Idrees Kahloon

The oil shocks of the 1970s forced traumatic austerity on Americans. Some gas stations had miles-long lines; fuel was rationed based on whether a car’s license-plate number was even or odd; the White House Christmas tree went unlit; daylight savings was imposed year-round. The fuel crisis that America’s war on Iran has unleashed is far larger—the biggest oil-supply shock in history, an estimated three times the disruption caused by the Arab oil embargo.

Humanity’s real problem, the great biologist Edward O. Wilson once remarked, is that “we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” There is no better proof for this aphorism than the American military’s escalating spat with Anthropic, the creator of the artificial-intelligence model Claude.
If the most fervent believers are correct, AI might one day challenge the power and sovereignty of nation-states.

Of all the kingly and capricious powers that Donald Trump enjoys exercising as president, the ability to threaten arbitrarily large tariffs is his favorite. Who could ever forget “Liberation Day” in April 2025, when America declared economic warfare on the rest of the world? Or, at least it was his favorite power—before the Supreme Court ruled today that many of the tariffs he had imposed in the past year were illegal.