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 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.