Cuba Libre: Rubio’s Big Bet on Regime Change in Havana
uba’s communist regime was not supposed to live to see its 66th birthday. Yet Cuba is one of the world’s longest-surviving single-party states and the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. President Donald Trump and his team have all but said that they want to topple the government just as soon as he receives Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”
Have conditions and attitudes changed enough on the island since 1959 for the leadership and party to survive the next phase of America’s amped-up Monroe Doctrine? READ MORE
Geothermal: Clean Energy for People Who Like to Drill
Today, most people view artificial intelligence (AI) as a cultural phenomenon—think chatbots, deepfakes, existential essays on consciousness, and fears about AI replacing jobs. Beneath these ideas lies the AI industrial effort—artificial intelligence as physical infrastructure, including transformers, substations, and silicon warehouses that operate nonstop. They are forcing the idea of reliable power, a concept California once outsourced to natural gas.
In 2024, clean energy accounted for about 60 percent of California’s power mix. It’s one of the Golden State’s crowning achievements, built on hard policy and harder engineering, such as the Renewables Portfolio Standard and a mandate for 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. Natural gas still supplied roughly 40 percent of the state’s electricity. The state decarbonized the noon hour faster than the evening peak, the heat wave, and the smoky day, when solar output is low. Wind and solar are indispensable. Batteries are getting bigger and cheaper. But they are not 24/7 insurance and won’t be for years. America needs clean power beyond wind and solar.
Right on cue, geothermal makes its grand re-appearance. READ MORE
Trump’s attacks on California condemn America to dependency on China
The 21st-century economy — from our smartphones and F-35 fighter jets to wind turbines and electric vehicles — runs on 17 obscure metals known as rare earth elements. Control their supply, and you control the technological high ground. For decades, America ceded this control, a strategic blunder that left our security perilously dependent on China, which now dominates over 80% of the global supply chain.
The Trump administration, to its credit, correctly identifies this vulnerability as a five-alarm fire. Its diagnosis is accurate and plans for a $12 billion dollar strategic stockpile heartening. Its other proposed solutions, however, have been a series of bizarre and coercive foreign policy gambits that betray a fundamental misunderstanding of American strength. READ MORE
Trump’s Iran Strike: What It Says About Russia—and Us
Russia is toothless. If anyone needed evidence of how far and fast Russia has fallen, it is the American assault on Iran. This “war,” as President Donald Trump called it in his video message on Saturday, would have been impossible if Moscow were not bogged down with its reckless, inhumane bloodbath in Ukraine, now in its fifth year. (That’s not counting the 2014 Crimean invasion and annexation, which would make it 12 years.) While Russia bleeds, its clients, allies, and friends flail or fall.
Syria and Venezuela were pre-show. Iran is big time. Bashar al-Assad had nowhere to turn when he fled Damascus, except to hole up in Moscow. Russia couldn’t save him, but it gave him a place to retire. Nicolas Maduro could count on Cuban personal security in Caracas, which didn’t stop him from being cuffed, hooded, and taken to federal detention in lower Manhattan. For years, Russia was the guarantor of its regimes’ survival, but Moscow is spent, and Vladimir Putin is a friend without benefits. No administration would have toppled two Russian allies in one winter if the Kremlin were still a global player and protector. That’s no solace for poor Ukraine, but on the geopolitical chessboard, Kyiv’s heroic fight made changes in Damascus and Caracas possible. The world is better off without Assad and Maduro. (Goodbye Hamas and Hezbollah, too). READ MORE
In India-US deal, there is a dangerous asymmetry. California can bridge the gap
The prevailing narrative surrounding the US-India relationship is one of triumph. As the world’s oldest and largest democracies, we often celebrate our converging strategic interests, robust trade, and deep cultural ties. Yet behind the handshakes and headlines, the cold, hard statistics on foreign direct investment (FDI) reveal a structural vulnerability — a dangerous asymmetry that threatens to undermine the long-term health of our partnership.
The United States currently stands as the third-largest source of FDI into India, a testament to American confidence in India’s growth potential and economic trajectory. The flow in the opposite direction, however, tells a starkly different story. India does not even rank among the top 20 sources of FDI into the United States. This imbalance creates more than just a missed economic opportunity; it creates a significant political liability for New Delhi — particularly in this America First-driven political climate and trade reality. READ MORE
Lai and Bezos: A Tale of Two Publishers
On our screens, two images tell a story for our time. First, there is a fleeting glimpse of publisher Jimmy Lai, 78, standing trial in Hong Kong. The democracy advocate and critic of the Communist regime, he’s been handed a 20-year prison term—a span so long, it is a death sentence. Lai is a man erased for the crime of promoting a free press. His world is a prison cell, his future a void. The second image is of Jeff Bezos on a yacht, radiant under a Mediterranean sky, a titan of industry whose newspaper, The Washington Post, once adopted, under his ownership, the solemn motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
One publisher is in a cell, the other on a yacht. To see the gulf between them is to spy the war on truth.
Appreciating the cruelty of Lai’s fate, one must remember the promise that was Hong Kong. It was meant to be a beacon of “One Country, Two Systems,” a vibrant city where commerce and speech coexisted when the United Kingdom relinquished its claims to the former colony in the late 1990s. As Beijing retreated from its commitments to Hong Kong’s freedom, its citizens fought back. The 2014 Yellow Umbrella Movement was the zenith of this spirit of liberty, a breathtaking display of civil disobedience where a generation demanded the democratic future they were promised. For a moment, it seemed possible. READ MORE
Trump’s Catastrophic War on Global Talent
America is just beginning to tally the cost of our catastrophic, self-inflicted wound. During Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, by assaulting immigration and global engagement, we have also banned and discouraged the globe’s most talented students from being educated here, hurting ourselves and our economy. After green shoots of recovery under Joe Biden, the data reveal the profound price we’re paying.
America’s economic engine of international education is powerful. According to data from NAFSA: Association of International Educators, for the 2022-2023 academic year, the most recent available, international students contributed more than $40 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 368,000 jobs. Ground zero for this war on talent is California. In the Golden State alone, this meant over $6 billion in economic activity. These talented international students, often paying full-freight tuition, keep our magnificent University of California and Cal State systems affordable for in-state students. It is the rent paid to local landlords, the money spent in our small businesses, and the funding that fuels our advanced research labs. READ MORE
Trump’s Authoritarian Envy: The Plight and Peril of a Lame Duck
hile the world was distracted, Turkey swallowed a piece of Syria. This is not a creeping occupation; it is annexation in plain sight, a brazen 21st-century conquest. Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Ankara has seized effective control of approximately 9,000 square kilometers of northeastern Syria—a territory larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. This is no mere buffer zone patrolled by a nervous neighbor; it is a new, unofficially declared Turkish province.
The evidence of this de facto annexation is overwhelming and irrefutable. The Turkish lira, not the Syrian pound, is the official currency. Turkish-language schools, funded and staffed by Ankara, are educating Syrian children. Turkish-built hospitals, post offices, and infrastructure projects have replaced the functions of the Syrian state. Most strategically, plans are advancing for a railroad that will directly connect this resource-rich territory to the Turkish heartland, cementing its economic and strategic absorption for decades to come. All the while, Turkish troops patrol the region, enforcing Turkish rule and effectuating a brutal clampdown on the Kurdish populations, once America’s most effective partners against ISIS. READ MORE
Why Europe Needs Its Own Nuclear Deterrent
The Norwegian television series Okkupert (Occupied), also on Netflix, began with a chillingly plausible premise: a near-future Russia, with the tacit approval of the European Union, occupies Norway to seize control of its abundant North Sea oil and gas fields. (Norway, after being devastated by a hurricane attributed to global warming, elects a Green Party-ish prime minister who stops the Scandinavian country’s oil and gas production.) The drama was a meditation on sovereignty, appeasement, and the vulnerability of small nations amid resource-hungry giants. A decade ago, this was compelling fiction. Today, it reads like a prophecy laden with irony. The most explicit threat to Nordic territory comes not from Moscow’s revanchism, but from Washington’s transactionalism, with an American president coveting Greenland’s vast resources and vowing to obtain it.
Trump’s pressure to wrest this autonomous territory from Denmark underscores a terrifying truth: the foundational premise of the post-war order is dead, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney eloquently made clear.) That the United States would protect the territorial integrity of its allies is no longer guaranteed. As my Hoover Institution colleague, the historian Timothy Garton-Ash, recently diagnosed our era with brutal clarity, “The West is history. Muscle up for a post-Western world of illiberal international disorder.” READ MORE
The Tip Is the Distraction, and the Wage Is the Scandal
Gesturing, I caught the waiter’s attention to pay my restaurant bill. He hustled over and brought with him the now-ubiquitous handheld payment device. I tapped the prompts and noticed something unsettling. The suggested tip amounts—20 percent, 22 percent, 25 percent—were calculated not on the subtotal for the food and drink, but on the grand total, a number bumped by 8.625 percent state and local sales tax in San Francisco and, in the case of my burger, an additional 6 percent city-mandated health charge to help pay for restaurant workers’ health insurance.
This is a tip-on-a-tax, a surcharge on surcharges. Let me be clear: As a former waiter, I am not critical of the hardworking people who depend on tips. I once depended on them, too. I believe in tipping generously. My objection is to the software and the business decision behind it, which inflate the basis for the tip and, in turn, the swipe fees that go with it. This sleight of hand, much like shrinkflation, erodes trust by banking on the inattention we give to modern transactions. The solution is simple: point-of-sale (POS) systems should be programmed to calculate gratuities on the pre-tax subtotal. “No tips on tax” should be a principle of consumer fairness. READ MORE
Mamdani: The Unique Voice of NYC’s First African-Born Mayor
The job is local. The platform is global. This is the fundamental paradox facing every mayor of New York City, a metropolis of 8.5 million souls that also serves as the de facto capital of the world, and the home of the United Nations with its 193 member states. Most nations have U.N. offices in New York as well as missions. It’s arguably the most diverse city on earth, with 180 languages spoken in its public schools.
While the quotidian duties of New York City’s mayor require an obsessive focus on sanitation and safety, subways and schools, the city’s role as U.N. host and its continued role as the world’s financial center thrust its leader onto a geopolitical stage. New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, its first foreign-born mayor to be elected in over 50 years, understands this duality better than most. The question is how he will wield it. READ MORE
As Washington Falters, California Leads the Way on Scientific Research
The government and its people are bound by a compact: Citizens finance their government, delegate it life-and-death powers, and expect security. This is not just a military or police matter; it also concerns protecting public health through vaccines, food inspection, and cutting-edge scientific research. In recent decades, however, Washington has frequently abdicated this core responsibility, paralyzed by ideology or incompetence, leaving a vacuum. Invariably, California steps in to fill it.
This is not a story of partisanship or the most populous state using its clout. It is pragmatic self-preservation and strategic foresight. When Washington falters, California—leveraging its economic might, its world-class institutions, and its people—acts as a de facto nation-state to safeguard its future and the rest of the nation’s, whether through auto emissions or food safety. This trend reveals a critical shift in the American federalist system, where a single state has become an essential backstop for national progress. At the time of the Republic’s founding, the population difference between the most and least populous states was 10 to 1. Now it’s over 70-to-1. READ MORE
Venezuela and the Dawn of the Don-roe Doctrine
Nicolás Maduro is in American custody. With that simple fact, the Western Hemisphere’s geopolitical landscape has irrevocably shifted. The United States has crossed a threshold, trading years of sanctions and diplomatic pressure for swift, decisive military action. This is a historic pivot, a moment that will be studied for decades, not only for its impact on Venezuela but for what it signals about the future of American power in its hemisphere.
In a recent conversation, my friend, Leopoldo López, the Venezuelan opposition leader in exile, cut straight to the core of this complex reality. He reinforced the U.S. administration’s framing of the operation: this was not a war against a nation, but a judicial action against a “criminal” who had held 30 million people hostage. It is a critical distinction, one that seeks to legitimize an otherwise fraught intervention. READ MORE
NATO’s Myopic Accounting Ignores Maritime Superpower Greece
America just skipped December’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting. That’s a first in over two decades. Part of the reason is the alliance’s irrelevance to President Donald Trump’s personalized, high-stakes peace negotiation to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Another is likely the administration’s weariness over Europe’s anemic defense spending. The alliance’s current 2 percent of GDP benchmark has long been a source of transatlantic friction. It is also a dangerously simplistic metric that measures inputs, not outputs.
The benchmark quantifies treasure, not strategic capability, and overlooks one of the most critical (and undervalued) contributions allies can make: maritime power—specifically, commercial sealift capacity. There is a solution. READ MORE
Five Eyes Become Three Blind Mice
George P. Shultz, the late Secretary of State, regularly reminded me and my Hoover Institution colleagues that in diplomacy, “trust is the coin of the realm.” Trust is even more critical in intelligence sharing. Without it, even the most sophisticated satellites, signals intercepts, and cyber tools are just expensive toys.
For decades, the Five Eyes alliance—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—has relied on trust as its currency across oceans and governments. Born of World War II code-breaking cooperation and formalized in the UKUSA Agreement of 1946, the network of English-speaking nations and bilingual Canada became the world’s most durable intelligence partnership, fusing shared values with shared secrets. But the trust account now looks overdrawn on our side of the ledger. The shortfall isn’t just an accounting technicality—it threatens the alliance’s utility and credibility. READ MORE