Ryan Watson

Deep Koots roots and hardy Bluenose branches in the glorious Zim sun. Geostrategist, storyshaper, and entrepreneur. Sovereignty for all.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

FORTRESS PAN AMERICA
The Canadian Shield for a Continent in Transition

The unipolar moment has passed, and the American-led global order that has been in place since 1945 is experiencing terminal systemic failure across military, economic, financial, political, and geostrategic domains simultaneously. Canada faces great danger and great opportunity.

America’s naval dominance has been defeated by local and regional anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems that are cheap and easy to replicate, anywhere. The United States has lost control of the globally-critical Strait of Hormuz. Its weapons stockpiles are dangerously depleted, its carriers are highly vulnerable, and it no longer has the capacity to win wars overseas in the geopolitical theatres that matter most.

The petrodollar has cracked, the greenback is losing its position as the global reserve currency, and liquidity is drying up in eurodollar ledgers at the systemic level. Even before this dramatic military defeat and supply chain disruption, the Anglo-American financial architecture already faced an imminent private credit crisis, compounded by sovereign debt unsustainability. Now energy prices are rising, shortages are coming across multiple supply chains, and famine is near-certain in some of the world’s poorest nations.

The political instability in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, and Kiev is extreme, and the actions of the dying Empire are unpredictable, damaging, and strategically ineffectual.

Therefore, Canada must immediately accelerate an independent foreign policy that builds the foundations of a Pan American defensive and economic architecture, positioning itself as the indispensable convener and guarantor of a peaceful transition for our continent. The goal is not to humiliate or displace the United States in any way, but to provide a dignified off-ramp that preserves what is valuable, and helps channel American power and greatness into a cooperative, defensive, Pan American framework.

This document outlines a geostrategic posture that is intended to engender a peaceful and cooperative continental transition that replaces the collapsing global Pax American empire with a Pan American sovereign defense and trade zone stretching from the Arctic Archipelago to the Caribbean Basin and perhaps beyond. The framework envisions Canada playing a unique convening and stabilizing role immediately, leveraging its geography, multicultural identity, and trusted-ally status to build an alternative architecture that secures the hemisphere against both imperial overreach and external threats.

The posture is organized around four integrated principles:

Transparent and Friendly Towards America — deep integration and mutual dependence

Globally Integrated and Supported — diversified economic and diplomatic resilience

Assertive Shield for Sovereignty — layered protection for vulnerable neighbors

From Imperial Fortress America to Sovereign Fortress Pan America — the dignified end state

The immediate foreign policy implementation strategy presented is based on opportunities in Canada’s relationships with Venezuela and Cuba, working together with these nations in strength towards hemispheric peace, security, and prosperity.

By immediately normalizing relations with Venezuela, and integrating our planning with American refiners, we immediately establish the foundational trilateral energy architecture of Pan America. Together we can use our precious endowment of nonrenewable fossil fuels to build the renewable energy future required to ensure collective long term prosperity across our hemisphere.

By opening a genuine and permanent invitation for Cuba to join the Canadian Confederation like Newfoundland did in 1949, Canada can reshape the strategic landscape of the Pan American security zone, working towards a foundation of trust, unity and strength from which all Pan American nations can engage on the world stage.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Transition Protocol lays it out, wow. Three of the brightest and most well informed geostrategic thinkers out there provide an amazing look at what we are witnessing unfolding around us. This really is the end of geopolitics. Winter is Coming. @LarrySonar21
@RealPepeEscobar

https://t.co/drWhvCmxMi

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Yikes. Here it comes. AI bubble popping. Private credit imploding. Petrodollar dying. The perfect storm is almost upon us. Winter is Coming.

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

Palantir's CEO just exposed Sam Altman and Dario Amodei for robbing every Fortune 500 company.

Within two minutes, Alex Karp took the entire frontier AI industry apart on national television.

His exact words:

"Every single enterprise in this country, these people are LIVID. They are paying for tokens that create no value. These people are stealing the weights and alpha of my business."

He literally said the entire frontier AI business model is intellectual property extraction dressed up as a subscription.

Then he also destroyed the pricing model with a single question that Silicon Valley still refuses to answer:

"If it was so valuable, let's say I can make you $1 billion tomorrow. Wouldn't I say I'll make you $1 billion and I want 30 percent? Why are they charging for tokens if it's so valuable?"

That question breaks the industry.

If OpenAI and Anthropic's models truly delivered the productivity gains the labs claim, they would take equity or a share of the profit they generate. They would not sell access by the million tokens.

Token pricing is itself the CONFESSION that the product cannot produce reliable value at scale. If it did, they would price for the value. But they price for the compute because that is what they are actually selling.

Karp went even further...

He called the entire arrangement "a wealth tax that does not help the poor. It just punishes."

American businesses are transferring the alpha of their operations, meaning the workflows, the customer data, the strategy memos, the internal models that make them competitive, directly into the training pipelines of a handful of Silicon Valley labs. Once those labs retrain, the customer's own edge becomes the next enterprise product sold back to their competitors.

And the part the AI industry does not want anyone thinking about:

Every enterprise running its confidential documents, its customer conversations, and its financial models through a frontier model is potentially teaching that model HOW to replace them.

The vendor collects the token fee AND the compounding intelligence about that customer's business. That is the mechanism. And that is why Karp used the word "stealing."

He claims this is why every executive he meets is furious in private and silent in public. Nobody wants to be the CEO who called out the labs and then discovered their next competitor was built on their own leaked workflows.

The entire AI industry has been priced for perfection on one assumption:

That frontier labs produce durable, defensible value that justifies infinite compute spend.

But Karp just told us that the customers do not believe that assumption anymore. They believe they are being taxed without benefit, watched without consent, and copied without recourse.

The moment enterprises stop believing, the whole valuation stack shakes.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

This is the AI dynamic that matters most, and the one that is going to kill the American AI bubble. Open source is pounding the shit out of closed source, with 85% cost reductions in this example.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

China just released an open source AI model that matches the best closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Gavin Baker explained exactly how they did it and the answer should concern every American AI lab.

The model is called GLM 5.2. It was built by Z. AI.

You get 744 billion parameters, 1 million token context window and its MIT license, meaning anyone can download it, fork it, build a company on it, with no restrictions and no Dario.

It scored 51 points on the artificial analysis intelligence index. The highest score any open weight model has ever achieved.

It beat GPT 5.5 on the frontier software engineering benchmark. It trails Claude Opus 4.8 by less than one percentage point. And it costs 85% less to run than GPT 5.5 for comparable performance.

Gavin Baker said on the All-In podcast that this model has challenged some of his beliefs. Then he explained how China built it.

The method is called distillation.

Just think of tens of thousands of phones and computers running simultaneously, all hitting the frontier model APIs through masked accounts, asking specific questions, and harvesting what happens inside the model when it answers. Every reasoning step, every token. The entire thinking process gets recorded and fed back into the Chinese model during training.

It is a cheat sheet. It is the answer key to the exam.

And here is the part that should worry everyone.

Sacks said it plainly. China was already nine months behind American models. But now that GLM 5.2 is good enough to run its own reinforcement learning, it can improve itself without needing to distill from American models anymore. The cheat sheet let them get close enough to start writing their own answers.

Sacks said we are six months behind on the model and 24 months behind on silicon and they are only a few months behind in total.

The Z. AI founder told Elon Musk directly that open weight fable-level capability will be here before Q1 2027.

Every restriction Anthropic lobbied for, every self-imposed safety guardrail, every month of delay in releasing American frontier models accelerated this. The Chinese labs were not under those restrictions. They were not going to wait.

The composable model future Gavin described, where every enterprise runs a frontier model alongside their own fine-tuned open weight model, is coming regardless of what American labs do next.

The question is just whether the open weight half of that stack is American or Chinese.

Right now it is Chinese.

WATCH THE FULL PODCAST ON @theallinpod

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Do you think capitalism requires limited liability? The law cannot limit negative impact, it can only limit liability. The negative impact still exists. Practically speaking, I think limited liability is the root way that we socialize costs while privatizing profits. I'd love to get your thoughts on this.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

I think open source AI is a much bigger deal that people yet realize. Great example from a Brazilian city here.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is a ridiculously wrong framing because this supposedly frontier AI by the IT department of Rio de Janeiro **is Qwen**! So it's not "making Qwen fade into irrelevance"...

You just need to read the HuggingFace page this guy linked 👇 (https://t.co/AAEz6BEhu6): "Rio 3.5 Open 397B is built upon the exceptional work of the Qwen Team and their Qwen 3.5 model family... [it is] post-trained from Qwen 3.5 397B."

So no, you didn't have a municipal IT department in Brazil somehow leapfrog the frontier: they were able to do this precisely because Chinese open-source models exist. They stood on the frontier, that's the whole point.

Which, incidentally, is yet another very concrete illustration of what Chinese open-source AI means for the Global South: it lets a city government in Brazil build, customize, and own its own AI capabilities instead of renting them from Silicon Valley at exorbitant prices.

With US models, the municipal IT department of Rio wouldn't be releasing its own frontier model: they'd be writing checks to OpenAI or Anthropic and hoping they don't somehow get cut off or restricted for political reasons.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Who's a middle power?
I identify as an emerging Great Power, thank you very much 🙂🇨🇦

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Anita Anand: "Collectively, Canada and our like-minded friends in Europe, in Australia, in Japan, and Korea, for an example, represent a larger GDP than the United States ... Purpose-built coalitions can make a difference so that we, as middle powers, can drive prosperity together."

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

This is the way. Cut colonial dependencies. Build a continental base of connection and prosperity from which to engage the world. Same principle everywhere, but Africa has the most to gain from implementing it immediately.

[THEE ALFA HOUSE @thee_alfa_house]

Against the backdrop of France recently summoning African leaders to Kenya, and now planning to do so again in Paris later this year, Joshua Maponga is furious with African leaders. He wonders when they will finally gather themselves and set their own agenda as a continent. He does not care whether such a meeting is called by Ramaphosa, Ruto, Kagame, or Tinubu; what matters is that it be a gathering of Africans, for an African agenda, driven by Africans. He proposes two items: first, how can we fast-track unity and business across the continent? Second, let every country bring forward its own ideas. No more imperial summons. No more Paris-dictated priorities. Africa must chart its own course.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

This bill is so wrong. A survelliance state is not Canadian!

[cbcwatcher @cbcwatcher]

Warning from Apple to Canada on Bill C-22 "As you know, this may be one of the last times we're permitted to discuss the consequences of this legislation publicly."

"That's because of the bill's secrecy provisions which forbid companies like Apple from even discussing the orders we receive with our users or the public." @Apple

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Do you also condemn the bombing of school dormitories by Ukraine? Or the use of Romanian airspace to attack Russia? Or the 35 year campaign to expand NATO and provoke war? No? It's all just Russia? That position has zero credibility, and it breaks Canada's reputation as a force for peace.

[Mark Carney @MarkJCarney]

Canada stands with Romania and strongly condemns last night’s reckless Russian drone incursion in Galați, which injured two people. Another escalation in Russia’s unjust war of aggression against Ukraine. 

This incident is a serious violation of Romanian airspace and international law by Russia. Canada and our NATO Allies remain ready to defend allied territory.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

A strong Canada is good for America and good for the world

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

For the record.

Mark Carney’s address to the Economic Club of New York was a disciplined, strategically framed intervention that should resonate with business leaders on both sides of the border.

In tone and content, it was exactly the kind of message markets look for from a G7 head of government: pro‑growth, geopolitically literate, and grounded in concrete avenues for investment and partnership.

Carney’s central assertion – that a strong Canada can “help make America great again” – recasts the Canada–U.S. relationship in explicitly pragmatic terms.

Rather than positioning Canada as a counterweight to U.S. economic nationalism, he presented it as a force multiplier for the United States’ own strategic objectives in energy security, supply chains, AI infrastructure, and re‑industrialization.

That framing is shrewd. It acknowledges the realities of a more assertive U.S. trade and industrial policy while offering a collaborative model that can lower costs, reduce risk, and accelerate execution for American firms and investors.

The speech was also notable for its business‑ready specificity. By highlighting Canada’s role as a reliable provider of energy, critical minerals, food, advanced manufacturing, and clean power, Carney translated geopolitical themes into investable opportunities.

His emphasis on rule‑of‑law institutions, regulatory predictability, and a growing network of trade and investment partnerships positioned Canada as an attractive platform for capital seeking both exposure to North American growth and insulation from global volatility.

Equally important was the tone: confident but not complacent, aligned with U.S. strategic priorities without being deferential. Carney managed to speak fluently to Trump’s “America First” agenda while articulating Canada’s own interests with clarity and self‑respect. For corporate leaders, financiers, and policymakers, the result was a reassuring message: Ottawa understands the new landscape, is prepared to work within it, and is focused on building a North American framework that can support durable growth, competitiveness, and security over the coming decade.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

I like this attitude from Carney. As long as he doesn't capitulate and give up critical Canadian interests, he's 100% right that Canada is indispensible to making America great. And vice versa.

[Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @Tablesalt13]

‼️BREAKING

Carney does a COMPLETE 180 with the USA

Praises America, seeks a new partnership, wants to make "America Great Again"

he's also gutting his surveillance bills.... WHAT IS GOING ON?!?

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

This must be a joke. He can't be that poorly informed. Does this man not get briefed? Or are CSIS and the CAF really this clueless about military realities? Ukraine is winning? Wow. I'm dumbfounded and heartbroken at the suffering this attitude has created for Ukrainians.

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

PM Carney: "Russia's losing 35k troops a month. 22-23k, depending on the month of those troops are killed. They are not gaining territory. Ukraine is able to strike, as you see, increasingly deep into Russian territory. The balance of force is moving in the Ukrainian's direction."

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Where is Canada's mitigation strategy for approaching shortages and price increases of necessities? Where is Nova Scotia's strategy, or any other province? Why are we sleepwalking into the biggest economic calamity since the Great Depression?

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Washington is "watching very closely" 😂 that's hilarious. Evo directly accuses the CIA of an assassination attempt in him, and provides receipts. @RickSanchezTV I appreciate your analysis often, but "watching" is a blatant whitewash.

[Rick Sanchez @RickSanchezTV]

Something big is unfolding in Bolivia right now.

Miners are out in the streets clashing with police after Rodrigo Paz slashed benefits and wages.

Farmers, union workers and indigenous groups are joining mass protests, calling Paz “Washington’s puppet” and demanding the return of Evo Morales.

Bolivia may be the next major conflict in Latin America — and Washington is watching very closely.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

America no longer has the industrial or strategic capacity to win modern war. Strategic return per dollar invested in the US military is approaching zero, as is the value of their security guarantees. Militaries around the world are noticing.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The West Has Already Lost the Drone War. It Just Hasn’t Noticed Yet.

Here is something that should ruin your Monday. A Ukrainian AI drone engineer has gone on record to explain, calmly and with considerable evidence, that Western military planning is not behind the times. It is not lagging. It is not in need of reform. It is dead. Obsolete. A relic propped up by expensive acronyms and men in uniforms who still think the tank is the apex predator of land warfare.

Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder of AI drone company The Fourth Law, has done the maths. FPV drones now account for somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of frontline casualties in Ukraine. Not artillery. Not missiles. Not the armoured columns that NATO has spent forty years and several fortunes preparing to counter. Small, cheap, autonomous flying machines that cost about as much as a decent restaurant dinner and kill with the precision of a surgeon.

But here is where it gets genuinely terrifying. China can produce four billion FPV drones per year. Ukraine, a country that has been at war for three years and is building faster than anyone in the West, manages four million. That is the kind of number that makes you want to lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling for a while.

The West is not losing the AI arms race because it lacks the technology. It is losing because it is still arguing about procurement frameworks while the future arrives, uninvited, at four hundred kilometres per hour with a shaped charge attached.
Latest 👇

https://t.co/atG83skLeT

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

https://t.co/JKD4q57Cqy

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

FORTRESS PAN AMERICA
The Canadian Shield for a Continent in Transition

The unipolar moment has passed, and the American-led global order that has been in place since 1945 is experiencing terminal systemic failure across military, economic, financial, political, and geostrategic domains simultaneously. Canada faces great danger and great opportunity.

America’s naval dominance has been defeated by local and regional anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems that are cheap and easy to replicate, anywhere. The United States has lost control of the globally-critical Strait of Hormuz. Its weapons stockpiles are dangerously depleted, its carriers are highly vulnerable, and it no longer has the capacity to win wars overseas in the geopolitical theatres that matter most.

The petrodollar has cracked, the greenback is losing its position as the global reserve currency, and liquidity is drying up in eurodollar ledgers at the systemic level. Even before this dramatic military defeat and supply chain disruption, the Anglo-American financial architecture already faced an imminent private credit crisis, compounded by sovereign debt unsustainability. Now energy prices are rising, shortages are coming across multiple supply chains, and famine is near-certain in some of the world’s poorest nations.

The political instability in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, and Kiev is extreme, and the actions of the dying Empire are unpredictable, damaging, and strategically ineffectual.

Therefore, Canada must immediately accelerate an independent foreign policy that builds the foundations of a Pan American defensive and economic architecture, positioning itself as the indispensable convener and guarantor of a peaceful transition for our continent. The goal is not to humiliate or displace the United States in any way, but to provide a dignified off-ramp that preserves what is valuable, and helps channel American power and greatness into a cooperative, defensive, Pan American framework.

This document outlines a geostrategic posture that is intended to engender a peaceful and cooperative continental transition that replaces the collapsing global Pax American empire with a Pan American sovereign defense and trade zone stretching from the Arctic Archipelago to the Caribbean Basin and perhaps beyond. The framework envisions Canada playing a unique convening and stabilizing role immediately, leveraging its geography, multicultural identity, and trusted-ally status to build an alternative architecture that secures the hemisphere against both imperial overreach and external threats.

The posture is organized around four integrated principles:

Transparent and Friendly Towards America — deep integration and mutual dependence

Globally Integrated and Supported — diversified economic and diplomatic resilience

Assertive Shield for Sovereignty — layered protection for vulnerable neighbors

From Imperial Fortress America to Sovereign Fortress Pan America — the dignified end state

The immediate foreign policy implementation strategy presented is based on opportunities in Canada’s relationships with Venezuela and Cuba, working together with these nations in strength towards hemispheric peace, security, and prosperity.

By immediately normalizing relations with Venezuela, and integrating our planning with American refiners, we immediately establish the foundational trilateral energy architecture of Pan America. Together we can use our precious endowment of nonrenewable fossil fuels to build the renewable energy future required to ensure collective long term prosperity across our hemisphere.

By opening a genuine and permanent invitation for Cuba to join the Canadian Confederation like Newfoundland did in 1949, Canada can reshape the strategic landscape of the Pan American security zone, working towards a foundation of trust, unity and strength from which all Pan American nations can engage on the world stage.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

This is magnificent infrastructure that will create and nourish a unique microbiome. Hopefully they built it to last for centuries.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

This isn't AI, it's the Huajiang Canyon Bridge in Guizhou, China, the world's highest bridge at 625 meters above the river beneath it.

It features a man-made waterfall created by diverting karst spring water discovered during tunnel construction.

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Latin American leadership for Latin America. Sovereignty for all.

[Gustavo Petro @petrogustavo]

Bolivia vive una insurrección popular.

Es la respuesta a la soberbia geopolítica.

Latinoamérica es una civilización diversa y diferente, no se le puede homogeneizar desde ningún lado del planeta.

Latinoamérica y el Caribe deben ser escuchados por el mundo mirando de frente en paz, y hablando con franqueza.

Mi gobierno está dispuesto, si es invitado, a buscar fórmulas pacíficas de salida a la crisis política boliviana.

No debe haber presos políticos en ninguna parte de las Américas, debemos construir una democracia profunda, multicolor en nuestra civilización que viene de 60.000 a��os en las américas, pero también viene del mediterráneo ancestral y del África negra y de los desiertos del Sahara.

Decía la leyenda que el jaguar americano despertaría si atacaban al cóndor y el jaguar ha despertado en conciencia popular.

En Panamá hablé con el presidente de Bolivia sobre su padre Paz Zamora, el primer progresismo latinoamericano y su paso por Bogotá y Panamá en el exilio donde recibió las visitas del general Torrijos y del M19 con Carlos Vidales el hijo del poeta.

Que ese recuerdo lo llene hoy de amor por su pueblo y abra el diálogo para transformar a Bolivia en una democracia cada vez más profunda y soberana, profundamente latinoamericana

[Ryan Watson @RyanLukeWatson]

Total disaster in Iran. Ground down brutally in Ukraine. Stymied in the Sahel. And now blocked in Bolivia? Imperial power suddenly looks to be in outright collapse, everywhere. The Empire may still have some nasty tricks up its sleeve, but the tide has clearly shifted.

[BoliviaLibre 🇧🇴🕊 @BoliviaLibreNow]

CUANDO EL PUEBLO DICE BASTA BOLIVIA: EL EJÉRCITO HUYE DE LOS CARTUCHOS DE DINAMITA DE LOS MINEROS

Mareas humanas de bolivianos avanzan sobre La Paz, El Alto y las principales ciudades: "Ponchos Rojos, la COB y los sindicatos marchan junto a los mineros armados con dinamita
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