Was it real?As we record this on the morning of the 23 June, we are a little over 24 hours removed from Operation Midnight Hammer, in which USAF assets, including B2 Spirit stealth heavy bombers, attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. US President Donald Trump says that Iran's nuclear programme has been destroyed for good. Open Source satellite pictures of the Fordow site show six ominous black holes in two, tightly clustered groups of three, into which deep-penetration bunker buster bombs were dropped. The entire strike package got in and out entirely unmolested.But was Iran's nuclear programme really destroyed? There are suggestions that Iran moved its highly enriched uranium from the Fordow site some days before the US attack. If it was such a devastating blow, why has Iran not responded? US Bases and Gulf energy infrastructure is far closer, and far easier to strike than Israel, which Iran is still pounding.And was Iran a paper tiger? So beset by corruption and ill discipline that Israel could establish air supremacy in a single night, and US air assets can roam the skies with impunity? So that it could have its entire nuclear programme destroyed in a week? That it would be too afraid to strike back, lest the US escalate further. What was real at all? And what's next… To hear the full episode (and the whole back catalogue of our special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity) go to Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
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Special Edition: Malcom Kyeyune on Military Parades and Hypersonics Over Tel Aviv
Malcom Kyeyune is one of the oldest friends of Multipolarity. In his first 2025 appearance, he catches up with Andrew about the state of the world. Trump’s ‘military parade’. The breakup of the MAGA coalition. Violence on America’s streets. The advent of hypersonic missiles above the skies of Tel Aviv. This is a wide-ranging, theory-of-everything overview of the geopolitical moment. You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
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Musk Rat Love, Remember the LA mo’, Promising The Rare Earth
The Big Divorce has finally hit. Like a country rock record written by the WWE, the Trump Musk split has been its own kind of kino. But beyond two hotheaded men who secretly still love each other very much, could it be that this marks the schism between tech and MAGA? Meanwhile… that escalated quickly. As LA smouldered over the weekend, Trump punched the nuclear button, demanding to send in squadrons of marines. Whether they storm the beaches of the I-110 is perhaps secondary to the constitutional question: who holds the keys to law and order in a divided America? Finally, right now China is squeezing its rare earth metals. Always wear gloves if you do that at home, but if you do it at a geopolitical level, just get ready for some serious blowback. You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
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Special Edition: Pilkington Launches "The Collapse Of Global Liberalism"
This week, we’re going as big picture as imaginable. Philip Pilkington has a thesis about liberalism itself: 1. That it is bad. 2. That it is ending. That’s the nub of his new book, released this week. He argues that the modern world order is based on a doctrinaire and unrealistic form of liberalism and has given rise to hollowed-out financialised economies and disintegrating societies that can barely even reproduce their population or meet their energy needs. Only by abandoning our liberal delusions and adopting hard-headed post-liberalism can the West survive.In this special edition, Andrew Collingwood interviewed him in front of an online audience on a live Twitter Spaces. You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
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Premium Edition Teaser: Xi Blinded Me with Science, Every Ottoman for Himself, Poison Ivy
China is planning a new version of its Made In China 2025 industrial strategy. Just as America is punching holes in its own science funding budget, we'll be reporting from the output gap. Meanwhile, the new US ambassador to Ankara has declared that he's against carving up Syria in a modern Sykes-Picot, the treaty that drew up the Middle East modern borders. Is this an important anti-colonial action or just a license for Erdogan to gobble up his own Ottoman empire?Finally, Harvard continues to come under shelling by the US government. Not content with disbarring international students, Trump said on Monday that he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money and giving it to trade schools. Is this a case of frightening them to with an inch of their lives or is Trump genuinely guillotining the credentialed aristocracy that runs the United States? To hear the full episode (and the whole back catalogue of our special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity) go to Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity
Charting The Rise Of A Multipolar World Order
Philip Pilkington is an unorthodox macroeconomist.
Andrew Collingwood is an equally skeptical journalist.
Lately, both have realised that - post-Ukraine, post-Afghanistan withdrawal - the old, unipolar, US-led world order is in its death throes.
In its wake, something new is being born. But what shape will that take? That will depend on a combustible combination of economics and geopolitics; trade and military muscle.
Each week, our duo take three off-radar news stories and explain how each is shaping our multipolar reality.
Ireland