World Leaders Declare Post-1945 Global Order Dead as Munich Conference Signals Era of Great-Power Rivalry

January Inflation Falls to 2.4%, Beating Forecasts as Gas and Used-Car Prices Decline

Conservative Legislators in 17 States Move to Strip Regulatory Agencies of Power After Supreme Court Ruling

AI Executive's Viral Essay Warns Knowledge Work Faces Radical Disruption as Flagship Models Launch

2026 Winter Olympics medal count

World Leaders Declare Post-1945 Global Order Dead as Munich Conference Signals Era of Great-Power Rivalry

The post-1945 international order is dead, world leaders declared at this week's Munich Security Conference, where German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the decades-old system "no longer exists" and that the world has entered an era of "great power politics" in which freedom "is no longer a given," French President Emmanuel Macron warned that Europe's legacy security structures have collapsed and the continent must prepare for war, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a "new geopolitics era" because the "old world" is gone — pronouncements that billionaire investor Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, framed on X through his widely read theory of civilizational cycles, arguing that the world is now in a phase of "great disorder" in which the rules-based system breaks down, powerful nations act on raw strength rather than agreed-upon norms, and rival powers clash for dominance before new orders are eventually forged, a post that has since been read more than 59 million times.

X / Ray Dalio

January Inflation Falls to 2.4%, Beating Forecasts as Gas and Used-Car Prices Decline

Annual inflation cooled more than expected in January, with consumer prices rising 2.4% from a year earlier — down from 2.7% in December and below the 2.5% economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast — driven by declining prices for gasoline and used vehicles, while core prices, which strip out volatile food and energy items, rose 2.5% year-over-year, in line with expectations; the broader slowdown eases concerns that the Trump administration's steep tariffs will fuel persistent inflation, though rising prices for items such as computers and washing machines suggest cost pressures continue to weigh on consumers fatigued by years of price increases.

WSJ

Conservative Legislators in 17 States Move to Strip Regulatory Agencies of Power After Supreme Court Ruling

A broad deregulatory push is sweeping Republican-controlled statehouses, with South Carolina and at least 16 other states advancing legislation this year that would subject any state regulation costing $1 million or more to implement to direct legislative review and would automatically sunset surviving rules unless lawmakers specifically reauthorize them — an effort that accelerated after the Supreme Court's landmark 2024 decision curtailing federal regulatory agency power, according to proponents including the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian public interest law firm involved in drafting some of the bills. In South Carolina, where a booming population, proliferating AI-driven data centers, and the governor's push for small nuclear reactors and the revival of a half-built nuclear plant are intensifying demands on energy and environmental oversight, Republican House Speaker G. Murrell Smith Jr. said lawmakers do not want "unelected bureaucrats making rules and laws that are forced upon people," while veteran anti-tax activist Grover Norquist argued at a recent news conference in Columbia that the regulatory burden on business is sometimes even harder to see than taxes. Nine states already have such laws in place, and advocates say a flood of others could follow.

NYT

AI Executive's Viral Essay Warns Knowledge Work Faces Radical Disruption as Flagship Models Launch

Matt Shumer, cofounder and CEO of OthersideAI, ignited a massive online debate this week with a nearly 5,000-word essay titled "Something Big Is Happening," posted to X on February 10, which has amassed more than 83 million views and become one of the most widely shared pieces of writing about artificial intelligence this year; Shumer draws a parallel to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing the public is similarly underestimating a transformative force — the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities — and points to the simultaneous release of OpenAI's GPT-5.3 Codex, a version of ChatGPT optimized for programming, and Anthropic's Opus 4.6, the most powerful tier of its Claude assistant, as a watershed moment signaling that knowledge work is about to be radically upended, though Shumer told CNBC the piece "wasn't meant to scare people" and that he would have rewritten parts had he anticipated its reach, while Fortune and other outlets have questioned some of the essay's assumptions about AI's ability to automate work beyond software engineering.

X / CNBC / Fortune

Pentagon Prepares Weeks-Long Iran Strike Plans as Diplomats Head to Geneva for High-Stakes Talks

The U.S. military is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations against Iran if President Donald Trump orders an attack, two U.S. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity, a disclosure that raises the stakes for diplomatic negotiations set for Tuesday in Geneva, where U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will meet with Iranian representatives with Oman mediating; Secretary of State Marco Rubio cautioned Saturday that while Trump's preference is to reach a deal with Tehran, "that's very hard to do," even as the Pentagon dispatches a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East along with thousands of additional troops, fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers, and other firepower capable of waging and defending against attacks.

Reuters

Sources

1. X — Ray Dalio post on Munich Security Conference and civilizational cycles (no direct URL provided)
2. WSJ — CPI / January inflation report
3. NYT — State deregulation push
4. X / CNBC / Fortune — Matt Shumer "Something Big Is Happening" essay (no direct URL provided)
5. Reuters — U.S. military Iran operations planning

February 16 2024: Alexei Navalny, fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, dies in prison

New statements from the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands say tissue samples from his body “conclusively” contained epibatidine, a dart‑frog–derived toxin not found naturally in Russia, and that only the Russian state had the means, motive, and opportunity to administer it—amounting to explicit proof he was poisoned in prison.

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