🌍 Eat this summit sandwich

Your Insider’s briefing:
— Eat this summit sandwich
— Go do research in Bahrain
— Our first standing ovation of the day

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“The miners were stunned at the accuracy of the document, which included details on a privately held iron ore miner.”

That’s a line from Australia’s business daily, reporting the mining industry’s shock during earlier negotiations that seemed to suggest China’s authorities had somehow gained precise, confidential details of internal company operations, to get the upper hand.

What’s the best sandwich out there? Americans will die on a hill for the philly cheesesteak, our Vietnamese friends swear by the bahn mi, and Aussies might fight you over the democracy sausage (don’t ask). But they’re all wrong. 

For diplomacy nerds like us (and therefore you by association), the best sandwich is a summit sandwich, and this weekend served us quite the pairing, starting with… 

As you might expect, those two events had some pretty distinct... flavours, but those differences offer insights into how our world is tackling three big themes, starting with…

“The Russian Federation is one of, perhaps, the few countries that is both capable of creating, and is indeed creating, its own sovereign platforms for the development of artificial intelligence.” - Vladimir Putin, Russian President.

This regional summit in Kazakhstan explicitly focused on AI, and Putin used the stage to pitch his Russia as the region’s natural AI partner. Why?

It’s really about control, of both…

But it’s hard to see his fellow presidents at the podium taking him up on that offer given how much Russian AI already a) lags behind the US and Chinese pioneers, b) lacks investment, c) faces stringent hardware sanctions, and d) struggles to retain top talent.

Ok, passing the mic to the defence wonks over at Singapore’s Shangri-La…

“The erosion of predictability and compression of decision-making timelines [due to AI] are fundamentally reshaping the nature of interstate conflict and strategic deterrence.” - Nauman Zakria, Pakistani Lieutenant General.

This was one of the few AI mentions at Shangri-La, and it came from none other than the head of Pakistan’s rocket force command! So he’s not speaking in the abstract, but rather highlighting the nightmare scenario for nuclear-armed neighbours like Pakistan and India now grappling with seconds-long decision windows in the age of AI.

“I do not reproach, but strongly urge to implement all the goals and objectives of our Union in a timely and complete manner” - Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarusian President.

If you’ve ever taken part in a family dinner or multilateral forum, you know drama is natural (your estranged Uncle Gus probably insists it’s healthy), but Lukashenko’s blunt jab here is really striking: 12 years after agreeing on deeper economic integration, this bloc still hasn’t nailed down mutual digital signatures, and yet Putin wants to pivot to AI!

But there was an on-stage silence even louder than any Belarusian dictator’s words: Armenia’s Westward-leaning Nikol Pashinyan skipped this summit altogether, in yet another reminder of how rapidly Putin is now haemorrhaging influence across the region.

Now passing the mic back for a related (and blunt) message out of Shangri-La… 

“The era of the United States subsidizing the defense of wealthy nations is over. We need partners, not protectorates.” - Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defence.

It’s related how? Two very different pacts, but with one shared problem: the patron-client model is fraying, just in opposite ways. Belarus (client) wants Moscow (patron) to deliver on old promises, whereas the US (patron) is increasingly telling its clients to step up.

“The president called for the immediate implementation of national currency exchange mechanisms and independent payment systems to insulate member states from unjust, external sanctions” - Readout from Iranian President Pezeshkian's letter to Putin’s EAEU.

Iran’s regime has shown it can survive war, but it now seems increasingly wary of how its own economic crisis might finish the job. That’s why Pezeshkian is calling here for new payment rails that bypass US controls: the Islamic Republic needs cash, and quick.

So did Putin’s bloc heed Iran’s call? Hah no. Per Lukashenko above, they’re not quite up to the task yet. But hey, you lose 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Meanwhile, back at the Shangri-La… 

“Today, we are seeing a situation in which the Strait of Hormuz is … neither free nor open. […] Who benefits from such a situation?” - Shinjirō Koizumi, Japanese Defence Minister. 

Koizumi — a future PM and Columbia alum — isn’t just stating the obvious here. He’s very carefully drawing a parallel: if Iran can weaponise a maritime chokepoint, imagine what others (he carefully avoids the word “China”) could do in the Indo-Pacific.

Anyway, whether financial or logistical, it’s all a reminder of how much everyone is now scanning for chokepoint vulnerabilities.

This, dear Intriguer, looks like multipolarity in practice: no longer a stable balance of power, but a more…

This, dear Intriguer, looks like multipolarity in practice: no longer a stable balance of power, but a more transactional, brittle system where traditional blocs fray faster than new ones can form.

So what’s the answer?

Part of it will happen at home. History’s grim experiences with multipolar instability have often stemmed from authoritarians repressing at home and oppressing abroad. So while we rightly think a lot about how US-China rivalry will shape our century ahead, there’s a big related question around the broader future of authoritarianism — a future in which (say) Putin’s neighbours keep drifting from his grip, or Iran’s people shrug off their mullahs. That’s a plausible multipolar future that’s maybe not so unstable after all, even if our transition to that future gets more volatile in the meantime.

Another part of this will happen in the shadows. As the stakes soar and timelines tighten, we’ll see more real business shift into the shadows via spook-to-spook channels, like the one nobody seems to be talking about from this weekend: Singapore’s traditional spymaster conclave in a secure location away from the Shangri-La. Or to put it another way, when public posturing gets louder, spies often play a sharper deconfliction role.

And yes, part must also happen the old-fashioned way. We’re talking the unglamorous sides of diplomacy like building faster crisis hotlines, negotiating credible escalation safeguards, and hosting boring-assed low-profile ‘Track II’ dialogues for backchanneling.

All this to say that, in the end, our new multipolar world will never be stable by default — but it will be as stable as the guardrails we manage to build and the diplomacy we’re still willing to practice, even if it’s boring or in the shadows.

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Thousands of oncologists from ~166 nations rose to their feet in Chicago over the weekend, hurling cheers and whistles at California’s Revolution Medicines biotech firm.

Why? Revolution presented test results for daraxonrasib, a revolutionary new pill that reportedly doubled the survival for folks around the world fighting pancreatic cancer! One leading oncologist has described the results as “jaw-dropping”.

See? It’s not all bad news out there. 🤟

Yesterday’s poll: What do you think Colombia's next president should focus on first?

🔫 Guerrilla groups (47%)
💸 Ease of doing business (7%)
⚖️ Economic inequality (24%)
🇺🇸 Stabilising ties with US and neighbours (20%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (1%)

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