Combined with the fact that 95 per cent of AI pilot projects fail,
traders treated his remark as a broader warning. Although Altman was
referring specifically to private startups rather than publicly traded
giants, some appear to have interpreted it as an industry-wide
assessment.
What Altman’s comment really exposes is not only the fragility of
specific firms but the deeper tendency Prussian philosopher Karl Marx
predicted: the problem of surplus capital that can no longer find profitable outlets in production.
That question takes us directly back to Marx’s analysis of crises
driven by over-accumulation. Marx argued that an economy becomes
unstable when the mass of accumulated capital can no longer be
profitably reinvested.
By now, you may have seen the story
making the rounds. It’s about a University of Oklahoma student named
Samantha Fulnecky who received a zero on a psychology essay, filed a
discrimination complaint, and got her trans graduate instructor placed
on administrative leave. Conservative media have framed this as
religious persecution: a brave Christian student punished for citing the
Bible. The governor of Oklahoma has weighed in. Libs of TikTok has
amplified it to hundreds of thousands of people. Turning Point USA is
demanding that the instructor be fired.
But if you actually read the essay —
which TPUSA helpfully published — you’ll find something different than
what’s being advertised.
The assignment asked students to
write a 650-word reaction paper responding to an article about “Gender
Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health.” The rubric was
straightforward: 10 points for showing a clear tie to the assigned
article, 10 points for providing a thoughtful reaction rather than a
summary, and 5 points for clarity of writing. Students were given
suggested approaches like discussing whether the topic was worthy of
study, applying the findings to their own experiences, or offering
alternate interpretations of the researchers’ conclusions.
Fulnecky’s essay mentions the article
exactly once: “The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to
enforce gender norms.” That’s it. The remaining words are a sermon about
what God wants for gender roles, culminating in the claim that “society
pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be
whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth.”
She also calls her classmates “cowardly” for not sharing her views.
This is not a good essay. Not because
of the religious content — you can absolutely bring religious
perspectives into academic work — but because she just. … didn’t do the
assignment. A reaction paper is supposed to react to something. Fulnecky
barely acknowledged the source material existed before launching into a
position statement that would have worked just as well (or poorly) for
any article tangentially related to gender.
The graduate instructor, Mel Curth,
gave remarkably patient feedback. “Please note that I am not deducting
points because you have certain beliefs,” Curth wrote, “but instead I am
deducting point[s] for you posting a reaction paper that does not
answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily
uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class,
and is at times offensive.”
Curth explicitly told Fulnecky that
it’s “perfectly fine to believe” normative gender roles are beneficial.
The problem was the logical contradictions (arguing people aren’t
pressured into gender roles while simultaneously arguing religious
pressure to conform is good), the lack of engagement with actual course
material, and, yes, calling a group of people “demonic” in an academic
paper.
“I encourage all students to question
or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or
testable hypotheses,” Curth wrote, “but using your own personal beliefs
to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings
of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is
not best practice.”
Another instructor, Megan Waldron,
who teaches a different section of the same course, backed the grade.
She found it “concerning” that Fulnecky didn’t view bullying or teasing
as a bad thing, and noted that “your paper directly and harshly
criticizes your peers and their opinions.”
None of this matters to the people amplifying this story. The essay is a prop. The point is that Curth is trans.
The quiet part out loud
Fulnecky’s mother, Kristi Fulnecky, a
lawyer who defended a number of Jan. 6 rioters, has been busy on social
media. She’s been retweeting posts that say things like “If you claim
to be a transgender — you should be banned from working in any school.
Transgenderism is a mental illness,” and “Individuals who identify as
trans should be automatically disqualified from holding any position as
teacher or professor.”
To that last one — a post explicitly
calling for employment discrimination against all trans people — Kristi
Fulnecky replied: “Agreed! Proud of my daughter!”
The “Intellexa Leaks”, a new joint investigation by Inside Story, Haaretz and WAV Research Collective with
technical analysis provided by Amnesty
International, exposes the internal operations of Intellexa, – a
company notorious for selling highly invasive spyware Predator linked to
human rights abuses in multiple countries.
Responding to the investigation published today,Jurre van Bergen, Technologist at Amnesty International’s Security Lab said:
“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning
views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology. Jurre van Bergen, Technologist at Amnesty International’s Security Lab
“The fact that, at least in some cases, Intellexa appears to
have retained the capability to remotely access Predator customer logs –
allowing company staff to see details of surveillance operations and
targeted individuals raises questions about its own human rights due
diligence processes. If a mercenary spyware company is found to be
directly involved in the operation of its product, then by human rights
standards, it could potentially leave them open to claims of
liability in cases of misuse and if any human rights
abuses are caused by the use of spyware.
“Predator spyware was also implicated in surveillance attacks in
2021, such as against the Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis, based on
digital forensic research by Citizen Lab. Information in the leaked
files now adds to the evidence connecting Intellexa’s products
to violations of human rights, such as rights to privacy and freedom of
expression.
“These revelations come at a time when new cases of Predator spyware
abuse are coming to light, showing that Intellexa’s product continues to
be used to unlawfully surveil activists, journalists and human rights
defenders around the world. Amnesty International’s Security
Lab uncovered an attack against a human rights lawyer from
Pakistan’s Balochistan province over WhatsApp during the summer of 2025,
proving that the Predator spyware is being actively used in Pakistan,
gravely violating privacy and freedom of expression rights.
“Even more alarming is the company’s latest development of a new
spyware product called Aladdin which can infect mobiles through
online advertisements.”
Background
The “Intellexa Leaks” is a months-long investigation drawing on a set
of highly sensitive documents and other materials leaked from the
company, including internal company documents, sales and marketing
material, as well as training videos. An in-depth analysis of the leaked
materials, as well as details of the reply received by
Haaretz from Intellexa’s founder, responding to a request for comment
from the company, can be found in Amnesty International’s Security Lab
technical briefing, “To Catch a Predator: Leak exposes the internal operations of Intellexa’s spyware”.
Amnesty International has previously documented Intellexa’s technical
capabilities and numerous cases of abuse linked to their spyware
products as part of “Predator Files” in
2023. Ongoing investigations into the attack campaign in Pakistan and
other instances of abuse will be released in a series of
upcoming Amnesty International reports.
For much of the twentieth century it was a truism that political
behaviour was motivated by material interests. Then, from about the
1970s, this idea began to be displaced by an understanding of politics
as a set of struggles over ‘values’, ‘recognition’ or ‘identities’. Why
did this concept of interests decline? First, it was criticised by
humanist Marxists such as E. P. Thompson for the scientistic,
ahistorical and reductionist way in which it was often used. Second, the
rising militancy of new social movements – for Black freedom, women’s
liberation, queer emancipation – challenged the notion that all
political struggles could be explained in terms of class interest alone.
Third, the restoration of liberal hegemony in the academy created a
fertile environment for individualistic, psychologistic and idealist
interpretations. Within radical thought, this confluence – sometimes
referred to as the ‘cultural turn’ – led many theorists to sideline
class and materialist explanations.
The last decade has seen a salutary course correction of this
theoretical drift. Marxists have sought to defend class analysis and to
revive the explanatory power and political salience of material
interests. Yet this new tendency is not without its flaws. In a recent article for Sidecar,
Dylan Riley, echoing Thompson’s original critique, argues that the
backlash against the idealism of the cultural turn has succumbed to an
unwitting idealism of its own. Riley characterises this ‘new Marxist
culture’ as propounding a metaphysics which renders the idea of material
interests an abstraction, endowed with causal power over living
individuals. A prominent example here may be the work of Vivek Chibber,
whose book The Class Matrix (2022) lays out the case for a
renewed emphasis on class interests as the decisive determinant of
political behaviour. Although a valuable corrective, in certain respects
The Class Matrix risks bending the stick too far the other
way, overlooking the genuine issues raised by feminists, anti-racists
and the New Left.
In our book Hegemony Now (2022), we attempt to find a way
out of this impasse. Our conception of material interests begins from
the premise that two things can simultaneously be true: the political
and theoretical questions posed by the movements of the 1960s and 1970s
remain valid; reactivating the concept of material interests need not
entail returning to forms of orthodox Marxism that never took those
questions seriously to begin with. Our model attempts to retain the idea
of material interests in a manner that acknowledges the advances of the
last half-century.
John Ruehl’s generally informative piece on how the US and China are seeking to secure their technology spheres of influence is marred by at least one historical inaccuracy. Ruehl asserts that the former Soviet Union relied on a “militarized approach” to extend its reach. In fact, the USSR in Africa and I assume other parts of the world cultivated friends and allies by providing economic assistance with no military strings attached. That was a big reason most African states were willing to defy the US and EU during their shock and awe sanctions against at the start of the Ukraine conflict, that the USSR’s residual good will extended to modern Russia.
The U.S.-UK technology deal
announced in September 2025 promises to accelerate Britain’s AI sector,
but critics warn it will happen at the expense of national tech
sovereignty. It reflects the steady trend of U.S. government and private
interests extending a technologically driven form of hegemony,
employing communications, data, and AI systems to deepen dependence on American networks and weaponize against rivals.
China has built a parallel structure of
influence through its own technology exports, manufacturing base, and
integrated supply chains, challenging the American model without the
costly global military footprint. And unlike earlier empires,
Washington’s and Beijing’s systems increasingly overlap: Spain, long
considered a reliable partner for American tech firms and data security, has faced U.S. pressureafter contracting with Chinese company Huawei in July to store judicial wiretap data.
Yet both tech-driven networks face a
growing diffusion of capability. Advances in manufacturing, resource
mapping, and digital development are making it easier for smaller states
to build industries that have until now been dominated by major
powers—“Small countries like Taiwan and the Netherlands have curated specialized offerings in niche parts of the global AI supply chain,” stated an article
in the digital law and policy journal Just Security. A more balanced
and competitive order could emerge, though the U.S. and China still
retain major leverage.
The U.S. has maintained a strong foreign
presence for more than a century. When Elihu Root became Secretary of
War in 1899, he had already spent decades cultivating the nation’s
elites as a lawyer and once in office, he modernized
the army for sustained overseas operations. Subsequent American
expansion in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines was framed as paternal
administration—to spread the “civilizing mission” to those less
fortunate in need of a long period of paternal tuition—rather than
colonial conquest. Yet military power remained central to advancing
government and private American interests.
After World War II, the collapse of
European empires left the U.S. and the Soviet Union with competing
spheres of influence. Unlike Moscow’s more militarized approach,
“Washington’s forms of control were more in accordance with the will of
the local populations,” creating what scholars called an “empire by invitation,”
according to Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad. Military and
subversive power were often used to promote U.S. interests, but many
states partnered voluntarily to receive financial and technical
assistance.
With the Soviet collapse in 1991, the U.S.
entered a new phase of expansion. Technologies like GPS, which reached
full global coverage in 1993, expanded American power as a “silent utility”
providing an increasingly essential service. The rapid spread of the
internet under U.S. oversight further extended American standards and
control across global communications, while the rise of tech giants like
Microsoft, Intel, and Google embedded U.S. software and hardware at the
center of globalized technology systems.
Yet within years, the failures in
Afghanistan and Iraq exposed the limits of invasions and occupation,
which no longer guaranteed control over resources or populations. As of
March 2025, America had 1.3 million personnel stationed abroad, reflecting an outdated emphasis on physical presence. With nearly 90 percent
of corporate assets in advanced economies now intangible, such as
software, patents, and intellectual property, the same logic applies to
power projection. Digital networks and remote capabilities have replaced
much of what permanent garrisons once represented.
Global hegemony in the interstate system refers to the
capacity of a leading state to exercise leadership and governance within
the anarchy of supposedly sovereign states, which are constantly
seeking wealth, power, prestige or security. Giovanni Arrighi aptly
noted that global hegemony is not the same as pure and simple
domination, as the hegemonic state must be capable of steering the
interstate system toward a kind of general interest, at least that of
the owning classes and those in power.1 The
capitalist world-economy is not a global empire; therefore, becoming
its hegemonic power has always required a certain mix of coercion and
consent. Coercion alone is not enough to dominate the world. The United
States’ historical global hegemony over the modern world-system is no
exception. However, given the rugged path embarked upon by the Trump 2.0
administration, it seems increasingly evident that US hegemonic power,
in its crisis-dispute phase, is seeking to counter its loss of relative
power in the field of consensus by doubling down on coercion,
“mafia-style blackmail”, exploitative domination and the pursuit of
submission.
The question then arises: what has changed in the US’s
Grand Strategy under Trumpism, particularly during his second
administration? The purpose of this essay is to explore this question in
three parts. Part I will delve into homegrown traditions that shape the
matrix of US foreign policy, to argue that Trumpism amalgamates
reactionary forces within the interstate system. A forthcoming Part II
will address the political economy of Trumpian neomercantilism and,
concurrently, explore the hypothesis of a McCarthyist foreign policy
toward Latin America. Finally, Part III will examine new imperialism,
exploitative domination, and empire through submission as responses to
the current hegemonic conflict in the capitalist world-economy, in light
of Trump’s foreign policy toward Latin America during his second
administration.
1. Trump 2.0: A Hamiltonian Jacksonianism?
How should we characterise Trump’s second term administration’s foreign policy? To answer this question, we need to turn, prima facie, to the typology developed by Walter Russell Mead in Special Providence. There, the author sets out to strip US foreign policy of the interpretive framework of European realpolitik, most associated with Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, in favour of looking at more homegrown traditions.2 To
Kissinger’s typology, composed of Wilsonian idealism and Rooseveltian
realism, Mead counterposes four types. In the words of Perry Anderson,
Mead believes:
the policies determining these ends
were the product of a unique democratic synthesis: Hamiltonian pursuit
of commercial advantage for American enterprise abroad; Wilsonian duty
to extend the values of liberty across the world; Jeffersonian concern
to preserve the virtues of the republic from foreign temptations; and
Jacksonian valour in any challenge to the honour or security of the
country.3
Characterising
the first Trump administration (2017–21), Mead wrote in early 2017 that
Trumpism represented a Jacksonian rebellion against the standard
pillars of US foreign policy since World War II.4 According to Mead, Obama had been the president with the greatest contempt for the Jacksonian legacy, while Trump was its revenant.5 But
what is the Jacksonian tradition? And, more importantly, to what extent
can we take seriously the capacity of the Jacksonian tradition to shape
the second Trump administration’s foreign policy? After reviewing, in
comparative terms, the extensive history of the US’s capacity to kill
people abroad, Mead writes in Special Providence:
Nevertheless,
the American war record should make us think. An observer who thought
of American foreign policy only in terms of the commercial realism of
the Hamiltonians, the crusading moralism of Wilsonian transcendentalists
and the supple pacifism of the principled but slippery Jeffersonians
would be at a loss to account for American ruthlessness at war. One
might well look at the American military record and ask William Blake’s
question in “The Tyger”: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”.6
November 15 protest in Puebla. IMAGE/ Tamara Pearson
“Down with communism”, they chanted while also waving the One Piece
pirate flag, meant to be a symbol of resistance to elitist excess,
corruption and inequality. The right-wing march was meant to be a
“Generation Z” protest, but most of the people I could see among the
1000 or so marching through the centre of Puebla, were of older
generations; clearly the most loyal membership of Mexico’s right-wing
parties, the Institutional Revolutionary Party and National Action
Party.
Similar marches were held in various cities around the country on
November 15. They were a bizarre attempt to copy-paste the recent
uprisings and protests in Nepal, the Philippines and Indonesia, but they
were built from the top down. Money was spent conjuring the protest
from artificial intelligence (AI) campaigns, bots and influencers,
rather than involving real social movements.
The main chants in the march were “Out Morena” (Mexico’s governing
party) and “No more narco-state”. Meant to be organic, spontaneous anger
at the government, crime and corruption, these marches’ vagueness and
misuse of symbols left serious and experienced activists in the country
amused, and a little annoyed.
As 51%
of content is now AI-generated, it’s worth decoding how this protest
was fabricated and the impact of its co-option of the symbols and
phrases of more genuine causes. AI literacy and awareness of how videos
and facts are manipulated for political and economic interests is
becoming more important.
Social media
The Instagram account @somosgeneracionzmx (We are Generation Z Mexico) was among the first to publicly call for the November 15 protest.
Although describing itself as “anti-party”, “the disinterested
generation” and “enough of the same old shit”, there are dozens of signs
the account was not created by movement activists. The account does not
follow, tag or interact with other longstanding movements, collectives
or grassroots organisations, such as unions or community or alternative
media.
The only groups it follows are bot-like replicas of itself that have each posted perhaps four times in total.
The account’s first posts
were created exactly a month before the November 15 protest and got
hundreds of engagements (likes and comments) straight off the bat: a
sign the account holder either has funds to pay for significant boosting
or that the posts were supported by bots.
Almost all the account’s content, including videos, is AI-generated.
Likewise, its sister account
on Facebook. There are few real humans to be seen. But in Mexico, while
people often cover their faces in public videos denouncing crimes and
injustice due to fear of persecution, it is always important to show
at least the eyes, or the full group of farmers on the land being
attacked or the indigenous people meeting, women standing together and
so on, to demonstrate that these communities are organising and speaking
out.
The Generation Z Mexico accounts don’t have such visuals because they
don’t actually meet, discuss and decide based on voting or consensus,
hold speak-outs to build larger protests and other staples of real
movements.
“Generation Z Mexico” doesn’t have real visuals of activists — and
especially not young ones — because it is not led by actual activists or
young people. In Mexico, there are strong women’s movements, movements
for the forcibly disappeared, for water rights and more, but there is no
movement here to revoke the president, so there are no photos of that
to be used.
Instead, this group has resorted to AI-generated photos of protests such as this one. After
the November 15 march, they will have photos they can use, though even
those are being digitally edited to make their crowds look bigger.
I usually avoid being interviewed. I have always believed that journalists, especially in India, are generalists who may suddenly be assigned a “beat” they know little—sometimes nothing—about. Still, when my friend Gagan Sethi, a well-known human rights activist, phoned a few weeks ago asking if I would join a podcast on civil society and the media, I agreed.
Out of ignorance, I assumed a podcast was simply a live audio broadcast. I didn’t bother dressing up. But when I reached the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Gagan’s office, I discovered it was going to be a full-fledged video discussion—Gagan on one side, top rights leader Minar Pimple on the other, and me in between. I had been given a questionnaire and had prepared my responses, but I did not realise the format would involve both of them posing thoughtful, probing questions.
The set-up was fully professional. My phone was kept outside, and the recording was handled by a team from Drishti, a video NGO associated with CSJ, using a high-end camera. Part of their UnMute series, the episode (click here to watch), I was told, would appear on YouTube in November. And there I was—poorly dressed and with my snow-white hair uncombed—responding in both English and Hindi. The intent seemed to be to understand how media professionals work, and how civil society can engage with them more effectively.
They asked me about my seven years in Moscow as the foreign correspondent of the Delhi-based semi-Left Patriot and Link, as also my long stint with The Times of India, Ahmedabad, from 1993 until my retirement as political editor in January 2013. But the real focus was on a question that continues to bother many activists: what must be done to increase the visibility of civil society in the mainstream media?
The conversation opened with my Counterview article, written during the Covid period, summarising an IIM-A study that said civil society felt completely unheard. The disconnect between the state and civil society during Covid, especially concerning the hardships faced by working people, was enormous. They asked, “How can this gap be bridged? What can the media do?”
I began by defining the media as it exists today. Mainstream media is corporate media. It always has been. Earlier, only newspapers were owned by big business houses; now TV channels are too. Journalists hired in these organisations are rarely specialists. Most do not understand civil society. In fact, junior reporters—precisely those least familiar with these issues—are often assigned to cover them. Unless they have worked with NGOs, they know little about laws like the FCRA or about grassroots realities.
Expecting such media to authentically represent civil society is unrealistic. Reporters will come to cover events; that’s true. But they need training—training to understand what is happening on the ground, how to read it, and how to report it responsibly.
Urdu poetry has always lived through the human voice. Its power lies not just in what is said, but in how it sounds
For poets and listeners, the voice is not
just sound; it marks the shift from silence to meaning. Writing can
preserve words, but the voice brings them alive in the moment. When
poetry moves from the page into the air, it turns into something more
than language—it becomes performance, resonance, and revelation. The
real force of poetry lies right at this crossing of sound and sense.
The Indo-Muslim tradition recognised this
duality. Urdu, Persian, and Arabic poetry were first recited, then
written. In Sufi gatherings, majalis, markets, and courts, poetry was
shared orally. The mush??ira—Urdu’s poetic assembly—was more than a
literary event: a theatre, ritual, dialogue, and sometimes a
metaphysical experiment.
Here, the poet meets the audience through
words—but also through voice. And voice is never neutral. It carries
timbre, inflexion, memory, and an ethical charge. How a poem is voiced
determines how it is received, what it means, and what it awakens.
The point is clear: Urdu poetry’s
aesthetics are inseparable from vocal performance. Performance is not an
optional embellishment; it is the means by which poetry becomes vital,
open to interpretation, and emotionally deep.
Teht-ul-lafz and tarannum
From this performance culture come two
central modalities: teht-ul-lafz (plain recitation) and tarannum
(chanting). These are more than stylistic choices—teht-ul-lafz values
meaning and clarity, while tarannum privileges melody and emotion.
Teht-ul-lafz emphasises loyalty to the
text—semantic clarity, structure, diction. Here, the reciter fades back,
letting the poem itself be the focus. The voice stays steady and
unembellished, inviting contemplation, in contrast to tarannum’s
emotional and musical style.
In contrast, tarannum wraps the poem in
melody, prioritising emotional resonance and rhythmic flow. It creates a
space between speech and song, intensifying emotion and musicality,
separate from teht-ul-lafz’s reflective approach.
This division is more than technique. It
vividly encapsulates an ongoing tension in the tradition: the pull
between meaning and music, thought and sensation, clarity and feeling.
Critics of tarannum often feared that melody could obscure meaning. Poet Majid ul-Baqri once complained:
Is tarannum meñ to mafh?m nah?ñ hai ko’?
She?r kahte ho to pa?h ??lo, magar g?o nah?ñ!
[This chanting has no meaning whatsoever.
If you compose poetry, just read it—please don’t sing!]
This frustration is not with beauty
itself, but with the danger of reducing poetry to sound. If the audience
remembers the tune but not the verse, has poetry lost its essence?
And yet, the opposite danger lurks within
teht-ul-lafz. When delivered too dryly, without modulation or feeling, a
poem may lose its vitality. Faiz Ahmed Faiz, master of the written
word, was often criticised for his monotonous recitation. Once told he
wrote beautifully but read poorly, he replied with characteristic wit:
Sab k?m ham h? kareñ? Acch? likheñ bh? ham, acch? pa?heñ bh? ham. Kuch ?p bh? to kareñ!
(Should we do everything? Write well and also read well? Why don’t you contribute too?)
