Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Shocking opposition victory throws Pakistan into chaos

Summary: Despite having the deck stacked against them by the country’s military-aligned government, parties associated with Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan have taken the most seats in the country’s recent election, sparking a crisis.

Context: In essence, Khan is in prison for alleged corruption, the country’s military, which has long been at odds with Khan, reportedly pulled the strings on the court cases that put him there (and which are likely to keep him there for a long time into the future), politicians tied to Khan weren’t able to run under the auspices of his party, so they ran under different party names but collectively won more seats than the current, military-backed government, and now, because no one took enough seats to have a simple majority, everyone is scrambling to put together a coalition government, and it looks like there will be some court cases related to alleged vote-rigging by the military, as well—so political chaos that has been the name of the game in Pakistan since Khan was booted from his position in 2022 looks likely to continue, and will possibly become more disruptive for the foreseeable future, as well.

—Axios

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Trump's NATO comments draw scorn, White House calls them 'unhinged'

Summary: Former US President Trump told a story at a political rally in South Carolina last week in which he indicated that if reelected he would not just ignore the tenets of the NATO defense alliance, he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies that failed to raise their military investment to 2% of their GDP.

Context: The story is generally thought to be made up and demonstrated a significant misunderstanding of how NATO and similar alliances work, but the policy implications of telling that story have rippled through geopolitics, as the NATO alliance has been fundamental to the creation of the current global security apparatus and all the economic and social infrastructure arising from that general state of peace across Europe—so everyone is kind of scrambling to figure out how to respond to this, even panicking a bit, as it implies the US could become a non-entity in that aspect of geopolitics if Trump were to be reelected, and that raises the question of whether the US government can be trusted as an ally considering that someone could be elected who just one day decides to pull out of long-term alliances of this kind.

—Reuters

Disney invests $1.5 billion in Epic to create ‘persistent universe’ tied to Fortnite

Summary: Disney has announced an investment of $1.5 billion in Fortnite-maker Epic Games as part of a larger effort to build-out a branded metaverse using Disney’s huge portfolio of intellectual property.

Context: Epic recently made a similar deal with Lego, which led to the creation of a game that works a lot like Minecraft, but with Lego-branded everything, and it suggests that Disney—now that it’s clear its streaming services are not going to be huge sources of profits any time soon—is looking at other areas of possible expansion, with Epic’s offerings allowing them to become more involved in the video game space, while also creating a persistent virtual world in which users can interact with their characters and stories continuously, granting the company more interactive media options in the future.

—The Verge

Myanmar’s military government has warned that the country could break into pieces if its ongoing conflict with separatists and pro-democracy activists isn’t ended soon; the government has recently started enforcing a new conscription law meant to help them in this regard, following series of defeats that have necessitated such an (unpopular) move.

—BBC News

$5-7 trillion

Size of investment OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is said to be seeking for a new tech initiative focused on scaling-up global chip-building capacity.

The idea is to increase the number and quality of AI-capable chips being made, as that’s currently a bottleneck for businesses trying to scale their computationally intensive efforts, and this figure is being seen by many as a non-starter (and is possibly meant to grab headlines, not represent a real-deal goal), though others have suggested that trillions would be required to get where we need to be if AI and similar technologies are going to reach their potential any time soon.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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