Did Donald Trump change the presidency, or simply reveal it? Debating presidential power and the US Constitution in this episode of “Can We Agree?”: John Yoo of UC Berkeley Law, one of the country’s leading scholars of executive power, and William Galston of the Brookings Institution, a Wall Street Journal columnist. In other words, the only liberal at the Journal and the only conservative at Berkeley. Galston argues Trump has transformed the office and that the next president, Democrat or Republican, will inherit those powers in full. Yoo says Trump is using powers that were always there, just more boldly than his predecessors did. What can they agree on? What about Trump’s claim that there are “no limits” to his power? Or whether Trump obeys the courts, and who is supposed to stop a president who goes too far? Would George Washington recognize the job he created? Nobody leaves until we agree. “Can We Agree?” is the program that asks whether two brilliant minds from opposite corners of an argument can find any common ground on the questions that matter most to Americans today. Subscribe to the Smerconish YouTube channel to never miss an episode:
/ @michaelsmerconish 00:00 Presidential Power Introductions 02:20 Did Trump invent presidential power or just use it more effectively? 04:49 Did Trump change the presidency or just reveal it? 12:00 Trump’s “no limits” claim 17:40 Trump any worse than predecessors? 21:05 Has Trump defied a court order? 22:47 Trump and immunity 25:05 Trump vs. Citizenry 27:00 Has Trump “permanently broken” the Presidency? 33:20 Presidents undoing each other 35:22 Switching Jerseys 38:35 Would Washington recognize this presidency? 41:10 Can We Agree?
University plans range of awards in basic and applied science, seeking to meet ‘moment of remarkable opportunity’
A new strategic research initiative is seeking to bolster pioneering Harvard work in areas ripe for breakthroughs, including neuroscience, immunology, quantum, artificial intelligence, and energy and climate.
The $150 million initiative, which represents one of Harvard’s largest direct investments in research,will fund promising avenues of inquiry in both basic and applied science, and fuel the creativity of the University’s exceptional scientists and researchers. Projects will address critical questions in science, engineering, and related fields, and have the potential to grow and attract external funding.
“Harvard’s long dedication to basic and applied research that serves our nation and the world has never been more important than at this moment of remarkable opportunity for science and innovation,” said Harvard President Alan Garber. “Thanks to scientific advances in many fields and the development of more powerful tools for conducting research, the potential for rapid scientific progress has never been greater. But it requires dependable support. This program will ensure that Harvard sustains its momentum in pursuing high-impact innovation even as we seek to diversify funding sources for our vital work.”
The broad-based initiative recognizes that the research funding environment for higher education has shifted dramatically since early 2025, but builds on groundwork laid by the University over many years.
“In a time of both great uncertainty and great opportunity, Harvard’s program will provide strategic support to our extraordinary scientific community,” said Harvard Provost John Manning. “With Harvard’s researchers poised to make field-changing discoveries in multiple areas of inquiry, and with the rapid development and deployment of new tools that are reshaping science and engineering, we cannot slow down.
“Drawing on the expertise of our Schools and our faculty to identify and shape strategic priorities, we are making this substantial investment to enable Harvard’s world-class researchers to pursue work of exceptional promise and impact in both basic and translational science,” Manning continued.
Harvard Senior Vice Provost for Research John Shaw said that the initiative recognizes the University’s commitment to sustained investment in promising areas of discovery, regardless of shifts in federal funding. This is a different intent, he said, than the funding the University made available for research in 2025, which sought to support continuity during difficult and disruptive months following steps by the government to terminate Harvard’s grants.
Court victories have helped sustain the flow of federal research funding to Harvard, while Congress has also maintained federal funding for research nationally. However, the pace of new awards to research institutions across the country, including Harvard, has declined substantially.
“The topics, the targets, that the federal agencies want to support are ever-evolving,” said Shaw, who is also the Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering. “We’re not focused on trying to simply plug a gap due to a reduction in federal awards. We’re trying to advance new research opportunities that will lead to new discoveries, broad societal benefits, and attract future funding from both the federal government and other sources.”
The scientific research initiative includes two key components. The first will provide $100 million to be distributed by Schools to support strategic priorities identified through School-based processes. Funding allocated to the Schools from the $100 million will be proportional to their federal funding expenditures.
The remaining $50 million will include awards in areas of research that offer promising opportunities across multiple faculties at the University, marrying strengths in different disciplines. To facilitate this, the University is launching a series of new and expanded internal award programs through the provost’s office that will support individual research labs as well as collaborative projects that connect researchers across the University.
One area Harvard will look to support through funding is neuroscience, which is experiencing rapid advances in areas related to dementia, schizophrenia, and brain structure. A second area is immunology, inflammation, and infectious diseases, where advances have been accelerating cancer treatment and the understanding of the role of inflammation in Alzheimer’s and other conditions. Individual awards of up to $275,000, with larger amounts for collaborative proposals, will go to each of the two project areas, which, as with others that are part of the initiative, will emphasize early-stage research that is likely to eventually attract outside funding.
In a third area, energy and climate, the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability is adding two new clusters to its existing portfolio of cross-faculty research clusters. The first involves energy technologies, markets, and systems as they relate to climate impacts. The second addresses the area of remote sensing and climate/environment measurements, in this case as applied to risk assessment and mitigation, as well as adaptation. Each of the two clusters is eligible for up to $600,000 per year for a three-year period.
Support will also be directed to the Frontiers of Innovation for Societal Impact Fund. The Frontiers Fund offers early-stage Spark Awards (up to $100,000) and more advanced Ascend Awards at higher funding levels. The two-year Frontiers awards go to projects that have as a key feature the potential to attract follow-on funding from industry or private philanthropy. In the first year of the project, the University awarded $4.9 million to 20 awardees, including for research aimed at identifying breast cancer progression earlier and efforts to advance strategies for injury prevention, rehabilitation, and treatment for musculoskeletal and neuromuscular conditions.
Other existing funding programs that focus on innovation will also be strengthened through the two components of this initiative, including a partnership with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering to support validation projects, which test new ideas with the potential for both societal benefit and commercialization. University support will allow the number of projects funded to double, Shaw said.
The final piece of the initiative is aimed at augmenting Harvard’s computing infrastructure, ensuring that it will be robust enough to support the University’s increasingly computing-intensive research.
“It’s a recognition that research is increasingly dependent on access to sophisticated technology: large-scale computing, specialized hardware, leading commercial AI models,” said Harvard Vice President and Chief Information Officer Klara Jelinkova. “We are reducing barriers to access those capabilities in ways that accelerate existing research and enable new forms of scholarship.”
The infrastructure investment will include adding servers and computational capacity and providing access to other computing resources, such as cloud computing and leading AI models. Data storage is also important, Jelinkova said, particularly where it concerns regulated data — such as protected medical data — that requires a higher level of security.
A new study demonstrates that accelerated biological aging in areas of the brain spared by a stroke strongly influences language impairment and long-term rehabilitation outcomes. Researchers found that structural brain age in uninjured tissue predicted aphasia severity and forecast language recovery six months after speech therapy paired with brain stimulation.
Key Facts:
Impact of Non-Injured Tissue: Biological aging patterns in the hemisphere opposite the stroke lesion accounted for aphasia severity independently of the stroke lesion’s actual size or location.
Predicting Recovery Success: Structural brain aging metrics gathered prior to intervention reliably predicted language improvements six months after patients completed speech therapy paired with noninvasive brain stimulation.
Accessible Clinical Translation: The predictive framework relies solely on standard, routine brain scans evaluated via a free, open-access online tool trained on normative human aging datasets.
Source: Society for Neuroscience / University of South Carolina Floyd School of Medicine
Following an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, neurological damage is rarely restricted strictly to the primary lesion site. Even brain regions that escape direct ischemic injury can exhibit hallmarks of accelerated structural aging. This secondary vulnerability is especially evident in post-stroke aphasia, a debilitating language impairment characterized by vast individual variability in both baseline severity and long-term responsiveness to rehabilitation.
Historically, clinicians have attempted to forecast recovery by mapping the focal stroke injury itself: measuring lesion volume and tracking specific damaged language tracts. However, these metrics often fail to explain why two individuals with nearly identical lesions experience drastically different recovery trajectories.
Now, a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience (JNeurosci) led by Nicholas Riccardi, Leonardo Bonilha, and colleagues from the University of South Carolina Floyd School of Medicine establishes that post-stroke language outcomes depend significantly on the biological age and resilience of uninjured brain tissue.
Machine Learning Reveals the Brain Age Gap
To quantify subtle structural changes across the whole brain, the research team implemented an online machine-learning platform trained on extensive, normative human brain aging datasets. This computational model compares an individual’s structural MRI scan against expected benchmarks to detect biological deviations from chronological aging.
The investigators evaluated 188 post-stroke patients presenting with varying degrees of aphasia. Strikingly, structural aging markers within the hemisphere not directly damaged by the stroke explained aphasia severity independently of classical variables, such as lesion volume or anatomical location.
Furthermore, the team assessed patients undergoing an intensive rehabilitation regimen combining speech-language therapy with noninvasive brain stimulation. Baseline brain aging metrics recorded prior to treatment accurately predicted the extent of sustained language gains measured six months after therapy concluded.
Accessible, Low-Cost Rehabilitation Biomarkers
The findings establish a critical link between baseline biological aging models and post-stroke rehabilitation success, offering an objective framework for tailoring individualized recovery protocols.
Importantly, because the computational model requires only a standard, non-contrast clinical MRI and an accessible, free computational algorithm, the methodology avoids the high technical and financial hurdles that typically stall advanced neuroimaging biomarkers.
“This work suggests that recovery potential after stroke depends on the health of the rest of the brain, which is partly shaped by treatable factors like cardiovascular health,” said lead author Nicholas Riccardi. “Second, because everything here came from a single routine scan and a free online tool, this could realistically reach a variety of clinical or research settings one day.”
Targeting modifiable systemic health factors, such as blood pressure, metabolic markers, and exercise habits, could serve to protect global brain resilience, ensuring that uninjured neural networks remain primed to support post-stroke neuroplasticity and functional recovery.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper will be reviewed in full upon release.
The advance of the Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group in Yemen has driven more than 130,000 people from their homes since the beginning of September, deepening the humanitarian crisis in an already poor country with a long history of domestic conflict.
The Houthis have swept down Yemen’s western coast, seizing the strategic port city of Mocha as well as the town of Dhubab and several islands in the Red Sea. A key aim is to control the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.
This narrow passageway is bounded by Djibouti to the west and Yemen to the east, and is a primary shipping route connecting Asia with Europe. Around 15% of global seaborne trade passes through Bab al-Mandab annually, worth more than US$1 trillion (£756 billion).
This includes a substantial amount of oil. Saudi Arabia, which supports government forces in Yemen, has grown particularly reliant on exports via the Red Sea since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in February following the start of its war with the US and Israel.
The Strait of Hormuz is another maritime chokepoint, so its closure has led to higher global fertiliser and food prices. Global energy costs have also surged, with oil prices rising from around US$70 per barrel in February to roughly US$90 per barrel by the end of August. The escalating hostilities in Yemen pose further uncertainty to global trade.
Three of the world’s maritime chokepoints are located in the Middle East. La Terase / Shutterstock
Who is most exposed?
In 2025, we published research that measured the impact of maritime chokepoint disruptions. Our findings revealed which countries stand to lose most from shipping disruption through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Over a dozen countries depend on the strait for more than half of their maritime trade by value, with Eritrea (87%), Djibouti (78%), Sudan (67%), South Sudan (65%) and Chad (61%) standing out as the most reliant states. Yemen itself relies on the Red Sea for 54% of its trade by value.
Here, maritime trade refers not only to goods loaded directly at a country’s own ports but also to trade transported into a country from foreign ports and connected maritime routes. This explains why landlocked South Sudan and Chad also appear among the countries most exposed to disruption in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Given its role in connecting Europe with Asia, the Bab al-Mandab Strait is important for countries outside the region too. Roughly US$520 billion of Chinese maritime trade passes through the strait annually, with this value standing at US$243 billion for India and US$226 billion for the US. Germany and the UK rely on Bab al-Mandab for US$208 billion and US$190 billion of trade respectively.
We calculated that the economic losses associated with a 30-day Houthi blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait could amount to US$30 billion, rising to US$40 billion in the case of a 45-day blockade. This is due to increased fuel costs associated with rerouting, as well as higher freight rates and growing insurance premiums.
A screengrab taken from a video made available by the Houthi military media center on September 22 shows Houthi fighters in the coastal town of Dhubab, Yemen, located next to the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Houthi Military Media Center Handout / EPA
The Houthis have attacked Red Sea shipping in earlier periods of disruption in the region, including the crisis that began in late 2023 following the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel and the outbreak of war in Gaza. At that time, the group said it was acting in support of Gaza.
Major shipping operators subsequently decided to take longer but safer alternative routes via the southern tip of Africa, adding up to 15 days to the journey between Europe and Asia. While some shipping corporations resumed their Red Sea routes in the intervening years, others continued to avoid the region entirely.
Since the recent return to hostilities in Yemen, the Houthis have so far insisted they will only attack ships linked to Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, the latest escalation risks prompting shipping companies that had continued to use Bab al-Mandab to divert their vessels around Africa too, while encouraging other operators to maintain their avoidance of the waterway.
Data from the PortWatch platform, a joint International Monetary Fund and University of Oxford initiative which monitors maritime trade disruptions, suggests only 22 vessels transited the Bab al-Mandab Strait on September 20.
This compares with around 70 vessels per day before the Houthis began attacking Red Sea shipping in 2023, and around 30 vessels per day prior to the recent escalation of hostilities in Yemen.
Unchoking the chokepoint
Moving forward, the question is what solutions are available. The link between the situation in Bab al-Mandab and the wider conflict in the Middle East makes a quick diplomatic solution challenging and unlikely.
Increased naval deployments would have been the conventional approach to keep the strait safe. Yet earlier such attempts by the US and its allies both in the Bab al-Mandab and Strait of Hormuz have failed. The mere threat of attack has deterred many vessels from crossing each waterway.
Iranians drive next to a billboard in Tehran, Iran, depicting the sinking of a US aircraft carrier. Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA
Continued instability in the Red Sea region will further reduce the attractiveness of this route for shipping companies, pushing ocean carriers to reorient their long-term fleet deployment around southern Africa.
This situation would be particularly disastrous for Egypt. Before the 2023 crisis, Egypt received billions of US dollars worth of fees from ships transiting the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the northern tip of the Red Sea.
The current situation in the Bab al-Mandab Strait is another wake-up call that the security of maritime chokepoints is vital for countries around the world.
The market for oil is global, which is why events like the war in Iran affect oil prices – and prices of the wide range of products made from oil – literally everywhere. Federal data shows that the price at the primary crude oil hub in the U.S. was US$66 a barrel in late February 2026 – before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran – and $101 a barrel on April 13. Similar price increases have reverberated around the globe.
And when its supply changes, its price changes. Economists explain this using a fundamental model of our field: the supply-demand diagram. When there’s less of something to go around, competition among consumers who want it and companies that need it can drive the price up.
In general, when supply of a product is reduced, prices rise. As a result, even when demand remains stable, the quantity consumers buy decreases because of higher prices. Matthew E. Oliver and Tibor Besedeš, CC BY-NC-ND
Sometimes this process can play out over time, allowing people to adjust their purchasing or activities to dampen price shocks. But when a significant source of the world’s oil is effectively blocked without much advance notice, such as when the the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, prices can rise sharply in a short period of time.
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A natural question many people ask when oil prices spike is: Where does all that additional money go, and who benefits from it?
Some people have writtenentirebooks dissecting all the places that money goes when it leaves consumers’ pockets. But ultimately, the bulk of the money heads in the direction of the source of the oil itself – the oil companies.
What they do with the money varies widely, depending on where in the world an oil company is operating and who owns it. What also matters is the business environment – the set of laws and regulations – in which the company operates.
A satellite photo shows damage from the war at Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil refinery, which must be repaired before full operations can resume. Satellite image (c) 2026 Vantor via Getty Images
Middle East faces danger
Oil producers in the Middle East face significant new risk because of the war in Iran, including threats to production, processing locations and shipping routes. These risks raise their costs for insurance, security and transportation.
But production costs in the region are relatively low, so higher global oil prices typically still translate into strong profits.
The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the U.S., is a long way from the Persian Gulf.When global oil prices rise because of the war in Iran, oil companies operating in West Texas effectively get a windfall gain: Prices rise more quickly than costs, at least in the short run.
The immediate effect is more income from higher prices.The money largely goes to company owners – meaning shareholders – through dividends, debt reduction, company-backed purchases of its own stock, and reinvestment in drilling and production. Over time, companies may decide to spend some of that windfall on building more production capacity or pipelines to get more oil and gas to market.
Drilling rigs in the North Sea are still operating and shipping oil. AP Photo/James Brooks
North Sea boosts government revenue
In the North Sea, between the island of Great Britain and Scandinavia, a mix of multinational and government-owned companies produce most of the oil.
In the U.K., private shareholders are the primary beneficiaries of higher profits from increased oil prices, though an additional tax on oil and gas companies’ profits means the government also collects a significant share of the money, which it uses to help pay public expenses.
In Norway, oil revenues flow into the Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, valued at over $2 trillion. Laws govern how much, and for what purposes, money can be withdrawn from the fund, supporting public spending and preserving wealth for future generations. This is a similar model to Alaska’s state-owned program, funded by oil revenue, that pays for government services and sends an annual dividend to every permanent resident.
Russian oligarchs get rich
Russian oil is subject to stringent economic sanctions imposed by major industrial countries as a response to the Russian invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine. While the U.S. cannot control how much Russia charges for its oil, it can control services needed to move Russian oil around the world. Under current price sanctions, Western shipping, insurance and financing can be used to ship and sell Russian crude oil only if the price is below $60 per barrel.
Russia’s oil industry is dominated by government-controlled companies whose leaders maintain close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The dealings of those shadowy figures are often shrouded in secrecy, but it is likely that they and Putin’s military-industrial complex – not the Russian people – are the main beneficiaries of high oil prices.
What this means for you
Everyday U.S. consumers may not like the idea of their hard-earned cash going into the already deep pockets of any of these groups. But in the short run, there’s not much to do but pay the price. For the long run, however, people around the world are already thinking and talking about, and opting for, sources of energy that don’t depend on fossil fuels.
UNODC figures show Afghan opium poppy area falling from ~232,000 ha (2022) after the Taliban ban to 10,200 ha in 2025 (~296 tonnes potential output; Alcis/EUDA ~414 tonnes). Farm sales income is estimated at $134 million in 2025, down 48% from 2024; drought also played a role.
The author says that does not prove the world heroin market shrank: EUDA cites ~12,000 tonnes of estimated Afghan stocks, Myanmar area up 17% (output ~flat), and ~9,116 ha of poppy reported in Balochistan—hectares are not proven replacement tonnes.
Criminal profits cannot be read off farm losses: revenue, cost, and margins differ by stage; groups may tap stocks, new sources, or other drugs. Relocation is a hypothesis to test, not a finding.
Afghanistan reduced the area devoted to opium poppy cultivation from approximately 232,000 hectares in 2022 to 10,200 in 2025. The scale of this decline raises three related questions that require different answers.
First, can state intervention drastically reduce a major source of drug production? In Afghanistan, the answer is yes. Second, has that reduction produced an effective contraction in the international opium and heroin market? Large accumulated stockpiles and the possible emergence of alternative suppliers make the answer less certain. And third, what consequences has the ban had for criminal organizations’ revenues and profitability, and what can we infer about drug trafficking globally?
Did the ban reduce opium production in Afghanistan?
In April 2022, the Taliban authorities banned opium poppy cultivation. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan cultivated approximately 232,000 hectares in 2022 and produced an estimated 6,200 tonnes of opium. Cultivated area fell to 10,800 hectares in 2023, rose to 12,800 in 2024 and declined again to 10,200 in 2025. UNODC estimated potential production at 296 tonnes in 2025. Drought and crop failures also contributed to the latest decline, so not every change can be attributed exclusively to the ban.
The contraction is unmistakable, although estimates differ. The European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) cites an Alcis estimate of 414 tonnes of Afghan opium production in 2025, compared with UNODC’s 296 tonnes. Comparisons over time should therefore use a consistent statistical series.
The economic consequences are also clear at farm level. UNODC estimates that farmers’ income from opium sales to traders fell from $260 million in 2024 to $134 million in 2025, a decline of 48 percent.
The answer to our first question is clear: following the ban, opium cultivation in Afghanistan fell dramatically. Afghan farmers also suffered a substantial loss of income. Yet their losses do not establish that international intermediaries and distributors experienced an equivalent decline. A smaller harvest does not necessarily mean that less opium is available on the market.
Did the fall in Afghan production contract the international opium and heroin market?
Cultivation is only the first link in a longer commercial chain involving traders, processors, transporters, intermediaries, and distributors. The market impact of lower harvests also depends on accumulated stocks, alternative suppliers, prices, and demand.
Stockpiles create a time lag between production and supply. The European Drug Report 2026 cites an Alcis estimate of approximately 12,000 tonnes of opium stored in Afghanistan in 2025. This is an estimate, not a physical inventory. EUDA reports that stockpiles, processing and adulteration practices, and supply management by trafficking networks have helped sustain heroin availability in Europe despite the decline in Afghan cultivation.
Stocks can sustain sales without equivalent new production, but they may eventually be depleted, become more expensive, or cease to be accessible to particular networks. The evolution of supply as these stocks diminish will be essential to evaluating the ban’s lasting market effects.
Alternative producers present a different question. UNODC reports that Myanmar’s cultivated area increased by 17 percent, from 45,200 hectares in 2024 to 53,100 in 2025. Its estimated opium output, however, rose by only 1 percent because yields fell. Internal conflict, displacement, and economic difficulties also affect cultivation there. These figures establish expansion in another country, not that the Afghan ban caused it or that Myanmar has replaced Afghan supply.
Pakistan offers a different kind of evidence. EUDA cites satellite analysis suggesting approximately 9,116 hectares of poppy cultivation in Balochistan in 2025, potentially rivaling Afghanistan’s 2025 output. This suggests a possible alternative source of supply, but hectares are not tonnes: neither the volume produced nor effective replacement of Afghan supply has been established.
We must distinguish three propositions: simultaneous expansion elsewhere, displacement causally linked to the Afghan ban, and actual replacement of supply. Each requires different evidence. The answer to the second question remains open: the production decline is established, but the extent and duration of its effects on the international opium and heroin market are not. Even if that market contracts, we still need to establish who bears the economic losses—and which activities, if any, take their place.
What happened to criminal organizations’ revenues and profitability—and what does this tell us about global drug trafficking?
This question brings me back to a hypothesis I began developing in 2014 while examining changes in Latin American drug trafficking and its expansion into Argentina. I borrowed a concept from the economics of globalization: relocation.
My hypothesis involved two mechanisms. State pressure—stronger controls, enforcement, and higher operating costs—could encourage certain activities to move to territories with lower risks. Expanding demand could also attract organizations, alter routes and draw previously peripheral territories into new consumer markets. Relocation could therefore reflect both a response to state intervention and the search for new commercial opportunities.
Afghanistan provides a case in which to investigate this hypothesis, but the available evidence does not yet confirm it. The central question is what happens to economic opportunities when a major source of production shrinks. Some may disappear permanently; others may be taken up by new suppliers, organizations, or activities. Relocation is one possible mechanism of that transformation, and its existence and scale must be demonstrated case by case.
Criminal organizations are not interchangeable with the markets in which they operate. An intervention may dismantle a network without eliminating consumer demand or the opportunities that attracted other actors. Some organizations may lose their business; others may draw on stockpiles, find suppliers, or diversify. There is no single global drug-trafficking organization making coordinated decisions.
The economic terms also matter. Revenue is the money received from sales; profit is what remains after costs; profitability relates profit to the resources required. Supply contraction can affect prices, costs, and margins differently at each stage. Prices and traded volumes may help estimate revenue, but profit also requires information on costs, and profitability requires relating profit to the resources employed. Higher heroin prices could increase an intermediary’s revenue without raising profit if procurement and operating costs also rise.
The documented fall in Afghan farmers’ income cannot simply be transferred to international traffickers’ accounts. Nor would a contraction in the heroin market and falling profits among organizations involved in it establish an equivalent decline in global drug-trafficking profits. Different organizations, substances, and markets may experience opposite outcomes; there is no single profitability figure for the entire illicit drug economy.
Testing the broader impact would require establishing which organizations lost income and profit, whether those losses persisted, whether other actors took their place, and whether activities shifted to other markets. Illicit markets do not provide conventional financial statements, but wholesale and retail prices, traded volumes, seizures interpreted alongside other indicators, estimated margins, financial flows, and changes in distribution may offer partial evidence.
Consumer behavior matters too. Reduced heroin availability could lead some people to consume less and others to turn to different substances. EUDA warns that synthetic opioids and stimulants warrant monitoring as possible market shifts; it does not establish that widespread substitution has already occurred because of the Afghan ban. A smaller heroin market could coexist with growth elsewhere, but that possibility remains to be tested.
The ban’s impact on the revenues and profitability of organizations involved in opium and heroin remains uncertain. Establishing its consequences for drug trafficking globally requires an even broader investigation.
Three Questions, Three Different Answers
The first question has a clear answer: state intervention can drastically reduce a major source of drug production. Afghanistan’s cultivation figures demonstrate this.
The second remains open. Stockpiles have cushioned the impact of smaller harvests, while alternative suppliers, prices, and consumption will help determine whether the international opium and heroin market undergoes a lasting contraction.
The third demands a wider inquiry. Even if that market contracts, we must establish which organizations lose revenue and profit, which adapt and whether those losses translate into a reduction in the illicit drug economy as a whole. The outcome could be lasting contraction, partial adaptation, or a transformation of criminal activities. Relocation is one mechanism to investigate, not a conclusion to assume.
Afghanistan has demonstrated that opium production can be drastically reduced. What remains to be demonstrated is whether that reduction also shrinks the market and, beyond it, the economic opportunities and profits of criminal organizations.
Geopoliticalmonitor.com is an open-source intelligence collection and forecasting service, providing research, analysis and up to date coverage on situations and events that have a substantive impact on political, military and economic affairs.
AI may be revealing that intelligence was never one thing to begin with.
By John Nosta
KEY POINTS: AI may separate capabilities that human cognition tightly integrates. Broad AI ability may not be organized the way human intelligence is. AI may reveal that our definition of intelligence is too human.
Source: hainguyenrp / Pixabay
Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about an idea called anti-intelligence. In this post, I wasn’t suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) was unintelligent or that it resulted in some adverse impact on human thinking. I was trying to describe a process that felt, at least to me, upside down or inverted.
While AI could generate smart language and solve tough problems, it accomplished this without the qualities we associate with a human mind. At the core of my idea was that AI’s output looked familiar, but its computational process didn’t. In many ways, AI’s computation—a stateless, pattern-based, and high-dimensional construct—was weird, disconnected, and perhaps even “alien” as some today suggest .At that time, I saw anti-intelligence as a way of describing the differences between human intelligence and AI’s techno-computation. In a word, it was different. Not better or worse, but fundamentally different.
Human thought comes from a life shaped by our lived experiences. AI seemed to reproduce many of the artifacts of our cognition, but without a process that came close to being human. I think that’s still true. But I’ve started to wonder if anti-intelligence was revealing something more, something about intelligence itself.The Curious Unity of IntelligenceLet’s take a step back. Science has spent more than a hundred years studying something called “g,” or general intelligence. The idea is fairly simple—our cognitive abilities tend to work together. Someone who performs well on one kind of cognitive test or task is more likely to perform well on another. And this collective cognitive pattern is called the positive manifold. Simply put, human cognition hangs together.There’s also a curious linguistic coincidence here. Psychology has a g in general intelligence. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) also uses the g word. Both terms come from different perspectives, and suggest a question. What does “general” actually mean in general intelligence?Let’s push on this a little bit more. We usually imagine AGI as intelligence that broadens to include expansive domains, from language to math to computation. But these expanded domains and integration may not be the same thing. Perhaps AI could become highly capable across almost endless domains but without those abilities being organized like the general intelligence of a human mind. The g might be different, and AGI could become “general” without possessing the g in the human sense.Taking Cognition ApartSome of the capabilities we associate with human intelligence may actually come from the architecture in which it is formed. And that sentence, curious as it may sound, is worth reading again. The likes of language and reasoning, to name a few, all live inside the same biological organism. They develop and co-exist together, influencing one another from the inside. Remember, they hang together.AI offers a different case. A large language model (LLM) can correctly answer a difficult problem and then stumble over something that seems simple, if not trivial. Its abilities don’t always align with our human understanding of what a “smart mind” is. This computational “jaggedness” also shares a border with another feature I’ve written about called fragility. Small irregularities in an LLM dialogue can sometimes produce large errors. And this can happen even when the model’s performance stays strong elsewhere. In the future, I imagine that this jaggedness will be fixed. And if these capabilities begin to move together—hang together as in a human construct—AI may eventually develop something like its own positive manifold. And that, in and of itself, is interesting.Key point: Capabilities that once seemed inseparable are becoming separable. We have studied intelligence almost entirely through our human architecture. And for the first time, we have AI to compare ourselves with.I need to point out that this story began long before AI. Medicine and psychology have been studying this for a long time. Split-brain research has challenged some of our assumptions about the unity of mind. We’ve seen cognition come apart. And today, AI may allow us to watch aspects of it being assembled separately.This is where anti-intelligence still feels relevant to me. AI may be separating capacities that genuinely belong to intelligence, or it may be building computational analogues that only look familiar from the outside. I don’t think we know yet, and it might not even be on the radar screen.Rethinking Anti-intelligenceWhen I first started using the term anti-intelligence, I was trying to describe how AI’s computational architecture was different from human cognition.But could it be that what we call intelligence is actually a “cluster of capacities” that science tied together? Those capacities “hang together” in us, so maybe we assumed that their integration was simply what intelligence is. For more than a century, g has described that togetherness. AI may force us to ask what it actually means.So here’s my bold and imposing thought: Perhaps we have mistaken the architecture of human intelligence for the definition of intelligence. And AI is the first chance to “decompose” this construct and learn that intelligence wasn’t one thing in the first place.
Pope Leo concluded his four-day visit to France with a stop in Metz near the German border, where he met religious leaders and French President Emmanuel Macron. Speaking at an interfaith gathering, the pope called for messages of peace and unity. Later, he and Macron discussed Europe’s role in addressing global conflicts, with both leaders urging dialogue and cooperation over division and nationalism. The visit ended with a Mass at Metz Cathedral before Pope Leo returned to the Vatican.
/ @michaelsmerconish 00:00 Presidential Power Introductions 02:20 Did Trump invent presidential power or just use it more effectively? 04:49 Did Trump change the presidency or just reveal it? 12:00 Trump’s “no limits” claim 17:40 Trump any worse than predecessors? 21:05 Has Trump defied a court order? 22:47 Trump and immunity 25:05 Trump vs. Citizenry 27:00 Has Trump “permanently broken” the Presidency? 33:20 Presidents undoing each other 35:22 Switching Jerseys 38:35 Would Washington recognize this presidency? 41:10 Can We Agree?
By John Nosta
