This week: two product announcements and an anniversary.

The American Conservative’s friends over at American Compass released a new policy paper yesterday, detailing a strategy for decoupling the U.S. economy from China. Assistant editor John Hirschauer wrote up the report in his column, concluding with the perennial problem of representative politics: personnel. While we work to build a political class willing and able to undertake such an effort, it’s important to acknowledge that this is currently a one-sided exercise; the Chinese have already invested in their domestic economy, disentangling strategic industries from global markets.

And on Monday, you probably saw, Apple announced its latest tech toy, a headset for augmented reality computing. What Meta cannot make cool for normal people, Apple might. Channeling Marshall McLuhan of medium and message fame, Charles Carman examines the device in terms four, interrelated aspects of technological adoption. A technology enhances, retrieves, obsolesces, and reverses certain modes of living. Carman suggests that, based on how it is likely to alter day to day live, Apple Vision may fall into the category of a tool of enslavement.

This June marks the thirtieth anniversary of Samuel Huntington’s original “The Class of Civilizations?” essay. Like Francis Fukuyama earlier, Huntington later affirmed that thesis in a book. As R. Jordan Prescott writes in an essay published Wednesday, in the 21st century, “Huntington contended the basis for conflict would shift from ideological to civilizational.” If we observe the last thirty years and conclude, with Prescott, that Huntington was right, then we might just find there is still a small window available to salvage or ameliorate the American-Russian relationship to maintain a global balance of power.

Best,
Micah Meadowcroft
Web Editor

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