Today’s briefing:
— The mass protests you didn’t see
— 18% odds for this plot-twist
— Why 60 million folks saw this job ad
Your Insider briefing:
— The mass protests you didn’t see
— 18% odds for this plot-twist
— Why 60 million folks saw this job ad
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. Today we take you to the highest administrative capital on Earth, where the air is thin, the politics are thick, and the locals love to joke, “La Paz te deja sin aliento” (La Paz leaves you breathless).
Bolivia renamed itself after Simón Bolívar, the liberator who visited in 1825, and it’s that same guy’s eventual disillusionment that now comes to mind, lamenting how the quest for genuine Latin American unity and independence eventually felt like ploughing the sea.
Since then, Bolivia has survived tin barons, military dictators, hyperinflation, and two decades of Evo Morales. But now it’s testing whether even a centrist experiment can survive its own streets, while the broader region watches on warily. It’s a wild story.
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Number of the day
$1,000
That’s apparently been the average FIFA World Cup ticket price this year, 14 days out from the opener between Mexico and South Africa. Backlash at those eye-watering prices (plus FIFA’s new dynamic pricing) has now triggered a joint New York / New Jersey probe.
Regional flashpoint.
It’s not every day you see a sitting president and cabinet cut their own salaries by half.
The last such headline we saw was back in 2012, when France’s Hollande kept his pledge to slash pay by 30%, though he then quietly spent a cool $10k per month on his barber. Don’t judge — you think looking that good comes cheap?!
But we raise Hollande’s sick fade because Bolivia’s newish president, Rodrigo Paz, just cut cabinet salaries by 50% in hopes it’d appease the mass protests paralysing La Paz.
The weeks of roadblocks have now triggered medicine, fuel, and food shortages that are so bad, the Red Cross is running humanitarian corridors, and neighbours are sending aid!
So… what — and we cannot stress this enough — is going on?
You could start this story on almost any date in history, but let’s pick 19 October 2025.
That’s when the business-friendly Paz — son of a former president — won the presidency and ended two decades of leftist rule under Evo Morales and his party.
Paz ran on reforms to salvage Bolivia’s battered economy, but last month’s new land reforms (making it easier to sell or mortgage small plots) triggered angry protests:
He sold it as giving small farmers better access to credit and investment, but
Critics feared a wave of forced sales, debt traps, and latifundios (tycoon estates).
By the time Paz shelved the idea, it was too late — rural grievances had already snowballed into mass unrest over ‘gasolina basura’ (crappy fuel), austerity, and beyond.
And that’s when a judge thought, Hmmmm you know what? This raging fire really needs more gasoline, so he re-issued an arrest warrant for ex-leader Evo Morales over shock allegations he impregnated a minor while running a human trafficking ring in office!
Many in the streets saw that as a political attack on Evo, their first indigenous president. So that’s when this really all morphed into a full-blown defend-Evo / bring-down-Paz movement.
And while Evo now hides in his remote stronghold, there are now signs the government is wobbling: the veep claims he and President Paz haven’t spoken since January!
So what to do?
Right now, Paz is hoping a mix of carrots and sticks might help stabilise the situation: carrots in the form of that 50% pay-cut he just swallowed above. But sticks in the form of Tuesday’s new law authorising him to deploy troops to the streets.
Intrigue’s Take
The thing that grabs us about this story is not any single country’s palace intrigue, but the way this is rapidly turning into a —
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Intrigue’s Take
The thing that grabs us about this story is not any single country’s palace intrigue, but rather the way this is all rapidly becoming a proxy fight across both the continent’s familiar left-right faultlines, and its broader attitudes towards the United States.
You’ve now got Trump’s America (backed by a dozen sympathetic leaders across Argentina, Chile, Panama and beyond) framing Bolivia’s unrest as an attempted coup by criminals and drug interests (Evo’s stronghold is also a coca epicentre).
And you’ve got the region’s more left-leaning leaders sounding the alarm on US interventionism, with Mexico’s Sheinbaum defending the fugitive Evo as Bolivia’s best-ever president, and Colombia’s Petro even framing Paz as a US puppet!
So it’s all shaping up as a high-stakes test for Trump’s Donroe Doctrine: back the US-friendly Paz too hard and you fuel the region’s Yankee imperialism rallying cry. But do too little, and a relatively moderate (plus democratically-elected) new leader bleeds out in his early presidency, sending a chilling message to any other reformers in the region.
All the while, Bolivian dollar bonds are in freefall and investors are running for the hills, as Paz’s pledges to leverage his country’s vast deposits of lithium, tin, silver, and zinc for national prosperity collide with a deeply polarised reality on the ground.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇮🇷 IRAN — Latest developments.
The US and Iran have again exchanged fire in their second tit-for-tat in three days. Meanwhile, President Trump has dismissed Iranian claims of an imminent deal that’d restore Hormuz traffic under joint Iranian-Omani oversight. (EuroNews)
Comment: We wonder if Iran’s regime is now taking a page out of Trump’s playbook, leaking “almost there” drafts to tilt momentum and international pressure in its favour.
🇰🇷 SOUTH KOREA — Joining the club
Seoul has unveiled its first formal plan to develop its own nuclear-powered attack subs, using low-enriched uranium to comply with non-proliferation rules. (Reuters)
Comment: The strategic rationale (counter North Korea’s sub-launches) is familiar, but the specifics are new and significant: that 2030s timeline plus full-domestic design-and-build all reflects a confident tech and industrial power. Becoming the world’s 7th country to run nuclear-powered subs will also give the democratic South greater range and endurance across the region, something Beijing will watch closely.
🇰🇿 KAZAKHSTAN — Loco with my motives.
The Kazakh national railway operator (KTZ) is planning an IPO this year with triple-listings in London, Hong Kong, and Kazakhstan. (Central Asian Times)
Comment: KTZ sits on one of the most important overland corridors in the world — its triple IPO aims to a) fund upgrades to capture more traffic, b) get both Western legitimacy and Eastern capital, and c) signal that Kazakhstan is open for business.
🇹🇭 THAILAND — BFFs.
Vietnam’s Tô Lâm is in Bangkok this week, signing a new 2026-31 action plan across defence, intelligence, supply chains, green energy, and beyond. (Bloomberg $)
Comment: Vietnam loves a good action plan, but this one has substance: both players want to dilute their China reliance, boost their China-US hedge, and curb exile dissent from each other’s soil. Expect more of these middle power pacts (plus battening down internal security) as US-China tensions simmer.
🇨🇳 CHINA — Woah there.
Benchmark aluminium prices have now hit their highest levels in four years. (mining.com)
Comment: It’s driven both by a) Hormuz hitting ~8% of global supply, and b) China’s new emissions probes, after temporarily allowing its energy-intensive smelters to ramp up and chase those higher prices. China wants to prevent disruptive oversupply, enforce energy rules, and free up power for its industrial heartland.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Gold finger.
The FBI has arrested former CIA official David Rush after finding $40M of gold plus dozens of luxury watches stashed in his Virginia home! He reportedly told investigators the gold was for “work-related expenses” (that’s a lot of taxis?), and now also faces claims he’s been lying about his credentials. (NBC)
Comment: Intelligence agencies often use gold to pay assets in denied, unstable, or easily-traceable environments. Beyond the sheer “you can’t make this up” energy here, it points to either astonishingly weak internal controls, or the kind of institutional complacency that only gets exposed by something this cartoonish.
🇨🇩 DR CONGO — Ebola spreads.
The Bundibugyo strain has now spread beyond its initial eastern DRC hotspot into turf now held by rebels like the Rwanda-backed M23, plus over into neighbouring Uganda. In response, Uganda has now closed parts of its border, while both the US and Canada have restricted entry from DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan. (BI Africa)
Comment: By setting up its own health measures, the Rwanda-backed M23 is effectively positioning itself as a functional authority in eastern DRC, turning this outbreak into yet another arena for DRC-Rwanda proxy conflict. Meanwhile, the US-Canada response is likely linked to their FIFA hosting duties as much as epidemiology.
Extra Intrigue
🎲 The prediction markets are now giving 18% odds on…
📈 US inflation, that Costco has to raise its famous $1.50 hot dog price by 2028
💥 Hezbollah, that the Lebanon-based Shiite group disarms by Dec 31, and on…
🇮🇩 Indonesia, that current fiscal-monetary pressures will force Prabowo out of the presidency this year (a bet that just prompted Jakarta to ban Polymarket!)
Job ad of the day
The mandarin text insert is the original viral job ad
That brief job ad above has just gone completely viral in China, attracting 60 million Weibo views and a thousand actual applicants! Why? It says, “Herd 3,000 sheep on 30,000+ mu of grassland. Salary 16,000 yuan, interested parties leave a message.”
The employer then really jazzes things up by promising zero days off, brutal -30°C (-22°F) winters, and epic isolation in Inner Mongolia (300km / 186mi from town).
But the perks! Free food, board, motorcycle, and horse. According to the boss (trialling new automated herd systems), it’s “more suitable for a husband-and-wife team”.
So… why’d it go viral?
The ad plays to a) general white-collar exhaustion (“give me yaks over my toxic boss any day”), and b) specific pressures in China — think the ‘996’ (9am to 9pm, six days), or the brutal competition among the 13 million grads entering the workforce this summer.
Today’s poll
Do you think the US will intervene in Bolivia?
Yesterday’s poll: Where do you see EV sales a decade from now?
🚗 Approaching 100% of global auto sales (25%)
🚕 Closer to 50% (61%)
🚙 Stable at 28% (13%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (1%)
Your two cents:
✍️ E.K.H: “Electricity is only getting more abundant, if not cheaper right away, while gas is only getting scarcer and more expensive. But a decade is too short a timeline for a total changeover.”
🚗 T.S: “As a mechanical engineer, it's easy to see how superior the technology really is. As a driver, their instant torque makes them so much more fun to drive. As a dad, I appreciate the safety advantages and that maintenance costs are much lower. Plus they're only getting better from here. (And I work in oil and gas.)”
🚙 D.J.S: “Man-made climate change hysteria is moderating. Government fiscal restraints are limiting subsidisation. Tech-driven electricity demand will raise electricity prices. Lots of durable EV headwinds going forward.”
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