2026-02-14 01:10:19
“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they’ll never sit under.” There’s an inverse to that wisdom. Great societies decline when old men chop down forests meant to provide shade and oxygen for future generations. Donald Trump isn’t making America great again, he’s clear-cutting American values.
Late last Thursday night, the president posted a video promoting his debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories. The clip includes images of Michelle and Barack Obama as apes. The following morning, the video drew widespread backlash, including from Senator Tim Scott, a Trump ally and the only Black Republican in the Senate, who called it “the most racist” thing he’s seen out of this White House. (Note the implication: Trump has provided other examples of racism for Senator Scott to benchmark against.) Initially, press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the criticism as “fake outrage.” Insisting he hadn’t made a mistake, Trump doubled down, calling the video “very strong in terms of voter fraud,” and adding that he was the “least racist president you’ve had in a long time.”
Trump’s crisis management role model remains Roy Cohn, the lawyer who served as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attack dog. Cohn taught Trump to respond to criticism immediately using asymmetrical force: Admit nothing, deny everything, and always claim victory, no matter the actual outcome. I teach a session on crisis communications in my Brand Strategy course at Stern. The scale of a crisis isn’t a function of the mistake, but how you react to it. The better playbook: Acknowledge the issue in plain language, take responsibility, and don’t just fix the problem, overcorrect with force disproportionate to the mistake.
As criticism of Trump’s video continued to mount, he moved on to other targets, calling an American Olympic skier who criticized his policies a “loser.” Next, he attacked Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance, writing on Truth Social, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children watching.” Not to worry — Kid Rock performed at an alternate half-time show which felt like watching a Ford Pinto compete at F1 Monaco. Supposedly, the criteria for entrance to Kid Rock’s performance was knowing the purchase limits on Sudafed or wearing an ankle monitor.
Trump’s performative concern over bad role models — won’t someone think of the children? — is rich from a man who appears in the Epstein files 38,000 times. More times than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible; more times than the word “meth” is uttered in all five seasons of Breaking Bad (#awesome). Trump’s depraved behavior is so omnipresent it’s been normalized. Worse, it’s become the cultural context for an entire generation of future civic, business and nonprofit leaders. Trump has been running for president or in office for a decade — if 2024 was the first election you were old enough to vote in, that’s more than half your life. According to a 2018 Quinnipiac poll, 90% of Americans believe it’s important for the president to be a good role model.
Sociologist Robert K. Merton coined the term “role model” in 1957 while studying the socialization of medical students. Distinguishing between reference groups (the crowd you want to belong to) and role models (individuals you emulate in a specific social role), Merton found that we learn “scripts” from role models that teach us how to behave in a specific status (doctor, leader, parent, etc.). Emulating role models, the med students engaged in “anticipatory socialization,” adopting the professional values and norms of practitioners before officially becoming doctors themselves. Building on Merton’s work, psychologists Thekla Morgenroth, Michelle K. Ryan, and Kim Peters argued in a 2015 paper that role models serve three motivational functions: acting as behavioral models, representing what’s possible, and serving as sources of inspiration.
In her book Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin, historian Pamela Walker Laird argues that access to role models is essential for accumulating social capital and influencing the career paths of American business leaders. According to Laird, Ben Franklin, the prototype for an American inventor/entrepreneur, served as a role model to countless nineteenth-century business leaders, including Thomas Mellon, B.F. Goodrich, and Frederick Weyerhäuser. For a contemporary example of a business role model, see the Steve Jobs “uniform” — black turtlenecks, Levi’s 501s, and New Balance sneakers. Explaining the enduring popularity of Jobs-coded looks on TikTok last year, psychotherapist Eloise Skinner told Fortune, “Zoomers have expressed confusion about what to wear for work, given that many started their careers working from home in their pajamas during the pandemic.” In other words, more than a decade after his death, Jobs continues to provide a script for how aspiring business leaders should carry themselves.
Medical students, aspiring entrepreneurs, and sartorially confused Zoomers don’t choose their role models at random, however. In his 2015 book The Secret of Our Success, Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich argued that what sets humans apart from other species is our capacity for cultural learning. According to Henrich, role models are “storage units” for cultural survival skills, and we’re hardwired to identify high-prestige role models. Explaining a scenario where players had the choice to contribute money (or not) to a community project, Henrich wrote, “When the high-prestige player had the opportunity to contribute money first, he or she tended to contribute to, and thus cooperate in, the joint effort, and then the following low-prestige player usually did as well. So, everyone won.” But when the low-prestige player went first, they tended not to contribute, and then, neither did the high-prestige player. In effect, high-prestige people can initiate/veto collaboration, giving them power to set a group’s agenda, whereas low-prestige people have limited veto power and often follow the lead of … a role model.
One recent example: The “Trump dance” phenomenon. The dance dates to his 2020 campaign — the nadir of Trump’s appeal/prestige. Four years later, after Trump mounted the greatest political comeback in American history, professional athletes, the general public, and two world leaders (Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Argentina’s President Javier Milei) were emulating a septuagenarian’s Village People impression. To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it’s good to be the authoritarian.
Last fall, my Pivot co-host Kara Swisher and I did a live tour. The final stop was Los Angeles, my hometown. It was a full-circle moment for me, as one of my early role models was in the audience. When I was 13, I walked into the Dean Witter office in Westwood with $200 my mother’s boyfriend had given me, with instructions to figure out how to buy stocks or return the money. At Dean Witter, Cy Cerro, a good man with an irrational passion for the well-being of a child who wasn’t his, gave me my first lesson in financial markets. We decided to invest my bounty in 13 shares of Columbia Pictures, ticker CPS, at $15 3/8. Each weekday for the next two years, I’d drop two dimes into a payphone and call Cy to discuss my portfolio. He made time for me. He also made time to call my mom. Not to pitch her for business (we had no money), but to let her know what we discussed in the calls and say nice things about me.
Eventually, I lost touch with Cy and sold the stock to fund a road trip to Ensenada with my UCLA fraternity brothers. But in 2021, I reconnected with my old broker. Our lives had moved along eerily similar paths: UCLA, financial services (both of us at Morgan Stanley, via Dean Witter for Cy); divorce, two kids, and then entrepreneurship. I’ve made a good/great living starting and selling companies. However, the bulk of my wealth is a function of one thing I’ve done since the age of 13 — invest in stocks. Unfortunately, there are three times as many women applying to be Big Sisters in NYC than men applying to be Big Brothers. In sum, we need more Cy Cerros. Note: You don’t need to be a baller or have your own family to mentor a young man. Just a guy trying to lead a virtuous life who has the most important thing to share: your presence.
My intellectual sherpas these days are the historians Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Synder. Whenever they’re on my podcast, I’m reminded history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. After reelecting an insurrectionist grifter, America doesn’t yet rhyme with the Third Reich, but the late-stage Weimar Republic. One alarming parallel: rhetoric that dehumanizes political opponents and out-groups. In his speeches, Hitler deployed “vermin” and “parasite” to fearmonger Germans into committing mass murder. Trump calls immigrants “garbage” from “shit-hole countries,” priming (some) Americans to want to throw out their neighbors. Meanwhile, the press is the “enemy of the people,” and dissenters are the “enemy within.” A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that the use of violent words in Trump’s speeches has trended upward since 2015, with an increasing focus on crime. “The growing violence of Trump’s language suggests a strategy aimed at spreading anxiety in order to boost demand for a strong leader who can combat the threats he invokes,” wrote the study’s authors, UCLA political science professors Nikita Savin and Daniel Treisman.
Another alarming parallel with Weimar Germany? Business leaders who provide cloud cover with their silence. German industrialists might’ve stopped Hitler but chose silence instead, as they wanted his help crushing labor unions. In public, Fortune 500 CEOs are silent about Trump. They prefer to wait him out, issuing watered-down press releases through trade groups only when absolutely necessary and bending the knee in exchange for tariff relief and favorable regulatory treatment. In other words, they’ve chosen the path of zero resistance, creating a speedway for an authoritarian.
In private, it’s a different story. I’ve heard from several CEOs since we launched Resist and Unsubscribe. Their rap is always the same. Scott, I share your concerns, but my hands are tied … shareholder value. That’s bullshit coming from a cohort with a bipartisan history of criticizing presidents, especially on tax and regulatory policy. America’s CEOs aren’t acting in the interest of shareholders by staying silent about democracy and the rule of law, they’re acting out of fear. My response to them is also the same. “When the people you love are at your side by your deathbed … how will you answer the following: What did you do?” Do those of us lucky enough to have built rewarding lives and companies owe a debt only to shareholders, or to Americans who sacrificed for our rights? Are we willing to do the right thing even when it’s hard? Are we role models?
Life is so rich,
P.S. Help spread the word by sharing our Resist and Subscribe campaign on social. Use #resistandunsubscribe for visibility and tag me @profgalloway so I can boost your signal.
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2026-02-07 00:11:48
I’ve struggled my whole life to discern the difference between being right vs. effective. Over the past decade, the U.S. has been on a slow burn to fascism. The best description I’ve seen of America’s current political landscape came from David Frum: “If progressives won’t enforce the border, fascists will.” We are squarely in the fascist part of the program. Now that it’s happened, to borrow from Sinclair Lewis, being right isn’t enough. We need to be effective. The question isn’t what to say or who to vote for, but what to build? A: Resistance infrastructure.
Congress has the power to rein in ICE, restore the rule of law, and unwind authoritarianism in America. But to paraphrase a quote popular with self-help gurus and motivational speakers, Congress isn’t coming to save you. Last year’s government shutdown over healthcare didn’t result in a solution, but the assignment of blame. Democrats leveraged the recent partial government shutdown to negotiate for “guardrails” on America’s gestapo. Good. But banning federal agents from wearing masks and ordering independent investigations into the murders of American citizens are empty wins if the Trump administration is responsible for enforcing those policies. In addition, without true structural change — de-gerrymandering, reversing Citizens United, installing term limits — we’ll continue to endure a bipolar America.
Democrats, playing by a rulebook that’s been incinerated, come across as neutered and voiceless. Meanwhile, Republicans are Jekyll and Hyde. In private, they say Trump is a threat to American democracy; in public, they’re sycophants, praising the president no matter what he says or does. The result? Congress is America’s answer to the Russian Duma, i.e., nominally important but functionally irrelevant.
When I interviewed historian Timothy Synder, author of On Tyranny, on my podcast at the end of January, he said the current state of American politics is best understood as a system of competitive authoritarianism. A democratically elected leader erodes checks and balances, attacks institutions, and weaponizes the justice system against his opponents. “There will still be elections, but you don’t wait for the opposition party,” Synder said. “Instead [the people] have to push out ahead of the opposition party. You have to set the moral terms, take risks, and build a coalition of which the opposition party is a part, but isn’t necessarily leading.” Pro-democracy movements aren’t created by political parties, they’re created by people.
Political parties are elected and returned to office for promising and then delivering tangible results to their constituents: good jobs, better schools, clean drinking water, etc. Political movements are graded on a similar curve, but the connection between action and outcome is rarely a straight line. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott began as a one-day protest. Despite a 90% participation rate, the single-day action achieved no tangible results. But after 13 months and a favorable Supreme Court ruling, the boycott successfully forced the integration of Montgomery’s bus system. During that long campaign, however, it would’ve been easy for onlookers to be cynical.
Over the past decade, I’ve been a protest cynic, believing most actions, viewed through the narrow lens of the moment, are performative measures that generate selfies and make participants feel good about being right, without having any actual impact. But Timothy Snyder says my thesis is incorrect. “The main reason you protest is to tell the rest of the people who are watching you that what’s going on isn’t normal,” Snyder told me. “The second reason you protest is that it’s the gateway to doing other things.” In other words, what looks like sound and fury signifying nothing is in fact an incubator for building infrastructure and organizing further actions. Case in point: After the first day of the Montgomery bus boycott, activists, led by a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr., organized a carpooling network with more than 200 cars and 100 pickup locations. That infrastructure sustained their movement, allowing them to register an estimated $3,000 hit per day ($35,000 adjusted for inflation) to the city’s bus service until their demands were met.
When we launched Resist and Unsubscribe last week, we contributed some infrastructure to a political movement. Our goal is to demonstrate to consumers that they wield enormous power, as their spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy. Your wallet is a weapon, and in a capitalist society the most radical act is withholding your money. Deployed broadly across the economy, however, a consumer boycott is a blunt instrument that maximizes damage while diluting influence. We prefer surgical strikes to carpet-bombing.
America’s economy has become one giant bet on AI, with seven tech companies representing more than a third of the S&P 500. The concentration of economic power in so few hands renders those businesses uniquely vulnerable to a boycott, as consumers can focus on a short target list. Big Tech’s vulnerability is further multiplied by the subscription model, as valuations for subscription companies are typically 8x to 20x revenue. One example: In 2022, Netflix reported losing just 200,000 subscribers in a single quarter, and that wiped out $50 billion in market cap overnight. (Netflix attributed the churn to increased competition and the lifting of pandemic restrictions that had kept people in front of their TVs.) The free gift with purchase? Consumers maximize political impact while minimizing household expenses. In America, 4 out of 5 adults spend nearly $200 per year on unused subscriptions. I had three HBO Max subscriptions … somehow.
Some of you have asked why we are targeting Amazon, my 2026 stock pick? Others want to know why we didn’t target Disney? A: I’d rather be effective than right. The companies at ground zero of Resist and Unsubscribe have an outsized influence over the national economy and our president. The stocks in the “blast zone” belong to consumer-facing companies we’ve identified as active enablers of ICE. Collectively, ground zero and blast zone businesses don’t represent the totality of complicity, but rather the jugular of American authoritarianism.
For a recent example of what happens when consumers deploy their spending power against the jugular of authoritarianism, see Disney’s suspension and reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel. In the end, it took fewer than 1% of the Mouse’s total streaming subscribers to accomplish what CEO Bob Iger couldn’t — stand up to an authoritarian. (Note: According to Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist and professor at Harvard who analyzed 323 nonviolent and violent mobilizations between 1900 and 2006, when at least 3.5% of a country’s population actively engages in a peaceful protest movement, it has always resulted in political change.)
My go-to framework for understanding the rise of fascism in America today is the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. The most chilling parallel between then and now is the relationship between business elites and authoritarians. German industrialists weren’t necessarily enthusiastic Nazis, Timothy Snyder told me, but they saw Hitler as a tool to crush unions and undermine democracy, the source of labor’s power. The most powerful American business leaders are making a similar bet, trading their support for tariff carveouts, a promise not to regulate AI, and hundreds of billions in shareholder value.
I believe consumers can force a change in the incentive structure around American CEOs. The clearest possible proof point that the incentive structure is changing would be for Resist and Unsubscribe to show up in earnings calls. That would signal that business leaders feel emboldened to speak up and insist that democracy and the rule of law prevail. That said, earnings calls aren’t the only relevant metric.
According to Brayden King, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who studies social movements and corporate social responsibility, and Sarah A. Soule, dean of the Stanford Business School, the typical boycott doesn’t have much impact on a company’s market cap. In their 2007 study of 342 boycotts against U.S. corporations between 1962 and 1990, they found that boycotts, on average, caused a 1% decline in a company’s stock price. “The number one predictor of what makes a boycott effective is how much media attention it creates, not how many people sign onto a petition or how many consumers it mobilizes,” King said in 2017.
The reason media attention matters so much is that boycotts aren’t a tool to permanently destroy shareholder value, but rather a vehicle to pressure leaders to change their behavior. Some people mocked me for saying last week I was keeping Instagram despite our boycott. Fair. But be practical. Infrastructure plus the distributional scale of Instagram’s 3 billion monthly active users is the peanut butter and chocolate for a political movement. Sharing screenshots of your canceled subscriptions inspires others to Resist and Unsubscribe. Equally powerful, the community in r/ScottGalloway is sharing tips for canceling, including how to get a refund on the unused portion of your annual Amazon Prime subscription. Infrastructure begets infrastructure. Finally, in a nod to the King-Soule study, I have been a total media whore (comes easy) the last couple days, hitting CNN, NPR, BBC, MSNow, etc.
I recently wrote that we should be deeply concerned about a world where connections are forged without friction, as we’re seeing resilience muscles atrophy, especially among young people. In my conversation with Timothy Snyder, he shared a related concern about the lack of friction in the way we conceptualize politics. “People talk about the Insurrection Act or martial law, whether they’re for them or against them, like [we’re in] a video game and you just level up,” he said. “It’s not like that.” In reality, politics is a messy, unpredictable struggle that favors the most resilient. Deploying the language of video games — “unlocks,” “cheat codes,” “speedrunning,” etc. — lulls us into believing that political change, whether in the direction of dictatorship or democracy, is a frictionless experience, achievable by pressing the right combination of buttons.
This isn’t a game. Resist and Unsubscribe is a one-month campaign to demonstrate political power both to consumers and those we seek to influence. Smashing the unsubscribe button won’t defeat the final boss, but making that small sacrifice builds (some) resilience. It also lays down a marker for battles to come. As Timothy Snyder explained, we’re making it clear that there will be severe consequences if the regime attempts to steal the midterms. Recognizing the friction in our politics isn’t an invitation to opt for the path of least resistance; it teaches us that saving democracy requires the same things that build lasting relationships: showing up, enduring discomfort, and wielding the power we actually have rather than waiting for someone else to fix our problem. Finally, action absorbs anxiety. It feels good to do something with others — that whole community thing. Or put another way, stop doomscrolling/hectoring/complaining … and do something.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Resources to help you Resist and Unsubscribe can be found here.
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2026-01-31 00:20:23
Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, was arrested today. Targeting journalists is not about enforcing the law, but shaping reality. History reflects a brutal truth: When you begin arresting journalists, your nation becomes angrier and poorer.
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After the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, many people feel powerless. Praised by tech CEOs, surrounded by sycophants, emboldened by multimillion-dollar settlements, and enriched by his return to the White House, Trump marches on unchecked. Americans, however, have overlooked a potent weapon of resistance. First, we should recognize that the president is unfazed by outrage and unmoved by protests. What does he care about? A: The markets. The best strategy is to opt out. We’re asking you to join a monthlong national economic strike, a coordinated campaign that targets tech and AI companies and inflicts maximum damage with minimum impact on consumers.
Protesters are playing a critical role in challenging Trump’s war on the “enemy within” and documenting the activities of his masked, heavily-armed, and poorly trained paramilitary force. But until the Republicans lose their grip on Washington and the president’s acolytes can be held accountable — and in some cases put on trial — the opposition needs bold new methods.
We’re not talking about a labor strike. It’s easy for me to tell other people to stop working and take the risk of getting fired; that kind of walkout would only hurt small businesses and probably lead to more job losses. We’re also not urging local businesses to sacrifice sales and close their doors for a day, a symbolic but ultimately ineffective tool. We’re proposing something quieter and less cinematic than a protest that will run all day on cable TV, but much more disturbing to the Trump administration. A one-day slowdown is irritating. A one-month slump is terrifying.
With support for abolishing ICE growing and a bipartisan backlash prompting Trump to at least feign a more conciliatory approach in Minnesota, this is the moment to exert pressure. If you need inspiration before joining the movement, look at photos from the September meeting at which tech industry CEOs, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Apple’s Tim Cook, took turns fawning over the president. These are the leaders who have his ear. A modest reduction in their companies’ growth could have a substantial impact on valuations priced to perfection. Small changes in consumer behavior — starting on the first day of February — could have an enormous ripple effect, one that extends all the way to the White House.
We need to get tactical. If consumers cut back on cosmetics, reducing L’Oréal’s revenue by 2%, it’s not going to make a difference. If OpenAI’s revenue falls by 2%, it will. America’s economy is one giant bet on AI, with seven tech companies representing more than a third of the S&P 500. That means the best way to ignite positive change, without hurting consumers, is to carry out an economic strike the tech CEOs can’t ignore.
Unsubscribing to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude are among the first steps. Although only 5% of ChatGPT’s more than 800 million users last year paid for a subscription, a pullback would sting. If enough people cut spending on AI, it could spill over to other companies, including Nvidia and Microsoft. You could also unsubscribe from a range of other tech offerings — Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber — and hold off on buying your next iPhone or Mac. While tech and AI are the main focus, the strike could expand to target companies enabling ICE, including AT&T, Dell, and Fedex, which have contracts with the agency. (See all the options on the Resist and Unsubscribe website.)
Then document your decisions on Instagram — we’d target this platform, too, but we need some way to spread the message nationwide. Talk to your friends and outline what you’re not buying, adding cancelation screenshots and unsubscribe selfies. Articulate the objectives: forcing the president to end the occupation of cities by masked agents, respect the rule of law, and uphold American values. And yes, I’m participating.
If wealthy households reduce spending by 10% and middle- and lower-income households pull back by about 5% in a targeted economic strike, it will curb U.S. GDP virtually overnight, amplifying the impact while mitigating the harm to average American consumers and business owners. And just as Dry January offers an opportunity to scale back on alcohol, a February freeze on subscriptions and other purchases provides a chance for people to reset their consumption patterns. Use the month to review your subscriptions and drop the ones you don’t use.
You may decide this isn’t for you, or conclude it would hurt innocent people. I get it. Punishing America’s economy isn’t an act we propose lightly. But pain for some U.S. tech businesses in the short term could inspire real change — a small price for restoring our democracy.
Consumers, whose spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, wield enormous power. Few things worry leaders more than a decrease in their purchases. Consumer spending fell 3.4% during the Great Recession — at the time, the most severe year-over-year decline since World War II — and 9.8% during the second quarter of 2020, in the depths of the pandemic. Those events sparked two of the fastest political movements in history, with the U.S. spending huge sums to escape each crisis. In the case of Covid, economic data, not the death toll, was the main driver.
Americans in the top 10% income bracket, who account for about half of all consumer spending, play an especially important role. In outlining this idea in October, I estimated that those consumers could achieve a 1% decline in GDP with a 3% cut to their spending (setting aside multiplier effects, import leakages, and substitutions).
If we want to know how Trump might respond, consider recent history. After the president unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs last April, the ensuing turmoil in the bond market prompted the administration to pause most of its planned tariffs for 90 days. Bond investors were getting “yippy,” as the president explained. Wall Street soon had a term for this phenomenon — the TACO trade, for “Trump always chickens out.”
Earlier this month, Trump threatened to punish European nations if they didn’t cave to his demands to give him Greenland. Then the markets threw up, and the president reversed course, announcing he’d reached the “framework of a future deal” for Greenland and the Arctic. Stocks surged on the news.
Fortune 500 CEOs need to organize to resist the president as he bulldozes the values that make America great. Understandably, nobody wants to go first or be alone on this, but it’s the right thing to do. It also presents an opportunity to reap reputational and commercial gains. I feel for businesses in Minnesota — victims of the administration’s cruel and reckless immigration policies — and collective action is the way to go. But the letter signed by 60 CEOs of companies based in the state, including Best Buy, Target, and UnitedHealth, calling for state, local, and federal officials to “work together to find real solutions,” while positive, isn’t going to move the needle.
Republicans could stop Trump … if they had a spine. The CEOs of America’s largest corporations could also show up, but don’t hold your breath. If you’re waiting for these leaders to overcome their fear and share-price idolatry in the face of threats from the president, you’re going to suffocate. Trump put everyone on notice last week with his lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, over allegations that the company stopped providing banking services to Trump and his businesses for political reasons after he left office in 2021. Bosses of big corporations know that won’t be the last battle the president wages, so rather than antagonizing him, they flatter Trump and keep their heads down. Without real pushback, things are likely to get worse.
You’d think that the death of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse Trump officials accused of being a “domestic terrorist,” would have been a tipping point for business leaders. Yet on Saturday, hours after federal agents killed Pretti as he attempted to help a woman who’d been pushed to the ground and pepper-sprayed, CEOs including Cook and Amazon’s Andy Jassy attended a private White House screening to celebrate the Amazon MGM Studios-produced documentary Melania.
The courage is coming from the rank and file. Following Pretti’s death, more than 450 tech workers from Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Salesforce, and other companies signed a letter urging their CEOs to contact the White House, demand that ICE leave American cities, and cancel all company contracts with the enforcement agency. A senior executive at OpenAI, James Dyett, wrote on X that there was more outrage from tech executives over California’s proposed wealth tax “than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets.” Exactly.
As Heather Cox Richardson and other historians note, there are many ways to make a difference in dark times. She points out that Minnesotans are doing their part — patrolling the streets, donating food, helping with legal services, and looking out for one another — while organizations at the national level speak up. Voters in the midterm elections in November, meanwhile, will have a chance to dilute Trump’s power.
Until then, the best tool we have to push CEOs to take on the president and prevent further erosion of the American brand is in our pockets — an economic strike that builds on calls for Apple boycotts that are already starting to emerge. Real change always comes from the American people, not from our political parties. But power doesn’t fear protests nearly as much as economic withdrawals. Getting off your couch, taking to the streets, and building community is important, but the most radical act in a capitalist society isn’t marching, it’s not spending.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Resources to help you participate in our Resist and Unsubscribe campaign and maximize your impact can be found here.
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2026-01-24 00:58:10
I’m in Davos. I was last here in 1999 — a period in history marked by (relative) peace, a narrower wealth gap, and techno optimism. Today geopolitics resembles a cross between pre-World War II and the Gilded Age, and Big Tech is the foe. But the most striking change is that the U.S. is no longer the good guy. It’s as if MGM greenlit a body swap installment of the Bond franchise, where 007 and Ernst Stavro Blofeld switch places. Think: Diamonds Are Forever meets Freaky Friday.
American military interventions have always reminded me of the Bond films. The opening act is nothing short of spectacular: a daring production marked by operational excellence, jaw-dropping personal courage, and high-tech lethality. But too often the rest of the movie serves up mediocrity and confusion, resulting in citizens/viewers asking, “How did we get here?”
In response to Iraq invading Kuwait, George H.W. Bush assembled a 42-nation coalition. After a six-month build up, it took 43 days and fewer than 300 U.S. killed for the American-led forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Bush decided to declare victory and leave, vs. attempting to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. The first Gulf War was Goldfinger: There was an iconic villain (Saddam), clear stakes (oil and sovereignty), spectacular set pieces (smart bombs down ventilation shafts), public support (yellow ribbons), and a clear ending. Even the dialogue was Oscar-worthy: “This aggression will not stand.” The plot was a perfect execution of the Powell Doctrine.
It took just 26 days of major combat operations for U.S.-led forces to enter Iraq, destroy Saddam Hussein’s military, and capture Baghdad. The “shock and awe” of Tomahawk missiles decimating their targets, American armored units on “thunder runs” slicing through the opposition, and the toppling of Saddam’s statue were as compelling as the opening of Spectre. Unfortunately, the next eight years also resembled Spectre. Weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photo-op. Abu Ghraib. There was no plan to stand up Iraqi civil society; we just imposed a democracy — a contradiction in terms. Sectarian violence followed, at an enormous human cost: 4,500 American dead, 32,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties. We squandered trillions of dollars — money we should’ve invested in America. Political division at home. ISIS. Iranian hegemony.
Critics panned Spectre for wasting one of the best openings in Bond history and for desperately attempting to retroactively connect the Daniel Craig films into one grand conspiracy. (See: the nonexistent link between Saddam and 9/11, fictional WMDs, and a Neocon pipedream about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East.) W. would be one of the most liked ex-presidents — his Pepfar program was credited with saving millions of lives in Africa before Trump came for it — had he not produced an Oscar-caliber geopolitical disaster film.
The U.S. military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a serious flex. For months, a surveillance team observed Maduro’s every move, while special forces trained in an exact, full-size replica of Maduro’s Caracas safe house. The night of the raid, hundreds of U.S. warplanes knocked out Venezuelan defenses. In a little over two hours, American forces eliminated more than 50 Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers and captured Maduro and his wife, while sustaining zero dead and seven wounded. The ultimate Bond opener.
A month after the raid, however, America’s intervention in Venezuela is beginning to resemble The World Is Not Enough — a forgettable Bond film with a convoluted plot about controlling oil pipelines in the Caucasus. Trump’s casus belli (fentanyl and cocaine) didn’t survive the press conference; he mentioned illegal drugs just five times, while talking about oil 27 times. However, Venezuela’s black gold is heavy crude; it costs $70 to extract a barrel of oil you can sell for $58. Regime change for oil, 007? That’s like invading the Alps for snow. Cut to: An Oval Office meeting where ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told Trump Venezuela is “uninvestable.”
Where The World Is Not Enough had a bad script, Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” doesn’t have a script at all. After the raid, Trump announced that Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, was in charge, saying she would “make Venezuela great again.” But Rodriguez struck a defiant tone, saying, “There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro.” In a column for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, retired U.S. Marine Colonel Mark F. Cancian called the Maduro raid a “military victory with no viable endgame,” likening it to conquering Nazi Germany but keeping the Nazis in charge.
Quantum of Solace is the Bond film nobody asked for. The geopolitical equivalent? Seizing Greenland. In the film, the villain’s scheme revolves around controlling Bolivia’s water supply — a resource he could simply purchase. Trump’s motives are even more convoluted. Greenland has valuable minerals, but 80% of the land is covered in ice, making extraction difficult and costly. One Arctic expert called the idea “completely bonkers,” adding, “You might as well mine on the moon.” Greenland is strategically important, especially as the melting Arctic ice cap opens up new shipping lanes, but we don’t need to invade — we already have the right to reinforce existing bases under a 1951 treaty. Speaking of treaties, attacking Denmark would blow up NATO, the most successful military alliance in history. We walked into a Starbucks with an AR-15, locked and loaded, and demanded a grande latte for $6.46. OK, we can have that without the gun or the threats. So fucking stupid.
What’s the motivation here? Some theories. First, Greenland is 3x the size of Texas. Seizing Greenland, or bribing Greenlanders to break their ties with Denmark and join the U.S., would be a real estate deal on the order of the Louisiana Purchase, albeit with a fraction of the ROI. Second, Trump said he feels that ownership of Greenland is “psychologically needed for success.” Third, like a movie star snubbed by the Academy, Trump is mad he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s Greenland folly is Quantum of Solace as written by the writer’s room from Veep, directed by Ed Wood (ask Gemini), and produced by the team that brought you Ishtar. Note: During his speech at Davos Trump backed away from an invasion (#yay).
In geopolitical terms, the audience for Quantum of Stupid was Russia and China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the NATO concept had “discredited itself.” That’s Russian for “stupid,” i.e., the U.S. is hurting Europe while hurting itself, and we love to see it. Without NATO, Putin could take advantage by rolling up Ukraine and then turning his attention toward seizing the Baltics, Finland, and Poland. A wider European war would likely follow. Meanwhile, China will continue to expand its influence. Last week, during an official visit, Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged Canadian leader Mark Carney to chart a path of “strategic autonomy” independent of the U.S. In a speech at Davos, Carney gave an obituary for the rules-based order America once led, saying, “the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” For China, the entree is Taiwan.
In economic terms, Quantum of Stupid is already a flop. After announcing a 10% tariff on goods from eight European nations that immediately rallied around Denmark, the U.S. got a sneak preview of coming attractions. Denmark’s largest pension fund announced plans to sell off $100 million in Treasuries (it denied the move was political). Pimco’s chief investment officer told the Financial Times it was pivoting away from U.S. assets because of Trump’s “unpredictable” policies. Europe holds 40% of foreign U.S. Treasuries. As Ray Dalio said, “You could easily imagine it could simply become unpopular to buy or hold U.S. debt.” True. You could also imagine the EU weaponizing capital. “For all its military and economic strength, the U.S. has one key weakness: It relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits,” said Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos, adding that it’s “not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part.”
In You Only Live Twice, Bond fakes his death to infiltrate SPECTRE and stop World War III. The title refers to a Japanese proverb: “You only live twice: once when you are born, and once when you look death in the face.” The Islamic Republic is looking death in the face, and the U.S. has a small window to pull the plug. This should be the Bond film every American wants. The Islamic Republic caused 17% of all U.S. casualties in Iraq and armed anti-American forces in Afghanistan. It remains the world’s chief sponsor of terror, committed to a policy of “death to America.” Iran’s mullahs have a brutal human rights record, especially when it comes to women and LGBTQ people. However, the left is silent, suffering under a moral color code. When the oppressor is brown, it experiences moral paralysis.
We squandered regime change opportunities during the 2009 protests over rigged elections and again in 2022 when Iranian women took to the streets. (Call this a regrettable prequel, Live and Let Live.) Now the regime is even more vulnerable. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has systematically dismantled Iranian proxy forces. Meanwhile, Iran is facing economic collapse — the rial fell by 45% against the dollar in 2025, inflation accelerated from 33% in 2024 to 42% last year, food prices have increased by 70% YoY, and an estimated one-third of Iranians live in poverty. Protests have galvanized society. The resulting crackdown has killed as many as 20,000 Iranians, according to a UN estimate. Airstrikes could defang the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, sabotage could disrupt infrastructure, cyber could cripple regime intelligence and propaganda capabilities while boosting opposition visibility, and special forces could take out the mullahs. The question isn’t whether we’re capable of regime change, but what comes next? The answer is likely something better, or less bad. Military intervention is always a risk, and this is one worth taking.
The tragedy of American power isn’t that it’s declining; it’s that it’s increasingly unserious. We still have the muscle, the money, and the moral case. What we lack is patience, humility, and the stamina for the boring part — asking “What happens next?” Until we relearn how to write second acts, every intervention will look the same: dazzling, destructive, and destined for a sequel no one asked for.
Life is so rich,
P.S. At Davos this week, I sat down with historian Niall Ferguson to discuss geopolitics. Listen on Apple or Spotify, or watch our conversation on YouTube.
The post License to Intervene appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2026-01-17 01:36:57
I hate the “incel” moniker. Throughout 99% of history, 99% of men have been incels for long periods. I was celibate until I was 19 — not by choice. I wanted a girlfriend in high school, but was largely sidelined from the dating game by afflictions common among teen boys: I was painfully skinny and insecure, with bad skin. So I got to work. I enrolled at UCLA, hit the gym, focused on ways to demonstrate excellence (for me it was humor), built friendships with women, and surrounded myself with the impressive men of ZBT. I worked hard and developed the callouses that nearly every successful person has: I learned how to mourn and move on, to endure rejection.
By the middle of sophomore year, I had my first girlfriend. There were a lot of “firsts” in the relationship, but two stand out: Melanie was the first woman I was “me” around, instead of trying to be someone I thought she’d like. And we loved each other. Having an impressive person who could date other men choose and love you is profound.
Struggling to find a romantic partner is normal. Today, however, a dangerous ideology is infecting many young men, who see their incel status as inevitable, and even embrace it, blaming women instead of trying to better themselves. Many aren’t incels, but vcels — voluntary celibates who choose resentment over self-improvement.
The challenges young men face are real. In school, boys fall behind their female peers and are much less likely to become valedictorians and go to college, with the education system biased against them and girls mature faster. American tax policy increasingly transfers money from the young to the old. We’ve adopted a scarcity mindset that only benefits incumbents — and the rising costs for housing and education that result take an especially heavy toll on young men, who are disproportionately evaluated on their economic prospects. Big Tech profits through sequestration and enragement, while digitizing dating has resulted in a winner-take-most environment.
Rather than addressing the problem, leaders on both ends of the political spectrum have inflamed the crisis. The left ignored young men in the lead-up to the last presidential election, espousing the belief that they didn’t have a problem, they were the problem. The far right filled the void with misogynistic, racist, and otherwise hateful messages, arguing that the answer was to send women and non-white people back to the 50s. But here’s the bottom line: Nobody is entitled to reproduce, nor obligated to serve another group. Women are ascending; it’s a collective achievement. Men need to level up.
Government programs and societal shifts will help, but young men should, and will, shoulder most of the responsibility — one that most are addressing but too many abdicate as they slide deeper into the darkness of frictionless online relationships.
These young men fail to recognize the agency they have to transform their lives, instead donning an incel badge to justify their sense of victimhood. My message to young men: Being an incel isn’t a burden you’re destined to bear. If you’ve surrendered, sitting at home all day watching porn, bingeing Netflix, and playing Diablo, that’s on you.
We need to model a healthier vision. My advice: Exercise three times a week, work at least 30 hours a week out of the house, and push yourself into the company of strangers at least three times a month, even if you’re an introvert. This strategy will make you more attractive and increase your odds of finding a partner. Following this rule of threes will put you into the 95th percentile of young men. If you can stay there long enough, you’ll likely have the opportunity to be voluntarily incelibate … which is awesome.
It’s easier to get a job than it has been for most of the last 100 years. Youth unemployment is hovering around 10%, historically low. When I was young, unsure if I could pay tuition, I took any job. If you’re reading this and living with your parents, you should, too. I’m going to Davos next week on my own plane, but I got there by waiting tables, carrying groceries, and hauling golf bags 5 miles in the humid Ohio summer.
On both the economic and social fronts, there are ways to overcome your obstacles and become a better man: Get an apprenticeship. Join a team. Go to a church, synagogue, or mosque. Develop a kindness practice. Learn how to approach people. This is harder in an age when many people are addicted to YouTube and TikTok and third spaces are disappearing, but increasing your risk appetite for the real world is essential.
Adolescence, the gut-wrenching Netflix miniseries that won four Golden Globes earlier this week, stoked the debate about “incel” culture, shining a light on the threats posed by social media influencers known for their misogynistic views. The drama, which follows a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate, tackled symbols such as the “red pill,” a metaphor taken from the 1999 movie The Matrix. Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo, must choose between a blue pill, which will keep him in a state of blissful ignorance, or a red pill, which will awaken him to a painful but enlightening reality. In the manosphere, people who make the latter decision have accepted the supposed “truths” about gender roles, including the idea that the world is unfairly stacked against unattractive and awkward heterosexual men. Here’s the truth pill, re sex: Throughout history, 40% of men and 80% of women have reproduced. In the U.S. today, an estimated 75% and 85% of men and women will reproduce, respectively. American men today are twice as likely to procreate as their ancestors.
Another incel conviction — fed by dating apps that separate potential partners into a small group of haves and a massive cohort of have-nots — is that most men will never find romantic satisfaction, because 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. The bottom 80% of male Tinder users, based on percentage of likes received, are competing for the bottom 22% of women. This leads me to the same conclusion: Young men need real-world venues where they can demonstrate excellence to women, who are more discerning than they are.
The incel movement was in motion long before Adolescence. The term emerged in the late 1990s on a website dubbed Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project, created by a university student who wanted to provide an inclusive hub for people of all genders and orientations who had trouble dating. Instead, the term was hijacked as a “weapon of war,” and the community morphed into a nihilistic, misogynistic subculture.
Our society is producing far too many self-described incels who think it’s acceptable, even aspirational, to give up on relationships, and who become susceptible to biases against women and immigrants. Most will not harm others — their loathing is usually reserved for themselves. About two-thirds of incels say they’ve considered suicide. Instead of retreating amid increased scrutiny, social media accounts are widening their audience and rebranding to bypass bans. Adding fuel to the flame, the algorithms boost many female influencers whose misandry cosplays as social commentary.
Many young men are genuinely trying to forge connections but stumbling over economic and social hurdles — struggles that Democrats are finally starting to take seriously after watching this demographic help Donald Trump retake the White House.
With young men continuing to feel frustation and malaise more than a year into the president’s second term, the Democrats have a chance to win them back. Empathy isn’t zero-sum. The party, and society more broadly, can build on the gains women have registered over the past three decades, while also supporting boys and men.
Young men themselves are part of the solution. Women aren’t to blame for their relationship woes, just as immigrants aren’t responsible for America’s economic problems. Men need to seize the opportunity to become better, and we need to provide an off-ramp for red-pilled men who believe the mating market is rigged against them, helping to prevent their descent into bitterness and potential extremism.
Many young men struggle with mental health — understandable given the challenges they face. But here’s a truth the manosphere won’t tell you: In the end, meaningful relationships are the only things that matter. If you’re alone and resigned to being nutrition for Big Tech, you need to reset and commit to becoming voluntarily incelibate. If you sequester from other mammals, the anxiety and depression you’ll ultimately feel will dwarf any terror about disappointment that exists in the outside world — isolation is the only danger that compounds.
Life is so rich,
P.S. This week, my Prof G Markets co-host Ed Elson wrote about the debate over California’s billionaire wealth tax … and proposed an alternative. Next week, he’ll unpack Jerome Powell’s win against Trump and what it means for our country. Subscribe to his weekly newsletter Simply Put here.
The post The ‘Vcel’ Movement appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2026-01-10 00:50:07
Last week, U.S. forces entered Venezuela and arrested President Nicolas Maduro. Regardless of your politics, this was a serious flex from the best-performing organization in history: the U.S. military. Army Delta Force and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (specialized helicopters) accomplished in 35 minutes what Putin has been unable to accomplish in Ukraine in 35 months. But, like most Bond films, our overseas adventures begin strong but then come off the tracks.
Ostensibly, the goal was to stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., but there is no flow; according to the DEA, Venezuela has nothing to do with smuggling fentanyl. Trump’s real objective is oil. In a press conference announcing Maduro’s capture, the president mentioned drugs just five times, while talking about oil 27 times. Like so many things with Trump, the “Donroe Doctrine” is a noxious cocktail of greed and stupidity, garnished with calcified ideas from the past. Oil still matters to the global economy, but launching a regime change for oil is like invading Costa Rica for sand. Venezuela’s black gold is heavy crude; it costs upwards of $70 a barrel to extract oil you can sell for $58. The world power curve has been shaped by oil for decades, but a different resource is bending that curve. So, for a moment, let’s ignore that masked government agents are murdering people in American cities — and talk about the new oil. BTW, America’s very founding was an attempt to escape this type of state-sponsored depravity. But I digress.
Rare earths is an umbrella term for 17 metallic elements. Despite the name, they aren’t especially rare, just difficult to extract and refine. Like petroleum, which is a raw input for more than 6,000 products, rare earths find their way into a wide range of modern technologies, including smart devices, solar panels, medical imaging equipment, and vehicles (both electric and internal combustion). Also, similar to petroleum, rare earths are vital to U.S. defense capabilities, from tanks and Tomahawk missiles to satellites. RAND estimates an F-35 fighter contains more than 900 pounds of rare earth materials in its engines and electronics. An Arleigh Burke–class destroyer requires approximately 5,200 pounds, and a Virginia–class submarine uses about 9,200 pounds. The question isn’t what do we need rare earths for, but what do we not need rare earths for? A: Nothing important.
The idea that nations don’t have friends, only interests, is a worldview variously attributed to Lord Palmerston, Charles de Gaulle, or Henry Kissinger. The maxim doesn’t capture the idealism that (sometimes) drives American foreign policy, but it does sum up how statesmen explain the logic of sacrificing blood and treasure in the pursuit of national interests. A nation that secures its interests, oftentimes natural resources, controls its destiny.
For the ancient Romans, salt was more than seasoning, it was the backbone of commerce. In Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, historian Tom Holland views control of the salt trade as the key building block of Rome’s early wealth and military dominance, noting that Rome’s location was desirable, in part, because of its proximity to the salt pans at the mouth of the Tiber River. In SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, historian Mary Beard argues that Rome’s government saw salt as a strategic resource akin to how modern states view energy. Rome built roads to transport salt (in particular, the Via Salaria) and even subsidized salt prices to preserve domestic order.
In the 19th century, Peru held a near-monopoly on guano (bird shit), a critical input for fertilizer as well as gunpowder. In response, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in 1856 authorizing the seizure of more than 100 guano islands. In How to Hide an Empire, historian Daniel Immerwahr notes that guano was so valuable that many called it “white gold.” As Immerwahr writes, “It was the pursuit of this ‘white gold’ that made the U.S. an oceanic empire and laid the foundations for overseas territorial conquests to come.”
During World War II, Japan’s push into Southeast Asia cut off 90% of the global supply of natural rubber, spurring the U.S. to launch a program to mass produce a synthetic alternative. Without rubber, America couldn’t produce tires for trucks and planes, life rafts, oxygen masks, pontoon bridges, certain medical supplies, raincoats, boots, and thousands of other products necessary for waging war. In The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War, Alexander J. Field, professor of economics at Santa Clara University, argues, “Redressing the loss of Southeast Asian rubber imports was more important than the Manhattan Project in making Allied victory possible.”
In 1973, Americans got a crash course in the geopolitics of oil when the OPEC nations flexed their economic muscle to undermine U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The fallout from the embargo caused the U.S. to reassess our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, leading to increased domestic production and a greater emphasis on energy efficiency. Beginning in 2019, nearly 50 years after OPEC’s embargo, the U.S. is now a net exporter of oil. Though we still import some oil, 52% comes from Canada and another 11% from Mexico. Notwithstanding the Donroe Doctrine, which can be summed up as “alienating allies and comforting enemies,” the U.S. oil supply is no longer vulnerable to exogenous shocks.
If rare earths are the new oil, China is the new OPEC. Chinese mines supply nearly 70% of the ore from which rare earth elements are extracted, and more than 90% of the refined materials. Meanwhile, the U.S. imports 70% of its rare earths from China. This asymmetry is a strategic vulnerability. According to a 2025 report from the Center on Strategic and International Studies, China has demonstrated a willingness to “weaponize” rare earths. In 2010, for example, China cut off rare earth exports to Japan over a maritime dispute, threatening to halt its automotive production. Japan responded by importing more rare earths from Australia in the short term and ramping up domestic production long term. Since then, Japanese rare earth imports from China have fallen from 90% to 60% — still too high, but low enough that Tokyo has options if Beijing restricts access. This week, China again banned the export of rare earths to Japan over its support for Taiwan, but, notably, the ban included a far broader category of goods, suggesting China’s rare earth leverage over Japan has weakened.
It’s a different story for the U.S. In April, China retaliated against Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs by restricting the export of seven types of rare earths. Trump folded, naturally, but even after reaching a deal in October to resume exports, the U.S. remains at China’s mercy. According to a recent Bloomberg report, continued restrictions on deliveries of raw materials “hamstring” U.S. efforts to build domestic rare earth processing capacity. Meanwhile, the president’s plans to secure alternative sources of rare earths would be laughable if they weren’t so stupid, i.e., hurting others while hurting ourselves. We’re threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, despite Greenland’s rare earth deposits being low-grade and costly to extract. We also shook down Ukraine for rare earths, but that deal could take more than a decade to bear fruit, as 40% of Ukraine’s mineral resources are inaccessible due to Russian occupation. While we flounder, China dominates. As Deng Xiaoping famously said back in 1992, “The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths.”
In 2024, reports out of Wyoming suggested that the U.S. had hit a rare earth mother load at Halleck Creek. Geo Hussar, an (outstanding) influencer who focuses on geopolitics, believes Halleck Creek, with an estimated 2.3 billion metric tons of ore, 50x China’s reserves, will eventually break Beijing’s stranglehold over rare earths. But according to Karl Friedhoff, a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Halleck Creek is likely to net closer to 7.5 million metric tons of usable rare earth material after extraction and processing. Even using the lower estimate, that’s enough to catapult the U.S. from seventh to third place, just behind Brazil. Still, the objective is getting rare earths out of the ground and into the supply chain. Unfortunately, it takes American mining firms an average of 29 years to go from discovery to operations, putting the U.S. next to last worldwide, just ahead of Zambia.
China monopolized rare earths by providing capital to its leading firms, encouraging rare earth acquisitions abroad, banning foreign companies from buying domestic mines, and eventually consolidating its industry into a few giant players, giving it leverage over prices. In other words, China played the long game. According to a 2025 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis, both the Biden and Trump administrations correctly identified the need to contest China’s rare earth dominance. But to do so, the U.S. must marshal a combination of innovation, international cooperation, and long-term industrial planning. Based on our history, I’m optimistic. Based on our present, however, the good money is on pessimism / catastrophe. Cutting research funding and pursuing a xenophobic immigration policy undermine innovation. Careening from one budget crisis to the next renders long-term industrial planning nearly impossible. And alienating allies while comforting dictators squanders the soft power that made the U.S. the indispensable nation.
One of my favorite aphorisms says “old men should plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.” Our rare earths deficit developed at the speed Hemingway attributed to bankruptcy — gradually, then suddenly. Our failure is bipartisan, and blame goes to the public and private sectors alike. Rare earths aren’t rare. Long-term, strategic investment is. And the scarcest resource in America today is leaders who will invest in a future we don’t immediately profit from.
Life is so rich,
P.S. My Prof G Markets co-host Ed Elson has launched a Substack. How original. Ed’s first installment is a deep dive into the business that defined 2025: OnlyFans. Read it here.
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