Bringing incisive clarity to decision-makers:

My review/recap of All-In Summit 2025… 🧵 @allinsummit, @theallinpod

There is historical precedent for President Trump’s latest. Dr. Carter Malkasian, author of The [1953] Korean War: “Rhee [President of South Korea] vociferously opposed the armistice. He wanted Korea unified and all Chinese forces withdrawn from Korea. Koreans filled the streets of Seoul and other cities throughout South Korea to demonstrate. Most South Koreans supported President Rhee’s stance that an armistice should not be concluded until North Korea was liberated. Rhee was intransigent.”

Joe Rogan to Elon: “AI music is disturbing because it’s my favorite music now. There are AI covers… they will blow your mind. This is my favorite thing to do to people. This guy, if this were a real person, would be the #1 music artist in the world... The most soulful, potent voice… It’s going to blow you away.”

Sir Niall: “There’s never been a good long game for Ukraine. I stand by my view that we should have tried to end the war in 2022 when they had the upper hand, and I think future historians will say that the Biden administration blundered terribly when it did not push hard to end the war when Ukraine still had a shot, and still had some leverage.” - Latest GoodFellows episode

Wow. My mind is blown. @joerogan: “Just listen to this…”

What’s the coolest job title in President Trump’s incoming Administration? For those equally fascinated by diplomacy and geopolitics, co-leadership of DOGE places second to the newly created “Presidential Envoy for Special Missions” announced last Saturday. I’ve since listened to more than a dozen of @RichardGrenell’s interviews, and attempted to capture his diplomatic principles. - What America First means (and what it doesn’t) - Why Europe should welcome President Trump’s return - The oft-overlooked importance of deal enforcement - And how to get the right mix of diplomacy and deterrence “Belligerent for peace”: 12 lessons from (soon-to-be) Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, Ric Grenell edwardmdruce.substack.com/p/…

Great explainer from @hsu_steve on the medium-term reality of US Chip Wars. The West solved China’s coordination problem for them. Cc: @davidpgoldman, @crmiller1, @matthewclifford

Putin wants to negotiate. Zelensky has put a block on negotiations in Ukraine. Why are we never told this? (Authoritative sourcing) (If you’d prefer to watch on YouTube: piped.video/watch?v=lI3YBI8U… )

✈️ President Trump should take @elonmusk and @RobertKennedyJr along to Budapest – here’s why... 🧵

🚨 CLEAN cities If one of Jordan Peterson’s first rules for getting one’s life in order is to tidy their room, the first step to getting a country together is to clean its cities. “We should measure the health of a country by the condition of its cities” “Step #1 of renewal” “Cleanliness is next to godliness” “Your city is a reflection of your self-respect, how you feel about your nation, your patriotism” “It’s not about the Constitution; it’s about litter.” @TuckerCarlson on @theallinpod, @Jason @DavidSacks @chamath Hoping President Trump appoints (and we here in London imminently appoint) a Cleanliness Czar.

President Eisenhower’s biographer, Stephen E. Ambrose: “[In 1953] Walter Robertson [Assistant Secretary of State] and General Clark [Commander of United Nations forces] were conferring daily with South Korean President Rhee, threatening him with an American pull-out if he did not cooperate in the armistice, promising him virtually unlimited American aid if he did. Rhee resisted the pressure, helped by reports from the [United] States that seemed to indicate a near revolt by Republican senators against their own Administration. [Republican Senator for Vermont] Ralph Flanders had said that Robertson and Clark were putting ‘us in the position of threatening the Korean government with an attack from the rear while the Republic of Korea Army were attacking the Communists at the front’. [Republican leader in the Senate Styles] Bridges and [Joseph] McCarthy believed that ‘freedom-loving people’ should applaud Rhee’s defiance of the armistice... And on July 5, the acting majority leader, Senator Knowland blamed Eisenhower for a ‘breach’ with Rhee and announced his support for Korean unification before any armistice agreement was signed. Despite the clamor, Eisenhower insisted that Robertson and Clark be firm. They were, and ultimately persuaded Rhee that it was futile for South Korea to try to go it alone. On July 8 [15 days ahead of the Korean Armistice Agreement being signed], Rhee finally issued a public statement promising to cooperate.”

Credit to @DavidSacks for orchestrating this. David said five months ago, when appearing on The Duran (a show which regularly hosts the two professors individually): “I think it would be interesting, by the way, if you got Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs to debate that topic [China] on your show, because they agree completely on Ukraine, but they have a difference on China and I think it’s very interesting.” piped.video/live/ci1EgdNOvZo… @AXChristoforou @AMercouris The thinking for this panel had surely been in David’s mind for some time. And I think it can only have exceeded expectations. The spirited fun of the @theallinpod transposed onto two world-leading, contrarian academics. All four Besties did a great job drawing out differences in stance between the two. Panel of the conference – said by many, even who have no usual interest in geopolitics – for sure.

“When I was in government, any time I was given a new problem – I had the desk where all the really bad problems went; ‘we don’t know what to do with this, let’s give it to Jared’ – my first question was always: okay, what did they do in Singapore? In government, what I learned is that even though every problem seemed crazy, I started reading a lot of history and studying other countries because nothing was actually new under the sun. Every problem I was dealing with, somebody had dealt with it at some time, in some form, in some place. I wanted to pull whatever learnings I could from that, in order to inform the approach I was going to take. In some ways, my lack of experience was actually a benefit because I approached every problem by saying: how could I learn from the people who have done well and the people who have failed? Singapore has just been a very steady example of a country that has done a lot of the right policies, in the right ways, for a long time.” - @jaredkushner

Naftali Bennett’s remarkable tale of mediating between Zelensky and Putin (March 2022) – now with English voiceover. (As discussed between Prof. Mearsheimer and @lexfridman.) Why has this never been covered in Western press? Cc: @naftalibennett, @AXChristoforou, @DavidSacks, @elonmusk, @hsu_steve, @freddiesayers, @I_Katchanovski

Europe needs to step up. Here’s the plan to do it: artofthedeal.org/ukraine/FRU… A team of 3 worked on this. I challenge any European Foreign Ministry to put forward a better plan.

6/ Indian ex-Foreign Secretary opens up about Russia-Ukraine conflict I found this interview with Dr Kanwal Sibal (@KanwalSibal) extremely good. For anyone sufficiently interested, I encourage listening to the whole thing. piped.video/watch?v=wv75rDix… Dr Sibal is a former Indian Foreign Minister, as well as former Indian Ambassador to Russia. He knows what he’s talking about. He speaks very candidly. And he doesn’t pull punches speaking about any country: the U.S., UK, China, France, Russia… I liked his take on ‘de-risking’ rather than de-coupling. This conversation ought to have a wider global audience. And I think a reasonably good principle to have in trying to discern what’s actually going on: listen to neutral people. They are the least subject to propaganda/distortion/tribe thinking.

“[Jean] Monnet was one of the few people in modern politics who really deserve the label ‘genius’. The story of how he wangled the creation of his institutions through the daily chaos of post-war politics is a lesson to anybody who wants to get things done.” So wrote Dominic Cummings in 2017, a year after winning the Brexit referendum, having been significant underdog. “Monnet avoided immediate battles for power in favour of ‘preparing the future’ – i.e. having plans in his pocket for when crises hit and politicians were desperate. He created the European Economic Community in this way.” Monnet, subsequently considered one of the founding fathers of the EU, might be one of the best historical figures to study for those looking to manoeuvre (in a wiser direction) international institutions that today have outgrown their usefulness. Five standout lessons… 🧵

Instead of trying to derail American-led attempts at peace, European countries would be wiser to put together credible plans that might actually have a shot at assisting them. End 🧵

🧵 Sir Niall Ferguson explaining the genius of the Abraham Accords process, and where it might be heading… “I think, gentlemen, you’re both being a bit too negative – and maybe because you’re approaching this as academics. You’re reading the 20-Point Plan and wanting footnotes. But, of course, the architects of this plan are not academics. They’re real estate guys. They’re the ‘deal guys’, as @jaredkushner calls himself and @SteveWitkoff. And the key here is to look behind the 20-Point Plan... and ask yourself: have the constellations of force changed in a way that is significant? I think they have. First of all, I think this plan extricates PM @netanyahu from a real cul-de-sac that he got into… His military option had boiled down to ‘occupy the whole of Gaza’, something that has been tried before without success. I think it’s important to recognize President Trump’s ability to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way President Biden just wasn’t able to do. More importantly, the US team were able to get the Qataris, in particular, to lean on Hamas to sign the agreement. And getting the hostages out is a major breakthrough. It’s not a trivial thing. It’s really the whole point. Because now the hostages are out, then there’s a very stark choice: Hamas can either cooperate with the terms of this agreement, or face destruction. And what have they got now? They don’t have any hostages – though they may have the corpses of the hostages they murdered. So I think it does change the situation quite profoundly.” - @nfergus last Friday on GoodFellows

Lastly, Vice President @JDVance was not attacking the UK or France at all. The Economist two weeks ago: Ignore ~all British commentators who interpret his comments falsely.

Zelensky has just (commendably) committed to peace in a similar way:

There was also historical precedent for the actions of Zelensky on Friday. Stephen E. Ambrose: “The next day, [Secretary of State] Dulles called Eisenhower on the telephone to inform the President that Rhee had just sent a message demanding ironclad guarantees of post-truce American aid. Dulles said that it appeared to him ‘as if Rhee at the last minute was trying to run out on his commitment to us’. Eisenhower said he was ‘astonished’ at this development and instructed the Secretary to tell Rhee that ‘this is what we can do and beyond that we cannot go’. Dulles sent the word to Rhee, and when the truce was finally signed, two days later, Rhee made no public protest.” Events since Friday are a well-worn pattern in history.

🇬🇧🇺🇸How Sir Keir can have a 💯 meeting with President Trump thetimes.com/uk/defence/arti… Three policy ideas: FRUKUS, DODE, and a Ukraine peacekeeping force that’d pay for itself. Grateful to @thetimes for publishing.

Secretary @marcorubio: “The reality on the ground… The dishonesty that has existed. We somehow led people to believe that Ukraine would be able, not just to defeat Russia, but to destroy them and push them all the way back to 2014. Meanwhile, Ukraine is being set back 100 years. Their energy grid is being wiped out. Someone is going to have to pay for all this reconstruction… The President’s view is this needs to end. It needs to enter a negotiation. That’s going to be the work of hard diplomacy (@generalkellogg), which is what we used to do in the world. At least we have a President who recognises: our objective is this conflict needs to end. And it needs to end in a way that’s enduring. What we have been funding is… maybe even worse than a stalemate. One in which, incrementally, Ukraine is being destroyed and losing more and more territory.” @megynkelly

1/ I’ve attended the past three years, on the bounce – as has @poymeetsworld (in photo above). PoOn and I have extremely different interests. Her: crypto. Me: geopolitics. But us, and the likes of us, are brought together by the spirit of All-In: intellectual breadth, getting outside your typical lane of thinking, and fun – life lived unashamedly well. The best description I’ve heard of the podcast: “Like listening into an extremely high-IQ frat house.” And I consider the greatest accomplishment of the four hosts, @DavidSacks, @Jason, @chamath, @friedberg –beyond gaining intimate access to the White House and its leadership: “Making intelligence cool again.” Long may it continue.

Are you aware of these 4 things re: the Ukraine-Russia conflict? (Authoritative sourcing) 🧵 Cc’ @DavidSacks, @elonmusk, @VivekGRamaswamy, @AMercouris, @AXChristoforou

Interesting that @Dominic2306 did verbatim the same thing in 10 Downing Street during the same period. Great problem-solvers think alike.

How does a political party stay in power for 14 years, and remain intellectually fresh? Diary from Budapest, and six lessons British ministers could learn from Hungary... edwardmdruce.substack.com/p/… Cc: @BalazsOrban_HU, @FerencKumin, @BalazsHidveghi, @EduardHabsburg

You are one of very few leaders still speaking sense.

The crucial step President Trump’s negotiators are overlooking to get 🇺🇦 peace... It took Eisenhower’s team six months of fraught peace talks in Korea to realize one thing… 🧵

7/ @roelofbotha, Managing Partner of @sequoia: how much Sequoia has made “by being patient” (holding onto winners). And going on to describe a 2x2 quadrant bestowed by Don Valentine… There are four types of CEO: • Exceptional/not • Easy to get along with/not “All the best founders are exceptional + NOT easy to get along with.” “Being uncompromising seems a critical ingredient.”

BEYOND CEASEFIRES: Ukraine’s term sheet proposed on Monday – doubtless with significant input from US Special Envoy @generalkellogg – is light-years away from where terms need to be to achieve fast 🇺🇦 peace. The terms are incredibly basic – still. And they lack meaningful detail (see: nitter.app/ChristopherJM/status/1…). For example: still not ruling out Ukraine joining NATO, nor foreign troops being stationed in Ukraine. Mediators with any firm grasp would be forgiven for wishing to pack up their bags and go home. Terms do not address the “root causes” (from Russia’s perspective) at all. General Kellogg says he thinks this term sheet is “pretty good”. Last week: “We’ll have what we call the E3. That is the National Security Advisors from Germany, France, and Great Britain... When we were in London, they kind of helped us mold a term sheet for Ukraine.” But the term sheet’s authors appear subject to a fantasy, that getting Presidents together will magically solve immense divides – rather than themselves coming up with a creative plan to bridge the gap. Diplomacy can succeed. I am strongly pro-diplomacy. But 130 days in, this is the Western term sheet? Diplomacy is proceeding far too slowly. And President Trump is rightly frustrated with the slowness. Prisoner exchanges are an important step, and to be commended. But with the actual term sheets, next to nothing has advanced. The following is an alternative diplomatic plan… 🧵 One that’s much more defined than the Ukraine/Kellogg proposal from Monday… That attempts to reconcile the two sides – giving upsides and meaningful incentives to both. I’m rooting for President Trump’s peacemaking success. But figures close to President Trump need to decide: do they want to swing big, and try a daring outside-the-box approach to stop this awful war? 🕊️ Or are they content with a conventional and staid approach, that (based on Monday’s documents) is on a path to inevitable failure – and the war dragging on violently and interminably?

FRUKUS: The security guarantee that could stabilise Europe – no NATO for Ukraine, but what a credible America First security guarantee could look like instead… Aims: • Enduringly secure Ukraine, so the conflict doesn’t recur • Without further provoking Russia – a plan Russia might agree to (@kadmitriev), that would address the “root causes” of the conflict from their perspective • That could also work for President Trump’s America First administration. The plan: • “FRUKUS”: an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, and – to begin – the United States. In the acronym, the US expressly comes last, with the US backstopping it only for seven years. • All countries involved would provide an Article 5-strength guarantee to Ukraine (the territory Ukraine maintains behind a US-negotiated truce line) – with peacekeeping inside Ukraine managed by the UN. • No NATO or European troops to be stationed in Ukraine. • A restriction on long-range weaponry that can enter Ukraine. This is not “capitulating to Russia”. It’s exactly what Eisenhower enacted to end the Korean War in 1953. Emulate clause 13d of the Korean Armistice (artofthedeal.org/ukraine/fru…), and encourage British and French energies instead be put into a new military base in east Poland: “Fort FRUK”. • After seven years, US involvement sunsets, and Poland (which this year will spend a commendable 4.7% of GDP on defense) and Germany replace the US so “FRUKUS” (at inception: France/the UK/the US) becomes “Friends of Ukraine and the US”. At this seven-year juncture, Ukraine is also to lower its conscription age (presently at 25) to age 18 – to bolster collective European deterrence. • If the Trump administration were to give assurances for such an Article 5-strength security guarantee to Ukraine first (to kick into effect immediately after an armistice), history, from the example of President Eisenhower, suggests that the US can then push much harder on territorial concessions – which (regrettably) are necessary to end the bloodbath and prevent further escalation. Is this undesirable for Ukraine? Of course. Is it also the least-bad outcome from where we are today? YES. Combine the promise of a security guarantee for Ukraine with going much closer to Russia’s demands on territory, that are not going to budge. Stabilise Europe while forcing Europe to get its own defense readiness together. The medium-term result (from seven years on) is America First-compatible. If the Trump administration banks now on warmer relations with Russia, and thinks, at least for the next few years, it can keep Russia in check, the above hopefully ought not to be too great an ask. @generalkellogg, @SPE_Kellogg, @SteveWitkoff, @jaredkushner

3/ The event opened with @TripleH (the WWE superstar), followed by US Energy Secretary, @SecretaryWright. nitter.app/DavidSacks/status/1965… @allinsummit is the only conference in the world where this transition of speaker would feel normal. Where else would one get such a mix? At All-In, it just flows. The only thing missing: putting @Jason through a table. Though “it was discussed”.

Dominic in 2014: “Monnet created the EU by exploiting crises – sometimes nothing happens in decades, and sometimes decades happen in weeks. Big changes are possible, if people are prepared.” dominiccummings.com/2014/10/… End 🧵

2/ Last year, having had JD Vance, Megyn Kelly, Peter Thiel… You know the speaker list is going to be stacked, and you’re in for a good time. This year’s Summit took on a tone of a battle between two forces: a) “Suicide of the West” and cultural decline b) Excitement for the future, and distinct techno-optimism. No matter how bad things might seem, this can (yet) be turned around. A wildly better future lies ahead… Neither are inevitable. Each day is a choice, these are the paths, and our actions determine the outcome.

Edward Heath, British Prime Minister 1970–1974: “His influence has been very considerable indeed… I once discussed the secret of his success… Somebody said, the great thing about Jean Monnet is that he always goes to the point of decision. Now, this is not always the same as going to the top. Jean Monnet knows enough of governmental organisation to understand that with every part of the government machine there is one point at which the decision for all practical purposes is taken. It may sometimes be comparatively low down. But it’s then passed up and accepted because of the way the decision was taken and the person who took it.” 3/

Full video: piped.video/XFixxXD_bDA?si=RGJa…

@PressSec is absolute 🔥 piped.video/watch?v=8WEz96Eq…

From a 1971 BBC documentary… Monnet himself: “It takes a long time to get to power. But it doesn’t take very long to explain to the one in power what is to be done. And if the situation is difficult, the ideas are not so numerous – that he usually accepts, so long as the credit goes to him. In politics, the great thing is to have the credit. With my work, the credit must be forgotten. The essential thing is to know what to do.” 1/

“Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you.” - St. Ignatius

10/ Day two, Alex Karp, @PalantirTech CEO: “Yeah, China is trying to sow chaos in our society, but it’s the US’ responsibility to be stable.” One of the most profound remarks of the Summit. @chamath Further, at the close of Alex’s panel: those who are pro-open borders and (historically) pro-democracy building in Iraq/Afghanistan are the same. The two are rooted in the same false assumption: culture doesn’t matter. The past 25 years have shown a spectacular disregard for social fabric, the world over. David Sacks: “Neocons and integrationists… Invade the country; invite the country.” Human beings are much slower to change than, at the outset of the 2000s, we were led to believe.

8/ @Jason following a spicy panel with @TuckerCarlson and @markcuban: “9/11 killed around 3,000 Americans. Mexican drug cartels are killing ~100,000 Americans annually. If they are not a terrorist organization, I’m not sure what is... I’m strongly in favor of sending US forces over the border and killing them.” Notable how big a round of applause this last comment got from the audience. (I think potentially the biggest of day one.)

16/ Hanging out with @markcuban and Ari Emanuel, and having started their own tequila brand, the All-In four have made Entourage real – rather: they’ve surpassed it, by some way. There’s no single standout speaker. This year, the most impressive thing was the Besties’ ability to be informed – and connected, and entertaining – across so many different subject matters. All while “holding down” reasonably busy day-jobs. It’s an incredible feat @DavidSacks, @Jason, @chamath, @friedberg. The reason I keep returning… The @allinsummit is like a multi-vitamin for one’s intelligence. If you want to understand diplomacy (as I do), you need to have something of a grasp of energy policy and financial markets. Equivalent versions of this are true for a huge number of fields. With @theallinpod: you’re never permitted to stay in your intellectual lane. Well worth the trek to LA from London, three years running. World’s Greatest Conference? You bet.

I worked directly with Dominic Cummings for a big part of 2020 (one of his first ‘misfits’). This is an extremely good interview. piped.video/watch?v=3i7ym_Qh… To the uninitiated with government: some of what Dominic says might sound mad. But it is true! This from @dwarkesh_sp wins most interesting long-form interview I’ve listened to in 2023.

13/ @elonmusk: Any lessons from your time in Washington? “The government is basically unfixable... I applaud @DavidSacks’s noble efforts. It’s good to have talented people in the administration. But at the end of the day, if you look at our national debt… If AI and robots don’t solve our national debt, we’re toast.”

All happened before in history...

“With this, he combines the gift of being able to go for the essentials in a problem… All the time I’ve known him, he’s gone for the essence of the problem... ‘There are all sorts of details that have got to be sorted out, but don’t we agree that this is really the main issue with which we’ve got to wrestle? And if we agree on that, then we can get all sorts of experts to work out the details. But if we just give it to the experts and tell them to work it out, they’ll never get anywhere.’ You must tell them what is the essential, where do you want to get to, and then they can work out how to do it.” 5/

5/ California Forever founder @jansramek: “How to build in America is the defining question of the next 20 years” I concur. And a crucial point I’ve not heard others make: almost all US shipyards are on the East Coast. “The next potential adversary is on the West Coast, guys.” Going on to say: if ever there were to be a conflict over Taiwan, the first thing China would likely do is bomb the Panama Canal, meaning US ships cannot get back for swift repair. I hope @ElbridgeColby takes a close look at @CAForever and the remarkable ambition of what @jansramek is undertaking.

1/ @DavidSacks and @RobertKennedyJr rate Alexander Mercouris extremely highly on Russia. David Sacks: “Geopolitics – probably my #1 podcast is The Duran and Alexander Mercouris.” RFK Jr.: “One of my kids asked me the other day what podcast I consider indispensable. If I had only one podcast that I could listen to, it would be The Duran. I think anybody who wants to understand US foreign policy – Alexander on that podcast has such an encyclopaedic knowledge of politics around the globe; Latin America, Africa, Asia, Russia, China… It’s really quite breathtaking, and to me it’s just a joy to listen to. I never miss any of his podcasts.” - September 2024 @AXChristoforou, @JamesWebb_16

3 options to get the leader of a smaller, invaded country to agree to (necessary) territorial concessions to end a bloody war: a) You can arrest them b) You can abandon them c) You can give them a security guarantee 🧵

West German Chancellor 1969–1974, Willy Brandt: “He would make a draft… He would not circulate it and send it to a number of people. He would travel himself and see someone in Germany, someone in France, someone in Britain, in Italy; and based upon this he would make the real draft. He would be in contact with two or three dozen important people, before he has a meeting. So at the meeting, he already knows what different people from various countries think… He works, in a way, like a chief-of-staff, in putting all these different elements together.” 2/

@hsu_steve called this 🎯 well over a year ago: nitter.app/EdwardMDruce/status/18… Very good we’re pivoting away from foolish Biden-era policies.

14/ Elon went on to talk about: • His plans for humanoid robots, and what it’s taking to make @Tesla_Optimus happen (“human hands are a very versatile instrument”) • Whether Starlink will be coming to mobiles (taking on AT&T/Verizon, and offering global phone reception) • And multi-planetary redundancy: “There is a fork in the road of human destiny, where if we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, the key test being: if the resupply ships stop coming, for any reason, does Mars continue to prosper, or does it die out? At the point at which Mars is able to prosper and grow on its own, the probable lifespan of consciousness is drastically greater.” “The first missions to Mars are not that important. What matters is: can you get sufficient tonnage to Mars, such that Mars can prosper on its own? And that means it has to have all of the ingredients of civilization. It’s not just that you need to build a chip fab on Mars, but you need the ability to build chip fabs.”

6/ @demishassabis: “We will have AGI in the next 10 years” (Knighted last year, I noted Americans are yet to get accustomed to calling Demis “Sir Demis”.) From further developments Demis spoke about, we should be reasonably confident Google Glass will be amazing when it’s ultimately relaunched – hopefully in the not-too distant future.

Jared Kushner: “The biggest message that we’ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better… We’re just getting started. The success or failure of this will be if Israel and this international mechanism is able to create a viable alternative. If they are successful, Hamas will fail, and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future.”

Heath continued: “He is a very persuasive person… He has a deep belief that everything can be settled by reason. If you only analyse the problem, give sufficient attention to it, take into account other people’s views. Then, if you discuss it rationally, and simply, and as he does with great charm, you have a very good chance of persuading people to take the reasonable way out. He is most pertinacious; most persistent. I think there are few men in the world more persistent than he is.” 4/

9/ @TulsiGabbard, Director of National Intelligence, closed out day one with a recap of all that’s been made public in the past few months on the Trump term one Russiagate hoax. As several have long argued, the psychology of wanting to fight on in Ukraine as a means to “take down Putin” – rather than pursue diplomacy in 2022 (when there was a definite chance) – came to be inextricably linked in Democrats’ minds with a war against President Trump. We now have confirmed, the basis for any such link was fiction.

Over the past ten days, upon taking the mantle of the European Union’s rotating Presidency, Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, set off to see Zelensky in Ukraine; Putin in Moscow; Xi in China; NATO leaders in Washington; and Trump (prior to yesterday’s attack) at Mar-a-Lago. One could draw up no better itinerary of figures who need to be consulted to bring the conflict in Ukraine to a resolution. Yet, what does our media report? En route to Moscow, that Orbán is a “Putin sympathiser”, and that the EU/NATO member is “paying homage” to Putin. British media has for a good while chosen to ignore diplomatic efforts. I tried for three months last year to get a chronology of March/April 2022 diplomatic talks in Istanbul published in any mainstream outlet. I had official written endorsement from two of the key senior negotiators in the room. Every single outlet I wrote to rejected it. (nitter.app/EdwardMDruce/status/17…) Initialled agreements from these talks have in the past six weeks been published by The New York Times. Still, the British press at large refuses to mention the agreements. (Did you read anything about this commensurate for how big a story it is?) Now that diplomacy can no longer be ignored, the media turns to denouncing attempts. Think about it. Was Eisenhower “paying homage” to Kim Il-Sung by having his closest advisors negotiate with North Korea in 1953? Was General George C. Marshall a “sympathiser of Mao” in travelling to China and attempting to bring an end to the Chinese Civil War in 1947? Such character attacks have become embarrassing. Now, I realise that Orbán is portrayed as a villainous authoritarian. But I hope your mind has in recent weeks been opened to the fact that our media is not always entirely faithful in its coverage. Also, that you might be willing to concede to not having ever actually listened to a minute’s interview with Orbán to make your own assessment. I encourage you to watch the below interview, with your own eyes. What do you see? Is Orbán an authoritarian villain? Or someone actually quite reasonable, acting from a strong place of morality, who wants the best outcome for Europe? The interview is in English. It couldn’t be easier to see. The interviewer is skeptical towards Orbán – a fair representation of Western media generally. It’s peculiar that Orbán is portrayed as a traitor to Europe while Kyiv (Zelensky himself) now wants to hold a second peace summit and to invite Russian representatives. But such doublethink has become routine. I encourage everyone to adhere to a new life principle: In order to have an opinion about someone, you must have listened to at least one long-form interview with them. If you have, and you don’t like them, that’s fine. But you are not entitled to an opinion purely from media spin. Orbán’s mission is commendable. Kudos to the whole Hungarian leadership team. The fact Zelensky has since spoken out against their attempts puts them in the company of (in 1953) newly elected President Eisenhower. “Rhee [President of South Korea] vociferously opposed the armistice. He wanted Korea unified and all Chinese forces withdrawn from Korea. Koreans filled the streets of Seoul and other cities throughout South Korea to demonstrate. Most South Koreans supported President Rhee’s stance that an armistice should not be concluded until North Korea was liberated. Rhee was intransigent.” This mere weeks before the Armistice signing – now considered Eisenhower’s second greatest achievement. The UK Prime Minister could easily have done this, at any point, the past 2.5 years. Brexit afforded Britain the flexibility to play such a role. As the @WSJopinion editorial board wrote in 2019: “The world also needs the Tories’ pro-American streak – as ballast between the US and Europe.” It was a wide open goal, squandered by successive leaders in favour of accomplishing ~nothing at G7 photo-ops. Hungary is a country of not even 10 million people. But it has shown itself to have greater significance on the world stage than 21st century Britain, France, or Germany. Instead of challenging or skeptically questioning our government’s approach, our media has been a fawning and flag-waving supporter of the West’s skinny-fat foreign policy – steering Ukraine away from diplomacy (which right up until the morning of 9th April, 2022 Zelensky is on video with the Associated Press as having been in favour of), without doing anything seriously at all to build its industrial base. Calling earnest and doubtless exhausting attempts at diplomacy “appeasement”, the media has further debased its vocabulary – becoming yet hollower in perspective. Every so often an interview catches a spark and shifts public perception, causing people to “update” on the artifice they have been fed. The below with Orbán ought to become the latest such example. The West today is in a considerably weaker position than it needed to be. Attacks of the past several weeks would not have happened had an off-ramp been taken sooner. @PM_ViktorOrban, having visited all the key players in this conflict, now warns: “In the next two months we will see more dramatic losses and military developments on the frontlines than ever before.” But “Putin apologist” that he is in view of our head-in-the-sand media, the warning doesn’t cut through. Do not buy anyone who presents a binary choice between capitulation and escalation. Other policy options could still be pursued – if only our leaders were as brave as Hungary’s. Cc: @EduardHabsburg, @battleforeurope, @AXChristoforou

President Zelensky ought to stop saying the 1994 Budapest Memorandum was a “US security guarantee”. It was not.

2/ Alexander Mercouris on Tuesday this past week: “The underlying problem [not yet having brought peace to Ukraine] for me was exposed by certain comments which Trump intended to be jocular, about a conversation which Steve Witkoff had with Vladimir Putin during one of Witkoff’s visits to the Kremlin. Apparently, after about an hour, President Trump tried to phone up to find out how the conversation was going. He seems to have phoned Witkoff’s team at regular intervals to find whether there had been any progress. It’s clear Trump became increasingly restless and impatient as the discussion stretched on for five hours. Trump seems to have found this unexpected, and funny – stated over the course of his speech in the Middle East. I’m going to suggest this is the fundamental problem. It signals a disinterest in the complexities of the problem and how far the Russians live inside these complexities and how important they are for them. What Trump assumes is a very straightforward conflict, which could be settled with a single call, for the Russians is a very important – existentially important – conflict, which requires painstaking negotiation and a careful work-through of all of the many problems. We have had this happen many times. When the Americans speak to the Russians, Putin goes back to discussing the whole history of this conflict, going all the way back in some cases to the formation of the Ukrainian nation, the various promises that were made to Russia and the Soviet Union, the political developments that have taken place in Ukraine since the Orange Revolution in 2004, and the Maidan ‘coup’, as Putin refers to it, in 2014. Putin talks about the many broken promises that arose: the Minsk agreement and how many promises made were never honored, how Angela Merkel deceived him… I get the sense Putin explains this time and again to Western officials – and has tried to explain them several times to Donald Trump himself... The US just thinks it’s Putin going on and on again about the old matters that really don’t matter any more. In Trump’s mind, the key thing is to stop the fighting so he can transfer materiel to Asia... He doesn’t seem to understand for Putin all of these things really do matter. Unless Trump’s officials are prepared to get into the weeds of all of these issues with the Russians, this negotiation is going to get nowhere.”

1. Are you aware Putin is regularly publicly asking for negotiations, and Secretary Blinken (@SecBlinken) appears to be misrepresenting him?

Anyone who has never actually listened to @Dominic2306 should listen to this. How Whitehall/Westminster works... Thought yet better than the recent Oxford one. Exceptional talk! 🇬🇧 piped.video/watch?v=5EK3diXg…

The wisest thing that has been said on the Ukraine war, by anyone. Professor Stephen Kotkin of Stanford – interview credit @GWirjawan. Cc: @GrahamTAllison, @elonmusk, @lexfridman, @DavidSacks, @Jason, @Dominic2306, @RobertKennedyJr, @realErikDPrince, @hsu_steve, @RichardHaass, @freddiesayers

12/ @ericschmidt: Chinese companies can’t raise vast amounts nearly as easily as their US counterparts; thus, their company valuations aren’t so high. This means China (generally) isn’t pursuing AGI with the same fervor as the US, but rather goes after specific consumer verticals (e.g. robotics in application-specific ways). The US, be warned, the Chinese approach might actually be the quicker way of taking global market share. (In the way DeepSeek’s innovation in efficiency was forced by Chinese semiconductor constraints, could Chinese vertical-targeting be a byproduct of its constrained financial markets?) Is the US, in going for AGI, boiling the ocean – while the most competitive Chinese companies stack Lego blocks?

Can you guess right… Which President am I talking about? And which war? Keep watching... the answer’s not what you likely think.

Another very good piece from @McFaul (who I usually disagree with): michaelmcfaul.substack.com/p… #humility

11/ Ari Emanuel: “Podcasts will become networks” The likes of @MegynKellyShow and @theallinpod should develop talent under them, and come to appreciate that they’re on course to become the king/queen-makers of the next generation of influencer. Hearing Ari speak about Michael Ovitz (who spoke at last year’s Summit) and Lew Wasserman – “They would be on Mount Rushmore [of the agency business]” – the theme of mentorship and hero emulation echoed through many panels. A reminder of its importance from several titans of their field.

Fascinating quotation on NATO and Europe, from 1983: “Dependency corrupts, and absolute dependency corrupts absolutely.” @p_m_robinson, @nfergus, @uncknowledge

15/ A full summary is too much for any X 🧵. I’m here having to skip over: • The CEO of Eli Lilly, Dave Ricks, whose revenue was $8bn last quarter (“growing at 80%”) • The Chairman of Alibaba, @joetsai1999 (“focus: we try and run just two businesses”) • @Keller, the co-founder of @Zipline, perhaps the world’s most advanced drone delivery operator - The CEO of YouTube, @nealmohan …And many more. But: sports, entertainment, politics, manufacturing, education reform, astrophysics… The Summit is an annual glimpse into the future.

Thanks greatly for sharing. I’d encourage you to watch this, too – as the chronology is even more nuanced than this one interview shows:

4/ @SecretaryWright made an excellent point that China is maximally expanding ALL forms of its energy production, and so one “cannot cherry-pick solar” and argue that because China is increasing its, by inference, solar should be a growing part of the US energy mix. @DavidSacks asked: how are we rapidly going to produce all this energy for AI data centers – perhaps the bottleneck of the AI Race? It’s apparent to me (as a Brit) that Europe, in cutting off almost all Russian energy, has shot itself in the foot to an even greater degree than most appreciate – becoming newly dependent, as a continent, on American LNG exports (today: 4X average energy costs, versus the US, in many EU countries). American LNG might be much less available for export in years to come (the US needing all it can get domestically), and European decision-makers (not wise enough to attend @allinsummit) seem alarmingly oblivious of this. We have a long way to go to MEGA.

Indeed he did. Kissinger (age 98), May 2022: “Further alienation of the Kremlin will have dire long-term consequences for stability in Europe.” nytimes.com/2022/05/25/world… @doodlestein He was, of course, shouted down. “Critics called the idea reckless and unrealistic.”

Skirmishes following a ceasefire are normal In 1953: “Eisenhower said that the armistice was not the culmination, but the beginning of peace in Korea. The president noted that there was much more work to be done.” Eisenhower: “Throughout the coming months, during the period of prisoner screening and exchange, and during the possibly longer period of the political conference... we and our United Nation allies must be vigilant against a possibility of untoward developments, and as we do we shall fervently strive to ensure that this armistice will, in fact, bring free peoples one step nearer to their goal of a world at peace.” “It was also a very imperfect ceasefire with lots of skirmishes and such.” [Now enduring 72 years and counting] Skirmishes should be expected. No surprise when they happen. @jaredkushner, @JDVance, @nfergus

“A fable agreed upon” - @hsu_steve and @Dominic2306 quoting Napoleon, making this point two years ago :)

3. Are you aware that Zelensky wanted to continue peace talks after the massacre at Bucha? And that there is Associated Press video evidence of this. AP video: piped.video/watch?v=qqrQb0HH… BBC report: bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-…

Artwork thread: Geopolitical/diplomatic illustrations, from 12 months of experimenting with AI image generation… 🧵🎨

Why are the likes of @McFaul *still* saying Putin doesn’t want to negotiate? nitter.app/McFaul/status/17268650… When there is so much evidence to the contrary:

2. Are you aware Zelensky has a Presidential decree (as of October 2022) blocking any dialogue with Russia from the Ukrainian side? Reuters: reuters.com/world/europe/zel…

Very detailed account of the Istanbul 2022 attempt:

PS. The most articulate, flowing explanation on the background to the Ukraine war I have heard from anyone. This just shared with me (from August 2023). The Trump administration could take @RobertKennedyJr to Budapest and have him open the meeting with President Putin saying this: In one move —> peace put on the goal line.

PS. And they know how to party, to boot. Taking over Universal Studios for a blow-out last night…

4. Are people aware that there was a draft treaty in March 2022, that had been composed directly between Zelensky and Putin, mediated by the then Israeli Prime Minister @NaftaliBennett, and that they had got as far as draft 18?

Kissinger was extremely clear-seeing, even in his very old age. May 2022: “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” he said. “Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante,” he added, apparently referring to a restoration of Ukraine’s borders as they were before the war began in February. “Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.” nytimes.com/2022/05/25/world… And December 2022: “The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory, the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either.” thehill.com/opinion/internat… He of course got shouted down for saying this.

Truth bombs from Russell Napier. The best summary of financial advice (that’s comprehensible) you will hear in 4 minutes this year: piped.video/watch?v=cz_j2QOl… Cc: @ERICresearch, @EdinburghLoM

PPS. A behind the scenes look at 2024’s Summit, for anyone who’d like a further taste…

Is Europe’s energy policy even worse than it seems? 🧵

15/ Bring peace to Ukraine and get @elonmusk back on Team Trump in one swoop? If you like that thought, please share… End 🧵

And Captain America, played by a Brit... with @ElizabethOls0n

If this is intriguing and surprising to anyone, a full video exploring this…

@DavidSacks already has Gwyneth Paltrow in his fan club. The late Henry Kissinger famously said: “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” This could get too much 😅

Thank you, @RobertKennedyJr, for helping shed light on this. I encourage people to watch my video here for the full diplomatic chronology: nitter.app/EdwardMDruce/sta… And I encourage President Zelensky to lift his decree (reuters.com/world/europe/zel…) that’s presently blocking dialogue. Having a freeze on dialogue is not good for either side.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: “I never said that Russia must have a VETO on security guarantees. But security guarantees must be subject to consensus.”

Rather than put out statements begging to be in the room, there’s a way the British government could still – despite its diplomatic faux pas – add immense value to the new US Administration regarding Ukraine: listeningto.org/ukraine/dode… One enormous role the UK could play, that the US has explicitly said it does not wish to manage. An international opportunity ripe for the taking….

I’m not saying a negotiated peace would be awesome. But can you dispute any of the clips I’ve featured where Zelensky himself was advocating peace talks in April 2022? To use your analogy: if it were now a choice between letting the burglar keep the TV, or having them burn down your house – the cops just having said they’re not coming – which would you go with?

In addition to courageous and searing geopolitical analysis, I found large parts of the below @PM_ViktorOrban speech personally inspiring. “Here we must talk about the secret of greatness. What is the secret of greatness? The secret of greatness is to be able to serve something greater than yourself. To do this, you first have to acknowledge that in the world there is something or some things that are greater than you, and then you must dedicate yourself to serving those greater things. But if you do not do that, but instead you focus on your own greatness, thinking that you are smarter, more beautiful, more talented than most people, if you expend your energy on that, on communicating all that to others, then what you get is not greatness, but grandiosity.” This echos my favourite Robert Kennedy speech of 1966: “For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread… But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty… All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves, on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.” So, fitting @RobertKennedyJr has shared it. Cc: @EduardHabsburg, @battleforeurope

“Collaborate where possible (on global issues). Compete where needed. Confront where necessary.” 🔥