it is still important to understand the nuances of our system in order to decide what is corruption and what is just regular politics.

Campaign funding has changed dramatically in the past two decades. In the most competitive races, spending by outside groups – organizations other than candidates or parties – has increased from a small percentage of spending in the early 2000s to an amount that exceeds what candidates themselves spend. Super PACs or “dark money” groups can spend millions of dollars quickly, putting pressure on candidates to raise more money just in case.

I’m a political scientist who studies and writes about campaign finance laws and practices. As confusing as campaign spending may appear to be, there are still some basic rules anyone can use to understand information about money in elections. While most of my examples here are about federal elections, these rules apply to state and local campaigns as well.

Rule #1: Every campaign is more expensive than the last one.

This is partly a matter of inflation, but the cost of the average campaign has grown at a rate even faster than inflation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics, $9.5 billion was spent on congressional elections in 2024, compared with $8.8 billion in 2020.

This looks like an increase, but when you adjust for inflation, it’s not. But if you compare elections over the past decade, overall spending has nearly doubled, from $5.1 billion – adjusted for inflation – in 2014 to $9.5 billion in 2024. The decline in the number of congressional seats that are truly competitive in the general election means that this money is now concentrated in far fewer races than it was in the past.

Rule #2: Smart donors don’t give money to candidates with no chance of winning.

If you compare the candidates in each of the 468 or so congressional races, the candidate with the most money wins over 90% of the time. But most of these races feature a popular incumbent who is almost certain to win. Such candidates tend to raise respectable sums of money, but they don’t win because they have raised more – they raise more because they are certain to win. Who would want to give money to a candidate who is doomed to lose?

Rule #3: It’s good to have money – but it’s better not to need it.

If you consider the most competitive races, it becomes clear that the candidates who raise the most money overall are usually the ones who need it most. In the case of incumbents, these are the ones who face the toughest reelection challenges and are the most likely to lose.

These are the races that draw the most money from out of state or from outside groups. In the most expensive races – the ones where both candidates raise a lot – it matters a lot less who has raised the most than in the less competitive ones. It’s one thing to outraise your opponent by $500,000 or more in a race where neither of you has raised more than $1 million. But it’s another thing to outraise your opponent by a similar amount in a race where each of you has raised $20 million or more.

Rule #4: Home state donors matter more.

If a candidate has raised a lot of money from interest groups or from wealthy residents of another state, that is helpful to their campaign, but those people cannot vote for the candidate.

Conversely, if a candidate has raised that money from people in their community, the contributions are a sign that those same people will likely vote for them, campaign for them, and tell their friends to support them. The total value of these contributions, then, is less important than what they signify.

Rule #5: Small donations, particularly from out of state, suggest that a campaign has some sort of unique appeal.

Some candidates will boast about receiving much of their money from small donations. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, proudly says that her average contribution is $21.

Candidates who can do this – attract support from regular people who give modest sums – tend to be more progressive or conservative than the average candidate, or to have some sort of feature that makes them stand out to people across the country.

Just as importantly, the types of people who make small contributions also tend to be more ideologically extreme than the average voter. Many of these donors do not reside in the district where the campaign is happening, but are mobilized by emails or other online communications.

Rule #6: Super PACs can spend money quickly, but they can’t do the things candidates can.

Super PACS are political committees that engage in advocacy about candidates but cannot give money to candidates or communicate directly with them. Many news stories compare candidate fundraising to super PAC support.

To an extent, it’s better for a candidate to have money in their own campaign fund than to have super PAC support. That’s because candidates know better than outside groups the best way to spend money, they have an easier time spending money on grassroots campaigning, and their money comes from a larger number of people – and therefore it is a sign of broader support.

But it is not difficult for super PACs to learn how they can help candidates even though their staff cannot speak directly with them.

A careful look at a candidate’s webpage or candidate advertising can tell groups what a candidate wants to talk about and who the candidate is trying to reach. Because super PACs can raise unlimited amounts of money from a single donor, they can jump into a race and spend millions of dollars quickly. Even though they may not get more bang for the buck, they can change a race with a large advertising buy.

Rule #7: Party money can be more helpful to candidates than super PAC money.

The Supreme Court recently abolished limits on coordinated spending by political parties for candidates. Because they do not always know local politics as well as their candidates do, parties cannot spend money quite as efficiently as candidates.

However, they tend to have larger, more experienced staffs than super PACs, and therefore they know more about how best to help their candidates than super PACs do. Parties also have access to voter information that super PACs do not. Parties and candidates also can now receive discounts on advertising expenses that outside groups do not.

Rule #8: Little is gained from knowing donor occupations or employers.

The Federal Election Commission requires people who give more than $200 to a federal candidate to disclose their employer.

Some analyses will report the money that candidates get from the employees of particular companies. This is misleading – just because someone is employed in a certain business or company doesn’t mean they are giving to help their employer.

The University of California, for instance, has many reasonably well-paid employees, and some of them give money to candidates. This doesn’t mean the University of California has any role in the election.

Similarly, the most common occupations of donors are often “retired” and “self-employed.” Campaign contributors tend to be older than other Americans, but beyond this, there is little to be gained from knowing this employer information. And the “self-employed” include such a wide range of people – from consultants to landscapers – that this category is similarly meaningless.

Robert Boatright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/16/eight-rules-to-help-you-understand-what-campaign-finance-reporting-reveals-about-influence-and-support-or-doesnt/

The American farmer, novelist and poet Wendell Berry, died on August 31 2026, aged 92. Berry farmed in Port Royal, in his native Kentucky, for over 40 years. Through his writing and his farming, Berry emphasised the importance of both community and care for the planet, advocating for small-scale agriculture as key for both.

He criticised modern consumer culture, suggesting, in his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, that instead of buying into the rat race, people should: “Love the world. Work for nothing […] / Say that your main crop is the forests / that you did not plant / that you will not live to harvest.”

His prolific output included The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (1977), Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer (1987) and The Mad Farmer Poems (2008).

Caring for the planet, Berry believed, means recognising your own place in it. Not as the centre, but as part of a wider community of interconnected life. In doing so, Berry’s writing highlights an important new theme in environmental humanities: a growing interest in “georgic” writing as an environmental genre.

The georgic is a classical genre that gets its name from Virgil’s Georgics – a long, four-book poem offering farming advice on ploughing, animal husbandry, fruit growing and beekeeping that was written around 29BC.

While for centuries the georgic was as popular as other classical modes like the pastoral or the epic, by the late 18th-century the form in English had all but disappeared, as the developing science of agriculture became more suited to prose treatises than long, complex poems.

Farming and environmentalism have long been pitched against each other. Over the 20th century, the worst excesses of industrial farming have decimated insect life in the US, as attested to by Rachel Carson’s environmental science book Silent Spring, as well as declining bird life in the UK.

Intensive agriculture has cleared vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and has been linked with the spread of diseases between animals, as well as contributing to antimicrobial resistance and greenhouse gas emissions.

However, since the 1980s, interest has been growing in agroecology and regenerative farming – practices which balance human and environmental needs. Often small-scale and community-led, these practices offer an alternative way of engaging in food production, with projects flourishing from Berry’s native US to Brazil, Spain, Australia and beyond.

In the UK, farmers are increasingly being encouraged to “farm for nature”, with grants available such as the Landscape Recovery scheme, the Sustainable Farming Incentive and the Countryside Stewardship scheme.

The georgic resurgence

This growing interest in balancing agriculture and the natural world is reflected in contemporary books and culture. In the last five years, there has been a growing academic interest in the ways that contemporary georgic writing might respond to environmental concerns.

The resurgence of georgic is in part due to a reimagining of what the form might be. It’s no longer just long, instructional poems that can be thought of as georgic.

Alongside farming novels such as Addlands by Tom Bullough (2017), or The Long Dry (2014) by Cyan Jones, poet Terry Gifford has identified three types of contemporary georgic non-fiction. These include “traditional instructional georgic”, like gardening manuals or the TV programme Countryfile, as well as memoirs, such as The Cow Book: A Story of Life on an Irish Family Farm by John Connell (2019). Finally, there is the genre of rewilding books, such as Wilding by Isabella Tree (2018), which Gifford terms as “radically future-oriented georgic”.

Environmental humanities scholar Pippa Marland, meanwhile, has identified the “new georgic” – a genre in which farmers are engaged in producing nature itself. She cites English Pastoral by James Rebanks (2021) as a prime example.

While the term “eco-georgic” was only coined in 2011, Wendell Berry’s lifelong commitment to farming for nature and communities and to sharing his ethos and experience through writing, make him a fundamentally eco-georgic figure.

Berry’s legacy

Georgic is a didactic genre: it teaches readers things. Berry can be thought of as a georgic writer not because he wrote how-to manuals on ploughing, beekeeping or fruit-grafting (although he was a contributing editor at both New Farm Magazine and Organic Gardening and Farming), but because there is a fundamental quality about his work that seeks to teach readers how to coexist with nature and care for our planet, while feeding our communities.

In his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (1973), Berry asks readers to imagine our true crop as the trees that came before us and will outlive us. He urges us to think across the longer span of centuries. In doing so, he asks us to reorient our relationship with the earth. We should not see it simply as something to exploit and profit from. Instead, we should treasure it, even as we enjoy the crops and fruits that sustain us. Every reader, farmers and non-farmers alike, can learn from his broader ethics of care, attention and negotiation with the natural world.

Berry’s legacy, then, reflects a growing interest in agroecology over the past decades. But alongside his environmentally conscious farming, his writing touched many, feeding an appetite for ideas about how to live alongside nature, as much as for the food that farming produces.

The flourishing of the eco-georgic genre over the past decade testifies to a continuing and growing interest from readers and writers in a way of farming and living that cares for both nature and communities. Communicating these ideas is as vital as putting them into practice: making the pen is as mighty as the plough.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.

Hannah Green does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/16/wendell-berry-spent-his-life-farming-and-writing-his-legacy-is-an-ethic-of-care-for-the-natural-world/