STEFANO FORTE: Mamdani should not be on the ballot and should not be an American citizen.
If he lied on his naturalization papers about extremist ties, Pam Bondi must investigate! He’s a communist, a jihadist, and a danger to this country.@StefanoLfortepic.twitter.com/knCrP5YUKs
Wang Chuanfu, the 59-year-old CEO of BYD, wanted to demonstrate the safety and cleanliness of the batteries developed by his company during a meeting with Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s company. He did this by drinking a glass of the electrolyte liquid from one of them. The Hathaway crew was stunned. Was this man an idiot or a genius? Years later, having become the richest man in China, the verdict is clear.
In just three decades, BYD has grown from a small battery factory in Shenzhen to the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, challenging Tesla’s global leadership. The company sells more than three million electric and hybrid cars a year,exports to more than 60 countries and manufactures the innovative Blade battery, which even Elon Musk’s company has begun to incorporate into some of its models.
BYD is the ninth most valuable private company in China, with a capitalization of about $110 billion in 2024. Its expansion in Europe has accelerated even after the imposition of Trump’s tariffs on the Asian country’s car industry. The possibility of the firm installing an electricity factory in Spain has gone from being a rumor to a potential reality in recent weeks. According to Reuters, the Chinese giant is considering opening its third European assembly plant on Spanish territory, after those already planned in Hungary and Turkey.
With a personal fortune of around $24 billion, according to Forbes, Wang belongs to a generation of Chinese entrepreneurs who escaped poverty to join the country’s new billionaire class, benefiting from China’s economic opening-up. The electric and hybrid vehicle industry was a strategic part of the economic miracle, with billions available in subsidies and tax breaks to manufacturers such as BYD. Wang himself is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
Wang is reported to be a quiet man with modest habits. He travels in economy class on commercial flights whenever his schedule allows; he carries his own suitcase and prefers to go unnoticed in public. For years, he regularly ate in the BYD employee cafeteria and lived with his wife and daughter in the company’s housing facilities in Shenzhen.
He was born into a humble peasant family, the youngest of eight siblings. His parents died when he was a teenager, although the circumstances of their death are not entirely clear. According to newspaper reports, Wang’s father died after a long illness, and his mother collapsed suddenly while working in the fields and died before reaching hospital.
Wang’s siblings worked for years to fund his education, which resulted in him winning a scholarship to study chemistry, physics and metallurgy at the Central South University in Changsha. He then completed a master’s degree in Battery Technology at the Beijing Non-Ferrous Metals Research Institute.
After completing his studies, he worked for several years as a researcher in a state entity. In 1993, the center where he had done his postgraduate studies founded a battery company in Shenzhen and, thanks to his specialization, Wang was appointed general manager.
In 1995, at age 29, he decided to become independent and founded his own rechargeable battery company, BYD Company, in Shenzhen, with the financial support of his cousin Lu Xiangyang, who lent him 250,000 yuan (about $30,000) as initial capital. BYD’s success was dazzling. In less than five years, it became one of the world’s largest manufacturers of batteries for mobile phones. From the get-go, Wang’s strategy was clear: emulate successful products and reduce costs.
In 2003, the company made the leap from the consumer electronics sector to the car industry. That year, BYD acquired Qinchuan Machinery Works, a small automotive manufacturer in financial difficulty, and founded the subsidiary BYD Auto. In 2005, it launched its first passenger car, the F3, an internal combustion engine sedan that became one of the best-selling cars in the country by the end of that decade.
Wang was firmly committed to electric vehicles. In 2008, he presented BYD’s first hybrid and electric models, convinced that batteries had potential beyond mobile phones. However, that vision was not unanimously understood: many shareholders were skeptical of the costly shift to the electric car, which prompted a drop of up to 31% in the company’s stock market value.
Its first electric and hybrid vehicles achieved some traction in the Chinese market, and this attracted the attention of investor Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner. Fascinated by BYD, Munger convinced Buffett that the young Chinese company had a bright future. “This guy is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch… I’ve never seen anything like it,” Munger said of Wang.
Berkshire Hathaway invested about $232 million for a 9.9% share of BYD. This injection of capital and international confidence was a huge boost to the company, which just a year later launched its first 100% electric 12-meter bus and intensified its expansion into new energy vehicles. The value of BYD’s stock increased fivefold after Buffett’s vote of confidence, and in 2009 Wang became China’s richest man.
BYD has just unseated Tesla as the world’s largest EV seller by volume. Musk, who mocked the company in 2011 by saying “I don’t think they have a great product,” had to swallow his words more than a decade later by admitting that BYD’s cars “are very competitive.” That Chinese engineer who looked to some a that Berkshire Hathaway meeting that he might be an idiot, ended up proving that, in reality, he was a genius.
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Jeffrey Epstein was a vile individual, the kind any decent person would instinctively avoid. But Tony Blair isn’t like most people. He opened the door, put the kettle on, and asked about investment returns. Where others saw a predator, Blair saw potential: another billionaire to court, another rung on the golden ladder. For a man fluent in charm and comfortable with compromise, conscience has always been optional.
In 2002, while serving as prime minister, Blair hosted Epstein at Downing Street. It was not a chance encounter. Peter Mandelson arranged it.A civil service memo shows senior official Matthew Rycroft briefing Blair on the “super-rich financier” before their five o’clock meeting. The visit was deliberate, coordinated, and approved at the highest level. Epstein, a sadistic sex trafficker, entered the heart of British power because those who occupied it wanted him there.
That image — Epstein walking through the black door of Number 10 — captures the essence of Blair’s career. Power and privilege have always moved easily in his orbit. His gift has never been moral clarity but moral camouflage, the ability to dress ambition in the language of virtue. Many might argue that that afternoon in Downing Street was an aberration. They would be wrong. It was a preview of the career to come, where access trumped honesty and appearance outweighed truth.
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His defining chapter remains Iraq. Blair sold that war as an act of conscience; the noble defeat of tyranny. What followed was an unmitigated disaster. Hundreds of thousands were killed, entire cities were destroyed, and a generation of young men and women returned home broken. The infamous “dodgy dossier” was assembled under the direction of Alastair Campbell, his loyal spin doctor and now, astonishingly, one-half of the most self-satisfied podcast in Britain (more on this in a minute). The intelligence that justified the invasion was not discovered but constructed. The facts were bent until they fit the policy, and Britain was led into disaster on the back of manufactured certainty.
When the war turned sour, Blair rebranded. Out went the messianic reformer. In came the global elder diplomat. He spoke with the solemnity of a saint and the slickness of a salesman; a halo on hire. Now he fancies himself a guardian of order, warning of climate doom, disinformation, and populist decay. He preaches as though none of these ills were sharpened, seeded, or sustained by his own hand. His foundation now trains leaders and advises governments on “good governance”, a phrase that in his mouth sounds like a private joke. These days, Blair’s favourite subject is digital identity. He sells it as the next step in modern efficiency, a world where every citizen is catalogued for convenience.The tone is gentle, the promise soothing, but the purpose is unmistakably authoritarian.
The irony of his entourage completes the farce. The aforementioned Alastair Campbell, architect of deception turned podcast bro, now lectures the public on honesty with a straight face. His co-host, Rory Stewart, plays the pseudo-philosopher. A sort of Tesco Value Tocqueville, he dispenses fortune-cookie wisdom to anyone soft enough to nod along. Together they host a weekly séance of self-regard, a kind of moral karaoke for the comfortably smug. Tuning in feels like watching arsonists host a fire-safety seminar while the curtains behind them burn. Their chemistry has all the warmth of a tax audit and the honesty of a campaign promise. It’s not dialogue but duet, a harmony of hypocrisy so grating it makes you envy the deaf. Stewart may be insufferable, but Campbell is even worse — still scheming, still sermonizing, and still allergic to accountability. Standing just behind them, calm as ever, is the man who taught him every trick in the trade.
Many would argue — and rightly — that Blair belongs in a courtroom, not on the conference circuit. War crimes should have ended his career, yet he drifts from summit to stage, speaking with unshaken confidence. Polite, persuasive, and impeccably rehearsed, he talks of peace as if he never sold war.
For all the talk of redemption, nothing has truly changed beneath the measured tone and careful smile. The appetites endure: the taste for control, the hunger for influence, and the unshakable belief that he is right. Tony Blair’s gift has always been to make self-interest sound selfless, and to turn catastrophe into consultancy. He speaks as though history has absolved him, but history has merely moved on. The war he started remains a wound without closure. The meeting he took with Epstein remains a symbol of how power protects itself. Blair today stands as a monument to audacity — the man who helped break the world and then crowned himself its conscience.
The system of federally funded research gave the U.S. wealth, power, and prestige. Its future is now uncertain.
By: Jonathan D. Moreno
The American scientific community is experiencing a moment of collective trauma.The assumptions about the relationship between the federal government and the science establishment, especially as mediated by the great research universities, are no longer reliable, if they ever were.
What is puzzling is how so many smart people failed to appreciate the unique vulnerability to political fortune of the system of funding science in America that has prevailed since the 1940s.
Science leaders often voice their shock and grief by pointing to what feels like a broken bargain. Since World War II, the system of federally funded research has been credited with powering American prosperity and global influence. These advantages have not only been measurable in flourishing economic growth and an unrivaled military. They have also stimulated the creation of novel and world-leading technologies from atomic power to the internet and biotechnologies. American science has helped produce the “soft power” of innovation engines like the entertainment industry that has served as inspiration to anyone in the world with access to a screen or a radio, the most effective and sustained projection of a national idea in history.
This success rested on an implicit and largely merited confidence in government’s role as a steward of knowledge. That role runs deep in U.S. history. Thomas Jefferson’s patent law signaled the young republic’s commitment to invention, while the Articles of Confederation stressed the importance of reliable weights and measures for a stable economy, today embodied in the critically important National Institute of Standards and Technology. In 1807, the Coast and Geodetic Survey became the first federal science agency, ensuring safe navigation along America’s shores and, with it, the foundations of trade and national sovereignty.
The federal role was not always welcomed by the states. Bridges and tunnels and technologies like the railroad and the telegraph bound the country closer together but also challenged the power of individual states. Through much of the first half of the 19th century congress debated the implications of “internal improvements,” a question that the Civil War largely put to rest.
So extreme is this embarrassment within the political class that it has eclipsed even the personal fears of disability and death among legislators who control the dollars.
During the war, President Lincoln established a National Academy of Sciences to advise him on the most promising military armaments. Later, amid deep resistance by gilded age interests, a professional civil service was put in place along with intensified regulation of financial markets. Often the apparent stability provided by these arrangements proved illusory, as in the case of the Great Depression, but they created an opening for the most radical expansion of federal power in U.S. history:Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Suspicions that the new physics could lead to the engineering of the most powerful weapon in history reached the leadership of the most powerful countries at about the same time. But it was the United States that most effectively seized the opportunity. Great Britain had the intellectual capability but lacked the material resources and scale required to put the atomic bomb plan into action. At first, many academic leaders hesitated to allow government funding to shape their research agendas. But the urgency of war and the sheer availability of cash to finance their research endeavors and grow their faculty proved irresistible.
The undeniable success of this massive engineering effort formed the principle case study for presidential advisor Vannevar Bush’s argument that science could provide an “endless frontier” for American dominance in the post-War era, one with no end in sight and no immediate competitor, especially considering the devastation of the other great powers after 1945. The key ingredient, one that seemed blindingly obvious, was the organized and relatively predictable governmental support of research institutions. For more than a century the frontier image was also a political powerful one among the narrators of American manifest destiny, including President Kennedy’s New Frontier and the heralding of space as the last frontier. It was also resonant with the somewhat fuzzy notion of an American dream founded on opportunity amid greater affluence.
At mid-century, direct federal investment in transportation and education was accompanied by indirect investment in science and technology, especially in the expanded National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In turn, those organizations dispersed funds to the most promising ideas as determined by scientists and engineers themselves. In a sense, it all seemed to unfold with an air of inevitability.
But here is where some of the peril lay dormant in a society that has always displayed a conservative streak, one suspicious of elites and central government. When disaster struck, whether in financial markets or public health, those doubts came alive.
What American science leaders and the community of science advocates failed to perceive, this writer included, was the fragility of the alliance between government and science, and more particularly between politicians and scientists. As unfair as the perception might be — and it is wildly unfair — the alleged failure of the scientific establishment during the pandemic did the one thing that much of the political system could not endure: embarrassment about the confidence it had entrusted in these elites.
So extreme is this embarrassment within the political class that it has eclipsed even the personal fears of disability and death among legislators who control the dollars that could (and unarguably have) lead to new treatments for the diseases that will ultimately threaten them and their families, not to mention their constituents. Convenient and vague promises of efficiencies and discoveries afforded by AI provide the excuse of the moment. That may be an attractive play for the short-termism of venture capital, but cancer, stroke, heart disease, dementia and the next pandemic virus aren’t waiting for the next killer algorithm.
Thus American science finds itself in a kind of interregnum. The old world will not return; the new world must now be built. But no one can yet say how or when.
canisgallicus 