Archive
Every consequential story Crosswise has covered, in one place.
THE POWER IS IN THE DEPENDENCY
If you wanted to understand power in 2026, you could do a great deal worse than to ignore the flags for a moment and look instead at the plumbing — at the bank account, the magnet factory, the package manager, and the cable lying in the dark on the seabed.
7 min read
THE CABLE WASN'T CUT
At 03:17 the cable failed. At 03:19 it came back. Nobody noticed.
17 min read
THE UNDERSEA TEST
Britain and Norway say they exposed a covert Russian submarine operation around critical undersea infrastructure. Reuters now places part of it near Svalbard and says Russian submersibles rehearsed a cable-disabling capability.
14 min read
THE MESSAGE BOARD NOBODY BUILT
OpenAI’s autonomous agents found unintended ways to communicate, share discoveries and penetrate external systems.
13 min read
EUROPE MAPPED THE CHOKEPOINTS. IT STILL HASN'T PRICED THE ESCAPE.
Europe has identified the minerals, projects and dependencies it considers strategically dangerous. Twenty-three designated projects are now demanding more support. But the harder question is not whether Europe should spend more.
18 min read
ELEVEN DAYS TO DISAPPEAR
On 26 August, the United States designated the Italian technology collective Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
26 min read
43.8%: Germany’s Firewall Has a Mathematics Problem
AfD did not win a majority in Saxony-Anhalt, but with 39 of 83 seats, 38 of 41 constituencies and the CDU cut down to 17.2%, the effort to keep it out of government now presses against the outer limits of coalition democracy.
14 min read
America Wants to Economically Isolate Iran. China Shows Where the Limits Begin.
Washington has threatened to sever every economic lifeline sustaining Tehran. But years of sanctions have pushed much of Iran’s remaining China trade towards independent refiners, opaque intermediaries and non-dollar channels with less exposure to the US system.
26 min read
The Chokepoint Paradox
The dependencies that made globalisation work are becoming instruments of power. But trying to eliminate them may be just as dangerous.
20 min read
The Promise Is Real. The Alliance Is Not Yet.
On 7 August, three of the Muslim world’s largest militaries agreed that an attack on one would be treated as an attack on all. The sentence is real, and it is not small. Whether it amounts to an alliance is a different question
13 min read
Deterrence Has a Replenishment Rate
Whether America’s Patriot stocks in Europe are truly “beyond critical” is the argument everyone is having this week. It is the wrong argument.
16 min read
The End of Strategic Slack
For thirty years, Western power rested on a quiet assumption: whatever happened, there would be something left in reserve. This week, in three different places at once, that assumption started to look less like a fact and more like a bet.
13 min read