Bruno Maçães+

My new book: In Search of Greater India

as I continue a full investigation of the world’s main living civilisations. In this book I also develop my concept of the civilisation state to a much greater extent than before

The age of world order is over. The age of world ordering has begun

Every empire eventually discovers the same inconvenient truth: it is mortal.

A crime and a tragedy: the Iran war

You pounce when the enemy is weak and that is what Israel and the US did.

Europe in the Element of Crisis

On improvisation, adventure, and the unfinished European project

In artificial intelligence the world is always what we want it to be and it is so before we act.

Artificial intelligence will not replace human intelligence.

Against America, Europe Can Become Europe

I don’t remember exactly when I first thought something was seriously wrong with the transatlantic relationship.

The energy wars. Are China and America on a collision course?

Remember those loony conspiracy theorists who saw oil behind every invasion and every war?

A new kind of world order. Not order as a final state but ordering as a process.

We all have a sense that the Western or American order is coming to an end, but there is much less clarity on what might follow.

Gaza: The Reckoning

The debate on whether Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide is now closed, and has been closed for a while.

Power transitions: Britain, America, China

Geopolitics has taken over the energy transition.

Four waves of modernity

Europe played two distinct roles, I think.

May 2: The blackout in Spain and Portugal; how to build a new grid for a new energy system; energy as a system of relations

Jorge Sanz, former president of the Commission for the Energy Transition in Spain, argues that fifteen gigawatts were suddenly disconnected from the energy system because of an increase in the grid frequency resulting from too much energy generation from renewables.

April 27: The system as a third actor; why AI needs solar; how to infect a large language model

One of the topics in World Builders that needs development is the notion of a spectrum of dominance.

April 23: Trump as fantasist; American simulations; and the logic of decoupling

You have to admire Trump’s peculiar genius.

The Age of World Building Has Begun

Toynbee remarks in one of his essays that for an Englishman in 1897 history seemed to have come to an end.

The rebuilding macroeconomic theory project: Keynes

Among the once unquestionable beliefs that may now take a new meaning is the idea of the economy as a living organism.

The Taiwan Conundrum

We recently attended a workshop on the future of Taiwan with a delegation of very senior scholars from China coordinated and led by Tsinghua University.

Where the Sun Never Sets: Towards a Solar Civilization

I argued in Geopolitics for the End Time that what we saw during the pandemic, a race against every other country, often drawing a form of perverse political pleasure from comparative tables of success and failure, that logic will be embraced once again during the long climate crisis.

Join my chat

A private space for us to converse and connect

Electricity and the American century: of all forms of energy electricity is the most modern, and the most virtual

In the twentieth century, “increases in all forms of energy use made the United States the most highly powered society in world history” (David Nye).

The underworld, a system of modern energetics

The twentieth century brought about a different kind of civilisation.

The search for virtual energy. Sources of the energy transition

Energy sources take two main forms: energy flows and energy fuels.