By Oliver Booth Special to the Digest On March 2, 2026, the global energy landscape was thrust into chaos when Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officially declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, threatening to target any vessel attempting to transit. The closure followed US-Israeli military strikes on Iran that began on February 28. By […]
If you’ve ever watched a project that looked fine—right up until it wasn’t…If you’ve sat in a conference room, staring at a set of numbers that no longer quite added up… If you’ve seen a deal that almost closed, a plant that almost ran, a company that almost made it……then you’ve seen this moment before. […]
The roses were already in bloom when the numbers landed. White House gardeners had done their work—order, symmetry, early spring perfection—but what drifted across the Rose Garden that morning wasn’t fragrance alone. It was something rarer in Washington: relief. Vindication. The unmistakable sense of a season turning. And then the announcement: the final “Set 2” […]
It’s just past 11:30 p.m. on a cold April night, and the North Atlantic is flat as glass. On the bridge of the Titanic, the warnings have already come in—ice reports, coordinates, positions. Nothing dramatic. Nothing definitive. Just enough to know that something is out there, somewhere ahead. Below deck, the engines are still turning […]
He wakes before the sun, and for a moment everything feels possible. Then he tries to move. Nothing. A thousand tiny tensions hold him down—threads across the arms, cords at the ankles, pins in the fabric, stakes in the ground. Individually, they are laughable. Together, they hold. On his chest, committees have formed: one argues […]
ABLC mornings begin, as they always do, with coffee, conversations, and small acts of confusion. This year, a grandfather—tasked with entertaining his grandkids between sessions—handed them ABLC conference swag lip balms, confidently explaining how to speak into them as if they were microphones. The children obliged. For a moment, the room was full of voices, […]
By the time the Bioeconomy Policy Forum opened at ABLC 2026, the ground had already shifted. Oil had surged past $119 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz was in play. And inside the room, the instruction was simple: be candid, be fierce, and don’t waste time pretending things are fine. “This session is notorious for […]
At the beginning, it’s simple. Not easy—never easy—but simple. There is one problem, and it’s enormous: can this technology work? For years, that’s the mountain. Teams gather around it, capital circles it, skeptics point at it, believers climb it. Everything reduces to a single question: is this even possible? And then, one day, it is. […]
“Threepio! We’re all going to be squashed! Tell them to shut down the garbage mashers on the detention level!” Deep inside the Death Star, the walls are closing in. Metal groans. Pipes shudder. Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca are knee-deep in the Empire’s trash.Over the comm, C-3PO’s voice rises in panic. “Shut them all down! […]
