THINK TWICE, STAN

ANALYTICAL EVALUATION REPORT SUBJECT: RAND - “The AGI Rideout Strategy for Reducing Strategic Risk and Promoting Stability in the Transition to Artificial General Intelligence” DATE: 29 April 2026 ASSESSMENT TYPE: Structural, Strategic, and Analytical Evaluation ASSESSMENT The RAND paper “TheAGI Rideout Strategy” is a serious, intellectually disciplined, and strategically valuable contribution to emerging AGI-national-security discourse. Its core contribution lies in challenging simplistic “winner-take-all” assumptions surrounding the race to artificial general intelligence and in emphasizing strategic resilience, deterrence stability, and geopolitical hedging over reckless accelerationism. The report correctly identifies that many destabilizing dynamics associated with AGI competition arise not from AGI itself, but from state beliefs regarding first-mover advantage (FMA), strategic eclipse, and the fear of irreversible geopolitical inferiority. However, despite its sophisti...

The End of the Maritime Age   Trade Routes and the Distribution of Power The universal spread of maritime trade and the myth of its advantages are synonymous with Western dominance in global politics. The deeper states became integrated into maritime commerce, the more rigidly they were assigned a specific place within the global “food chain.” If we truly accept that the world has entered the most fundamental period of transformation not merely in the past century, but in the past five hundred years, then we must also be prepared for the disappearance of things that appear natural and eternal. It cannot be ruled out that the prolonged saga surrounding the Strait of Hormuz is the first signal of radical changes in the entire architecture of global trade - above all in its spatial organization and in the advantages traditionally enjoyed by maritime transportation. This is hardly surprising. If one accepts the inevitability of the collapse of the West’s monopoly on force in world ...

The Nuclear Club Expands - Starting with Iran The End of Nuclear Containment One of the stated goals of U.S. action against Iran is to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The bitter irony is that the leadership of the Islamic Republic will now almost certainly make that its number one priority. Others may follow Iran’s example. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, as of May 2025 Iran possessed more than 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which, with further enrichment, would be sufficient to produce several warheads. At the same time, there are grounds to believe that Tehran was not planning to cross the nuclear threshold. In 2015, the country’s leadership supported the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, under which Iran agreed to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief and assistance with integration into the global economy. The agreement functioned for several years until the first presidency of Donald Trump, who ...

  Exit That Won’t Happen No Way Out of NATO European leaders have privately acknowledged that NATO is effectively falling apart and paralyzed by threats from U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the alliance, Politico reports. According to the outlet, the EU is already seriously working through response scenarios in case Washington exits the bloc. Recall that on April 1, Trump said he was considering pulling the United States out of NATO over allies’ refusal to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sharply criticized NATO, accusing it of failing to meet its obligations and calling it a “one-way street.” Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that the question of NATO’s future will be decided by the president after the conflict with Iran ends. In reality, however, Trump’s wishes - even those of his entire administration - are not enough. Under NATO’s charter, any country can leave the alliance by giv...

                                          Who Needs Whom The greatest weakness of the United States in its relations with its European satellites is that it is America itself that is most interested in maintaining its presence on the continent. The Americans arrived in Europe as victors of the Second World War, took control of its military capabilities, and for decades used it as a territorial base in anticipation of a confrontation with the USSR. In a certain sense, they did indeed save the ruling European elites from the threat of communist takeovers in the late 1940s. This is a favor that in Berlin, London, and Paris will never quite be forgiven. A latent resentment does not mean that Europeans are preparing to rebel against their overseas patrons. They are too corrupt and too cautious for that. However, despite the insignificance of their geopolitical position, Europeans will...