From the Orbis team
The Orbis Blog
Essays on history, power, and politics from the team behind Orbis: why the world looks the way it does, one story at a time.
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Why every financial bubble gets compared to Dutch tulip mania
In 1637, a single tulip bulb sold for twice the price of an Amsterdam canal house. The crash lasted days. The legend has lasted nearly four centuries.
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Why China still can't make the world's most advanced chips
China has poured over $150 billion into semiconductors and built a 5nm chip without EUV. The gap with TSMC has barely moved.
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Why everyone keeps comparing America to Rome
The parallel is everywhere. Some of it holds up. Most does not, and the part that does is not the one people expect.
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Why Alexander the Great's empire fell apart in a single generation
He conquered from Egypt to India in eleven years. His generals spent the next forty tearing the empire apart.
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What happens when a country defaults on its debt
At least a dozen countries have defaulted since 2020. The pattern is the same every time, and it starts long before the announcement.
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How the Iran-Iraq war created today's Middle East
The eight-year war killed half a million people and moved the border nowhere. Everything that has happened in the Middle East since traces back to it.
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How the European Union actually makes decisions
Three institutions, 27 governments, and a process that can retaliate on tariffs in a week or spend three years passing a single law.
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Why China's property crisis keeps getting worse
Chinese households hold 70 percent of their wealth in property. Prices have fallen for four straight years, and the largest developers have collapsed.
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Who controls the world's fertilizer
The raw materials for fertilizer come from a handful of countries. In 2022 and 2026, supply shocks sent food prices surging across Africa and South Asia.
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What happens when a country gets cut off from SWIFT
SWIFT handles 60 million bank messages a day. When a country is cut off, its money doesn't vanish. It just can't tell anyone to move it.
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Is the American empire in decline?
The debt keeps growing, China is catching up, and allies are hedging. But American decline looks nothing like previous empires.
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How sovereign wealth funds buy foreign policy
Sovereign wealth funds hold $15 trillion. The governments behind them use that money to win allies, punish rivals, and reshape industries on other countries' soil.
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How cheap drones broke the economics of war
A $500 drone can destroy a $3 million tank. Three wars in five years proved it, and no military has found a cheap defense.
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Why Afghanistan has never been conquered
Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires. From Alexander the Great to the United States, every invader took the cities. None held the country.
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Who owns Antarctica?
Seven countries claim parts of it. Two more have reserved the right. The mining ban holding the whole arrangement together opens for review in 2048.
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What Mao's Cultural Revolution did to China
In 1966, Mao Zedong turned China's teenagers against their own teachers, leaders, and parents. Over the next decade, at least a million people died.
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The Sykes-Picot agreement: the secret deal that still defines the Middle East
In 1916, a British and a French diplomat secretly divided the Ottoman Empire between them. The borders they drew became Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. More than a century later, those borders have not moved.
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How the French Revolution created modern politics
In ten years, France went from absolute monarchy to republic to terror to empire. The template it set has repeated in every radical revolution since.
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How the Byzantine Empire outlasted Rome by a thousand years
Rome collapsed in 476. The Byzantine Empire survived another thousand years. Better walls, more money, and a willingness to adapt explain why.
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How Japan's 1989 bubble led to three lost decades
Japan's stock market peaked in December 1989 and took 34 years to recover. The crash turned the world's second-largest economy into a warning.
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How China avoided the Soviet Union's fate
The CCP spent a decade studying why the USSR fell. Their conclusions shaped Deng's reforms, China's rise, and how Xi Jinping runs the country today.
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Why Switzerland has been neutral for 500 years
Swiss soldiers were once the most feared infantry in Europe. Then they lost a battle in 1515 and stopped fighting. Five centuries of neutrality followed.
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Why Egypt and Ethiopia are fighting over the Nile
Ethiopia finished Africa's largest dam on the river that gives Egypt 97% of its water. There is still no agreement on how to run it.
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How the Meiji Restoration made Japan a world power
In 1853 Japan had no railways, no telegraph, and no modern army. Within one generation it defeated both China and Russia and became the first non-Western industrial power.
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How the collapse of the Ottoman Empire created the modern Middle East
The Ottoman Empire held the Middle East together for four centuries. When it collapsed, Britain and France drew new borders. Most are still contested.
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Why Korean reunification will probably never happen
Both Koreas officially wanted reunification for decades. In 2024, Kim Jong-un dropped the pretense. Most young South Koreans had already stopped caring.
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How Japan won the Russo-Japanese War
In 1905 Japan destroyed most of the Russian fleet in a single afternoon. No Asian country had ever beaten a European power in modern war.
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Why are Iran and Saudi Arabia enemies?
Before 1979, Iran and Saudi Arabia were on the same side. The revolution, four decades of proxy wars, and a failed Chinese peace deal explain the 2026 war.
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Is China winning the robotics race?
China installed 59 percent of the world's industrial robots in 2025. Its cheapest humanoid sells for $5,900.
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Who is Dario Amodei?
He runs Anthropic, the most valuable AI company on earth, and told Congress the technology he builds could help produce bioweapons.
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Will India be the next China?
India has 1.4 billion people, the youngest workforce of any major country, and the fastest-growing large economy. Its income per person is still a fifth of China's.
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What would a Chinese invasion of Taiwan look like?
China has the world's largest navy and has told its military to be ready by 2027. But 100 miles of open water, a prepared defender, and the US Pacific Fleet stand in the way.
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Why so many of Africa's borders are straight lines
A third of Africa's borders are straight lines drawn by Europeans who never visited. Those lines still split peoples and fuel conflicts today.
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How Singapore became richer per person than the United States
In 1965 Malaysia voted to expel Singapore. It had no army, no resources, and not enough water. Sixty years later its income per person tops America's.
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How China's century of humiliation shaped the country it is today
In 1820, China produced a third of global output. The century of humiliation, a hundred years of lost wars and foreign occupation, left it among the poorest countries on earth.
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How does Iran fund its military?
Iran's defense budget is a fraction of Saudi Arabia's, yet it closed the Strait of Hormuz and runs proxy forces in four countries. The money comes from oil China keeps buying, an economy the Revolutionary Guard controls, and weapons cheap enough to beat sanctions.
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Who will win the 2026 midterm elections?
Republicans hold both chambers by narrow margins, but Democrats lead the generic ballot by 8 points and the president's approval is at 37 percent. Here is what the numbers say about November 3.
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How far ahead is China in energy?
China generates more electricity than the US, EU, and India combined. It makes 85 percent of the world's solar panels and nearly half its new nuclear reactors.
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Why the Mongols never conquered Europe
In 1241, Mongol armies destroyed Poland and Hungary in the same week. They had already conquered from China to Russia. Then they turned around and left.
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What happened to ISIS after the caliphate fell?
ISIS lost its territory in 2017. By 2026, Syria's prison camps have emptied, the war has shifted to Africa, and the group is on its fifth leader.
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Why does the United States have 750 military bases around the world?
The US operates roughly 750 military sites in 80 countries, more than every other nation combined. Here is where they are, what they cost, and why they keep growing.
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Why China kept getting conquered from the north
China tried walls, tribute, and war to stop 2,000 years of nomadic invasions. The nomads conquered and ruled it anyway, more than once.
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Why the longest yield curve inversion did not cause a recession
The yield curve inverted before every US recession since 1969. Then the longest inversion on record ended, and no recession came.
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Why 40 million Kurds still don't have a country
The Kurds are the largest ethnic group on Earth without a state. A broken treaty, four hostile governments, and a century of being useful to great powers explain why.
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Where does North Korea get its money?
North Korea has the world's fourth-largest military and a growing nuclear arsenal, but an economy smaller than Cambodia's. The money comes from Chinese trade, crypto heists worth billions, arms sales to Russia, and workers abroad whose wages go straight to the state.
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Why do wars keep starting the same way?
Most wars start with leaders who are confident about something they turn out to be wrong about. The same pattern runs from 1914 through the Falklands to Ukraine.
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How the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth saved Europe and vanished from the map
Europe's largest state elected its kings, guaranteed religious freedom, and stopped the Ottomans at Vienna. Its own democratic rules destroyed it.
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Operation Barbarossa: could Germany have beaten the Soviet Union?
Hitler sent nearly four million soldiers into Russia expecting victory in weeks. His strategy failed, and the alternatives would not have worked either.
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How Russia became the largest country on Earth
In 1300, Moscow was smaller than Portugal. Today Russia covers one-eighth of the world's land, most of it taken in four centuries of eastward expansion.
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Why the Eurasian Steppe kept producing empires for 3,000 years
For 3,000 years, a single grassland stretching from Hungary to China produced the Scythians, the Huns, the Turks, and the Mongols. Then Russia and China closed the corridor from both ends.
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Why Russia and Ukraine Both Claim the Cossacks
The Cossacks began as runaways who elected their own leaders on the steppe. Within three centuries Russia turned them into the empire's mounted enforcers.
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Why Every Ancient Civilization Started on a River
Four rivers gave rise to four civilizations, but the Nile produced pharaohs, the Tigris produced warlords, and the Yellow River built a bureaucracy.
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Why Thailand keeps overthrowing its own democracy
Thailand has had 13 successful coups and 20 constitutions since 1932. The cycle is about a three-way contest for power no election has resolved.
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How South Korea went from poorer than Ghana to the world's 14th-largest economy
In 1960 South Korea's income per person was lower than Ghana's. One military dictator, Park Chung-hee, forced the country into steel, ships, and semiconductors in less than two decades.
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How Cyrus the Great built the Persian Empire
A vassal king in the mountains of Iran overthrew his overlord, took Babylon without a siege, and built the Persian Empire in twenty years.
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Why the UN Security Council still can't be reformed
Five countries that won a war in 1945 still hold vetoes over the rest of the world, and the UN Charter says they have to agree to give them up.
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Why the Middle East Depends on Ukrainian Grain
Egypt imports 13 million tonnes of wheat a year, and most of it crosses the Black Sea. When that route closes, the price of bread rises within weeks.
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Are Aircraft Carriers Already Obsolete?
A US supercarrier costs $13 billion. The Chinese missile built to sink it costs under $11 million, and two recent wars suggest the math has changed.
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Why is the yen carry trade unwinding again?
Japan and the US just made their first joint currency intervention since 2011 to defend the yen. Why the carry trade keeps unwinding into market chaos.
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Why is Russia losing the South Caucasus?
Russia ran the South Caucasus for two centuries. Now Armenia buys its weapons from France and India, and only Georgia is still moving Moscow's way.
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Why does ASML have no real competitors?
Two Japanese giants once ran the chipmaking machine market. A small Dutch company beat both, and three decades later still has no real challenger.
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Why BRICS Still Isn't a Real Bloc
In May 2026, BRICS foreign ministers could not agree on a joint statement about a war involving one of their own members. It was never built to be one.
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Could China Have Colonized the World Before Europe?
Ming China had the world's largest ocean-going fleet in 1405, sixty years before Europe's voyages of discovery began, and never used it to build an empire.
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Who is Xi Jinping? The personal story behind China's most powerful ruler since Mao
From a father purged in the Cultural Revolution to seven years in a cave village, the life behind the man who now rules China without a rival.
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The East India Company: the corporation that ruled with its own army
The East India Company was chartered to trade spices and tea. It ended up ruling India with a private army twice the size of Britain's own.
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Who controls the Panama Canal in 2026?
Panama owns the canal and an agency in Panama City runs it. The 2026 fight is over the ports at each end, the flag on the sterns, and the water in the lake.
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The Sunni-Shia split: how a fight over succession still shapes the Middle East in 2026
How a dispute over who should lead Islam after Muhammad's death in 632 became the Sunni-Shia fault line running through Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf.
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Who runs Venezuela after Maduro's capture?
Nicolás Maduro is in a New York jail, yet his party still holds Caracas. The acting president, the men with guns, and the exiled winner, explained.
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What does Palantir actually do?
Palantir is worth $400 billion, and most people cannot say what it sells. What Palantir's software does, from Ukraine's artillery to ICE and the NHS.
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How did Israel become a country?
How Israel became a country: the fifty-year road from Herzl's pamphlet in Vienna to the UN partition vote and the 1948 war.
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GDP vs PPP: is China's economy already bigger than America's?
China is both the world's largest economy and 11 trillion dollars behind the United States. What GDP and PPP measure, and which number to trust.
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The Mecca Agreement: why Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed a defense pact
Inside the Mecca agreement, the mutual defense pact Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed in August 2026, and whether it is as big as it looks.
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How the Chinese Communist Party is organized: from 101 million members to one man
China is run by the Communist Party, not the state. How 101 million members narrow to seven men in one room, and why nobody knows who comes after Xi Jinping.
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Why did the Persian Empire fail to conquer Greece?
The largest empire on earth invaded Greece twice and failed twice. The real reasons were a silver mine, a supply problem, and narrow water.
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The Peloponnesian War: the first Thucydides trap
The Peloponnesian War ruined both Athens and Sparta. Thucydides blamed a rising power and a frightened rival, and the pattern now has a name.
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Why is the Strait of Hormuz so hard to reopen?
Five months after Iran closed the strait, the strongest navy on earth still cannot get the oil moving. The reasons are mines, escort math, and insurance.
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Operation Ajax: the 1953 coup that created modern Iran
How the CIA and MI6 overthrew Iran's elected prime minister in 1953, and why the coup still drives Iran's distrust of America in 2026.
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The Geopolitics of Saudi Arabia
Oil, Mecca, and one ruling family. How Saudi Arabia became the swing power of the Middle East, and why 2026 is testing everything it built.
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Who are the Houthis, and why are they attacking ships again?
Yemen's Houthis went from mountain summer camps to choking world shipping. Who they are, who arms them, and why they are hitting Saudi tankers in 2026.
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The 8 maritime chokepoints in 2026: one closed, one half empty, one contested
World trade squeezes through eight narrow waters. In 2026, Hormuz is shut, the Red Sea is half empty, and the Panama Canal is a US-China battleground.
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Why did the Soviet Union collapse?
The USSR had 30,000 nuclear weapons and the world's second-largest army. Within three months it dissolved without a war. Here is how a superpower talked itself out of existence.
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The partition of India: the five weeks that split a subcontinent
In July 1947 Britain gave a London lawyer five weeks to draw the India-Pakistan border. He had never seen the country. The line still divides two nuclear powers.
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The Kashmir conflict: three nuclear powers and the world's most dangerous border
In 2025 a massacre of tourists pushed India and Pakistan close to nuclear war. The Kashmir dispute is really about water, geography, and a third nuclear power.
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Why is the Sahel full of military coups?
Nine governments in Africa's Sahel have fallen to soldiers since 2020. The wave was set off by a war the elected leaders were losing, and the coups made it worse.
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Why do only nine countries have nuclear weapons?
John F. Kennedy expected twenty-five nuclear states by the 1970s. There are nine. The bomb was never the hard part, and the deal that kept the number low is breaking down.
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Why did Ukraine give up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal?
In 1994 Ukraine held more warheads than Britain, France, and China combined. Within two years it gave them all up for a promise Russia would break.
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Why does China control the world's rare earth metals?
China refines about 90 percent of the world's rare earth metals, the magnets inside every phone, EV, and fighter jet. In 2025 it made them a weapon.
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Is de-dollarization really happening in 2026?
The dollar's reserve share keeps sliding and central banks are hoarding gold. But real de-dollarization looks nothing like the headlines promise.
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The Strait of Malacca: China's oil lifeline it cannot defend
A quarter of world trade and most of China's oil sail through a channel under two miles wide. Beijing has spent twenty years trying to escape it.
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China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2026: did it work?
Everyone called it dead by 2020. In 2025 it lent more than ever. The story of China's trillion-dollar bid to rewire the world, and what it was really for.
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Why does the United States want Greenland?
America has tried to buy Greenland since 1867. The reason has little to do with the minerals under the ice and everything to do with where the island sits.
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Why does Taiwan make the world's most advanced chips?
In 1985, Taiwan handed a sidelined American chip executive a blank check. Nearly every cutting-edge processor on Earth now comes from the company he built.