The Atlantic Divide

Donald Trump has upended US foreign policy and global geopolitics over the last couple of weeks. Not only has the US voted with Russia, refusing to condemn Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine—in what has been both hailed as a return to realpolitik and condemned as a violation of everything America stands for—but the Trump administration’s transactional worldview put into practice has scared European leaders enough to placate Washington’s new masters. Keir Starmer, before heading for the US, had his defence secretary increase Britain’s military budget and cut foreign aid. Emmanuel Macron had a rather anodyne encounter with Trump sans fireworks. And Volodymyr Zelensky, after protestations of not selling the state, has agreed to a diluted deal to give America access to Ukraine’s minerals and rare earths. Europe is desperate and except Germany’s Friedrich Merz, no one is willing to accept that the post-Cold War world order has just ended. As European leaders concede more, Trump may show some signs of softening. But the truth is that the old continent has to navigate a world without US guarantees. It’s a world where Vladimir Putin gets away scot-free.

The Sound of Silence

More than a thousand musicians came together on Tuesday, February 25, to record a silent album and send a message to the British government as it sought changes to copyright law easing the way for AI companies to access copyrighted material for training models. No licence is needed but rights owners can technically opt out. The music industry, however, argues that no musician can write to hundreds of AI developers individually and also track use of their material across the internet. Involving artists like postminimalist composer Max Richter, singers Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, et al and supported by the likes of Ed O’Brien (Radiohead), Billy Ocean, Cat Stevens (Yusuf) and others, the album, titled Is This What We Want?, draws attention to the feared impact on musicians’ livelihoods. The tracklisting runs: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.” The sound is of empty studios. On Monday, Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Fry, Dua Lipa, Sting, Ed Sheeran, et al published a letter in the Times opposing the proposed changes to copyright law. Then a ‘Make It Fair’ campaign was launched in newspapers on Tuesday against “rip-off” technology.

Operation Sakharov

Fifty years after his wife Yelena Bonner read out Andrei Sakharov’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on December 10, 1975 in Oslo, we now know how the text of that speech ended up in Norway. The dissident Soviet nuclear physicist met a Norwegian diplomat outside the embassy on a cold December morning to hand it over. Sakharov was banned from travelling abroad by the Soviet authorities. The details of the speech smuggling have been revealed by a bunch of newly released memos reviewed recently by Reuters. Sakharov would live to see the Berlin Wall come down but not the Soviet collapse.

Donald TrumpEmmanuel MacrongeopoliticsVolodymyr Zelensky