Pawn & Power

Geopolitics · Energy · Markets · History

[Bloomberg @business]

Unlike traditional team sports, tennis players don't earn a baseline salary—they only get paid when they win. On this episode of The Deal with @arod, @JPegula breaks down the unique economics of professional tennis https://t.co/HT9P8vmV4b

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@IterIntellectus Red is rational. Blue is human.

If you trust strangers to cooperate, press blue. If you trust your own survival instincts more than theirs, press red.

43% of people just told you exactly who they are.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

Two weeks ago: “locked and loaded.”

Today: “done all we can militarily.”

That’s not a strategy change. That’s what hitting a wall looks like.

Iran still has the bomb program. The Strait is still contested. Oil is still $100+.

Exiting a war you didn’t finish isn’t victory. Ask Afghanistan.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

Every generation has a moment where power changes hands so quietly that most people miss it.

This might be ours.

Palantir isn’t asking permission to decide who gets watched, targeted, and neutralised. They’re just doing it. And then publishing a document explaining why questioning them makes you naive.

The scariest part isn’t the surveillance. It’s how reasonable they make it sound.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

On this day in 1775, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord.

British troops were marching to seize colonial weapons.

Someone fired. Nobody knows who.

Ralph Waldo Emerson later called it “the shot heard round the world.”

By nightfall, 93 Americans and 273 British soldiers were dead or wounded.

Eight years later, America was independent.
Revolutions rarely announce themselves. They begin with confusion, a single shot, and nobody knowing quite what they’ve started.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@Pontifex The Pope just condemned everyone without naming anyone.

Every side in this conflict uses God to justify what they’re doing.

He knows that, and that’s the point.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@Pontifex The Pope just condemned everyone without naming anyone.

Every side in this conflict uses God to justify what they’re doing.

He knows that, and that’s exactly the point.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@s_m_marandi Threatening to make the Arabian Peninsula uninhabitable doesn’t help Iran at the negotiating table.

It tells every Gulf state sitting on the fence exactly which side they need to be on.

Sometimes the most damaging thing your enemy can do is speak.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@pelicanperch21 @unusual_whales No Sir, it’s not AI slop.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@stiers_rob @unusual_whales https://t.co/aEv3lEg0lG

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@richard8kmaway @unusual_whales https://t.co/aEv3lEg0lG

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

On this day in 1986, the United States bombed Libya.

Operation El Dorado Canyon. 18 minutes. F-111s flying from British bases because France denied overflight rights.

The target was Gaddafi’s compound. The justification: a Berlin disco bombing that killed two American soldiers.

Gaddafi survived. His infant daughter, by his own account, did not.

Three years later, 270 people died when Pan Am Flight 103 fell over Lockerbie. Libyan intelligence was responsible.

The strike didn’t end Libyan terrorism. It may have accelerated it. It’s evident over time that precision rarely closes the account, it just makes it personal.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@spectatorindex $270 billion in damage.

Iran’s entire GDP is $400 billion.

They just lost two-thirds of their economy defending a nuclear program they won’t give up.
That’s not stubbornness.

That’s an ideology that doesn’t negotiate on its core.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@drpezeshkian @Pontifex Iran just defended the Pope while America attacked him.
A Muslim nation. The Catholic Church’s leader. United against the same man.
Geopolitics just got a new alliance nobody saw coming.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@World_Affairs11 @alexbland MBS just told Iran: you don’t control our oil.
The Strait is Iran’s leverage.

The East-West pipeline is Saudi Arabia’s escape route.

7 million barrels a day now moves without touching Hormuz.

Iran just lost its most powerful card.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

@disclosetv No deal. Hormuz still closed. Oil at $100+. Saudi fields damaged.

The two-week clock started April 8th.

We’re not even halfway through and it’s already fallen apart.

What happens when the deadline expires?

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

On this day in 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
He had been president for 12 years, longer than anyone in American history.

He led America out of the Great Depression and through most of World War II.

He died 18 days before Germany surrendered.
His vice president, Harry Truman, had been in office 82 days. Roosevelt had told him almost nothing.

The man who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb learned about the Manhattan Project only after taking office.

The most consequential decision of the 20th century was made by a man who had no idea it was coming.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

Threatening to shoot down the plane carrying your enemy’s negotiators mid-negotiation is not a military statement.

It’s a message to Washington from Tel Aviv that they will destroy this deal if they want to.

The real question isn’t what Iran does next. It’s whether the US lets Israel have that veto.

[Pawn & Power @PawnandPower]

BREAKING: President Trump has warned China that they will have "big problems" if they ship weapons to Iran.