There’s a comforting story we tell ourselves about technology: that it scales smoothly, obeys policy, and waits for permission. This week’s reality is less polite.

AI is pressing against systems that were never designed for it—power grids, capital structures, governance frameworks—all at once. Some regions built vast AI infrastructure that now sits idle. Others can’t expand fast enough because electricity, not talent or chips, is the constraint.

Efficiency is no longer the question. Readiness is.

This edition looks at AI not as a breakthrough, but as a pressure test—of infrastructure, governance, and leadership.

As Thucydides warned, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
 

Technology doesn’t change that rule. It just redraws the line.

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Some things read better than they sound—charts and data included in the written edition.