I think the UAE ends up dipping into state funds to keep the cost of imported food down, costing a shit ton of money, and probably certain fancier stuff is allowed to rise sharply. But consider, for instance, how quick adaptation to the Qatar blockade was - www.brookings.edu/articles/the...
this is a good question. the UAE is highly dependent on maritime freight - biggest port in the region. But I think one recurring lesson of catastrophe is that places are surprisingly resilient and rerouting happens - in this case, presumably Jeddah->land routes->UAE. Expensive and crowded.
Man. Why did the FBI bother interviewing my family and 10 years of people I’d ever met and literally interrogating me over some weed usage in college when I could have just been a 19-year old with a ChatGPT account and gotten into the SCIF at work with no one watching
Folks will be - legitimately - furious with the Ds that voted no (leadership whipped hard for yes), but I think it is worth looking on the other hand: 98% of House Democrats (and 1% of House Republicans) just voted to try to block the president from waging war on Iran.
Iran! The Great Evil!
$40,000/year for 2 hours/day of AI-assisted education? Scam artists are apparently convinced there’s a nonzero population who’d like to pay a lot of money not to educate their kids.
it's weird to me how much Gulf states seem to dominate the imagination of the UK right at the moment. I assume it's largely about who's giving them money, but I also think "Dubai expat" is a common social type in their circles.
Oh now I get it. Dubai is Golgafrinchan Ark B.
Credible reports that ginormous Russian LNG (liquid natural gas) tanker Arctic Metagaz is on fire in Mediterranean. Reports suggest it was hit be a USV (uncrewed surface vessel)
Whether Iran linked or Ukraine, very big implications for Russian war effort
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz after meeting Trump: “It is indeed the case that at least the American government, according to my level of knowledge and insight today, has no really formulated strategy about the future civil leadership of this country (Iran).
Afghanistan started at 92 percent approval. Iraq started at 71. Iran started at 27. The "whose side are you on" rhetoric is identical. The country underneath it isn't. I wrote about how the framework works, and who's deploying it. www.readtpa.com/p/with-us-or...
👇👇
Germany's intelligence service BND says Russia's federal deficit was actually 3.6% of GDP in '25, not 2.6%. This was exactly my final estimate in December, based on past spending patterns (random but funny: I estimated 8.02 trillion). If true, the deficit was probably hidden in other public budgets.
More seriously, this is the problem. The Trump admin has bought into the view that 🇮🇷 as it exists is An Existential Threat. You can't bargain/negotiated over existence, like you can over "Do you have nukes?", & it can be used to justify any & all violations of the law, Constitution, & UN Charter.
This is absolutely brilliant 👏
Anecdotally, this tracks with my own impression that beneath the surface in many allied countries a seismic shift is currently underway in broader public attitudes towards the US. Trust is evaporating rapidly and resentment is building.
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Bit of a story here: the West has known for some time that Ukrainian interceptor drones are cheap, effective and the best way to deal with the sorts of things Iran has. If the US had been remotely serious it would have thought about this ahead of a war.
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It’s like Dunkirk but they’re all wankers www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
Pet take that the reputation and long term viability of Dubai and Abu Dhabi as global centres of power would be strengthened if a lot of these mercenary rentiers were moved on to the next legal black hole
I can't stop thinking about this because imagine having enough money to address every single problem in your life and still thinking it's better to risk having a suicide drone crash into your hotel room then pay a bit more in taxes.
Made this observation before: the US is like a giant cruiseliner with a mad Captain steering towards the iceberg as half the passengers cheer him on and the crew steal and sell the lifeboats. It's sheer size and momentum will keep it afloat. For a time. But not forever.
bsky.app/profile/ianf...
The migrant workers/slaves who built the city is geopolitics. The dirty money, the sanctions evasion, the uneasy relationships with neighbours, the war UAE funds in Sudan... Anyone living there is exposed to geopolitics. Just now they can't pretend otherwise.
"The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai."
yeah people routinely confuse ordinal claims about which groups will be affected most or worst on average with cardinal claims about which groups are safe and secure in general. privilege talk in particular did a lot to obscure the difference here as far as 2010s consciousness goes
whether war, vaccines, or critical infrastructure there is contingent of the right that seems to believe that their security from the worst things that happen is some kind of metaphysical principle rather than the result of specific historical processes that could've gone otherwise and still could
a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people
ive seen this article shared but seems a bit sus defencesecurityasia.com/en/irgc-dest...
