Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetence, corruption, and policy failures:
• 10 Political Violence Experts on What Comes Next for America: Can America escape the spiral of political violence after Charlie Kirk’s killing? (Politico)
• Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market: A new sign that AI is competing with college grads. (The Atlantic) see also The Job Market Is Hell: Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired. (The Atlantic)
• ChatGPT as the Original AI Error: The human fascination with conversation has led us AI astray (Paul Kedrosky)
• It’s Not You. It’s the Food. After we wrote a book on what shapes eating behavior, we now know that these individual wellness fixes are a trillion-dollar distraction from addressing the root cause of America’s chronic disease crisis: our toxic food. (New York Times)
• Own Goal: Presidents of both parties have long understood that our strength doesn’t flow from our economic output, military prowess, or cultural exports, but the capacity to leverage those assets in service of coalitions that are greater than the sum of their parts. That’s not idealism, but pragmatism. Going it alone would mean taking on 96% of humanity and 74% of Earth’s economic output. As Churchill said, “There’s only one thing worse than fighting a war with allies, and that’s fighting a war without them.” (No Mercy / No Malice)
• Tesla’s Dangerous Doors: When Teslas lose power, crashes can turn into deadly races against time. (Bloomberg)
• NATO States Have Failed: They have not prepared and do not understand their national interests. (Phillip’s Newsletter) see also Five Lessons From Putin’s Reckless Polish Drone Strike: The US and Europe have a lot to learn from Russia’s warning shot at Poland. (Bloomberg)
• The Latest Crypto Play Is The Biggest and Most Corrupt Yet: The family just made as much as $5 billion on a single token launch—while reshaping U.S. policy to keep the industry on their side. (Slate)
• A killing at sea marks America’s descent into lawless power: The peremptory strike on a speedboat is a warning to all who serve. Remember your oath. (Defense One)
• How the N.Y.P.D.’s Facial Recognition Tool Landed the Wrong Man in Jail: Trevis Williams is eight inches taller than a man accused of flashing a woman in Union Square in February. The police arrested him anyway. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Heather Boushey, previously a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden, and chief economist to the president’s Invest in America cabinet. She is currently a senior research fellow at the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Here’s the inflation breakdown for August 2025 — in one chart
Source: CNBC
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