| Welcome to new works, The Signal’s expanded weekly curation of books, documentaries, music, and more that we could all use some good guidance on.
It’s a curious thing about our moment: Despite all its novelty and rapid change, the most revealing new works often bring out just how much remains stubbornly the same. Consider a few of this week’s items: Since World War II, over and again, the U.S. dollar has been pronounced dead, yet it keeps dominating global finance through the same institutional advantages it’s always had. Officials still climb the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party using promotion tournaments that Deng Xiaoping designed decades ago. American automaking employment today nearly matches pre-NAFTA levels. A traditional form of lute music, chapei dang veng, survived the Khmer Rouge regime’s attempt to wipe it out—along with virtually all other forms of traditional Cambodian culture and arts—and continues to influence contemporary Cambodian pop.
The most illuminating books, documentaries, and even music often work as a kind of archaeology—creating new insights and experiences while also uncovering deeper, more abiding continuities. A new volume on U.S. banking regulation traces patterns back to America’s founding. A new film about ugly buildings looks at how we’re still grappling with the same trade-offs among beauty, sustainability, and cost that have always constrained and defined construction. Even house music, almost 40 years after its defining moment, remains “vital and evolving”—which is to say, not least, recognizably itself.
—John Jamesen Gould |
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If you come at the king
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| Why is the U.S. dollar so resilient? |
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| The dollar has had its worst start to a year since 1973, with its index falling by 10.7 percent. Meanwhile, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde says that if the European Union were to strengthen its financial and security structures, the euro might become a viable alternative to the dollar, as “ongoing changes” (polite European-bureaucrat speak for America’s new tariff regime) “create the opening for a global euro moment.” At the same time, the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—work to make their trade and investment less reliant on the dollar.
But U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn’t overly worried. “Since World War Two,” he says, “the demise of the dollar as a reserve currency has been predicted. And I think, once again, the skeptic is going to be wrong.” |
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Promotion tournaments
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| What makes Chinese Communist Party officials successful? |
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| The Chinese Communist Party is something of a black box. No one on the outside really knows what’s going on inside. And so, we’re reduced to watching for outward signs, however insignificant they might seem. Even the Central Intelligence Agency is often fogged. As Tim Weiner recounts, in 2012, the CIA was still unaware of what half of the 18 bureaus of the Chinese Ministry of State Security were tasked with. But it turns out there are clues, if you know where to look for them. A new study into Chinese cadre promotion explores why certain officials rise through the ranks when others don’t. |
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Globalization and the American car industry
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| Can protectionism save it? |
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| U.S. President Donald Trump has long grumbled that German automakers like Mercedes-Benz and BMW sell huge numbers of cars to U.S. consumers while American companies sell relatively few cars to German consumers. In an effort to revive the American car industry, Trump has introduced a new set of auto-related tariffs. Justifying the necessity of that move, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller said that “if we stayed on this current path, within a few years there would have been no U.S. automobile industry.”
Is that true? |
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| DEVELOPMENTS |
Meanwhile
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| What we’re watching for this week’s despatch |
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- A U.S.-Russia diplomatic gambit. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of a Russia-Ukraine peace deadline imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, while only one nuclear-arms–control treaty remains in force between the two powers—the main question being whether high-stakes personal diplomacy can yield any breakthroughs when broader U.S.-Russia relations have deteriorated to their lowest point since the Cold War.
- Death and information warfare in Gaza. While Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says dozens of Palestinians were killed overnight and into Wednesday while seeking aid from United Nations convoys and sites run by an Israeli-backed American contractor, Israeli officials cited German media investigations alleging some Gaza imagery has been staged for propaganda purposes. In this context, reliable assessment of civilian conditions in the Gaza Strip remains a massive challenge. … See “The specter of famine in Gaza.”
- A catastrophe in Ghana. Defense Minister Edward Omane Boamah and Environment Minister Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed were among eight people killed when a military helicopter crashed on Wednesday in the southern Ashanti region. The disaster will be a significant test of whether Ghana’s democratic institutions can maintain stability after losing such senior leadership responsible for national security and environmental policy in a single event.
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| Each week, The Signal brings you a compact, effective briefing that helps you think for yourself … |
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| Coming soon: this week’s member’s despatch.
See you Saturday … |
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| MUSIC |
| ‘១ សីហា (August 1st)’ |
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| The Cambodian hip-hop artist VannDa has a new album on the way, and he starts it off with a blistering track on the border conflicts between his country and Thailand, which have raged and ebbed since, believe it or not, the Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1904. Recently, in July, the conflict flared again, before the two countries announced a ceasefire on August 1. You hear pain in VannDa’s voice here about “losing my brothers to a war we never chose.” VannDa burst onto the scene in 2021 in the post-Covid collaboration “Time to Rise” with the aging Cambodian lute star and singer, Master Kong Nay. The video was filmed inside Phnom Penh’s National Museum of Cambodia, showcasing the building’s distinctive architecture and featuring both VannDa and Master Kong Nay in traditional Khmer clothing. |
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